Question: Captain Oveur was saying things to Joey. What I didn't understand is the jokes behind the lines "Have you ever been in a Turkish Prison" and "Do you like movies about gladiators." What are the jokes behind these? Please explain. Thank-you.
Hamster
29th Aug 2005
Airplane (1980)
Answer: I believe this joke is just to make the watcher extremely uncomfortable and it works great.
Answer: The Turkish prison question is a reference to the movie Midnight Express.
Chosen answer: All of his questions to Joey are filled with homosexual innuendos; the perverted captain is trying to see if Joey has any such tendencies. In a Turkish prison, men who are sexually frustrated will resort to "companionship" with other men (even forcefully). Movies about gladiators depict ripped, muscular men, and the question about seeing a "grown man naked" obviously fits the pattern.
Matty Blast
The gladiator reference is about Spartacus. There is a scene in there about homosexuality.
What scene are you talking about? If you mean the "snails and oysters" scene, that was not part of the movie until it was restored in 1991.
And also a veiled reference to the "Sword and Sandals" movies that the ultra-buff actor Steve Reeves made back in the 1950s and 1960s that featured well-built and handsome male actors playing characters from ancient Greece and ancient Rome.
Scott215