"Police Squad!"

Love it. Much better than the movies.

 

One of the best shows ever.

 

Leslie Nielsen was so committed to fart jokes, there's one on his tombstone:

 

"Who are you and how did you get in here?"

"I'm a Locksmith and...I'm a Locksmith!"

 

Love the TV show and love the movies. In fact my all-time favorite scene from a movie may be this one:

 

I find it funny that MLB Network is showing the "Naked Gun" movies as an equal to others like "The Natural".

 

Agreed. The TV show worked much better. It was a parody of cop shows after all. I do like the first movie but just feel it's not the same. And I can't sand the later 2 movies.

 

I really missed the actors who played Ed, Nordburg and johnny.

George Kennedy was a terrific actor, but it wasn't the same.
O.J. Simpson was just as wrong then as he would be now.

 

Note that the video arm of Modern Film Effects, Modern Videofilm, did the video transfers of all the episodes for home video... and I did those myself in the 1980s, supervised by the late, great Mike Spiegler of Paramount TV. Those were in the top 3 or 4 best experiences I had there -- they were screamingly funny and really, really good shows. I wish we could've shown the bits that weren't used -- they had some outtakes that were good, plus some epilogues that were dropped or changed.

I believe they used William Conrad as the replacement for John Belushi, who had the misfortune to die of an overdose the week the episode where he "dies" in the open...



The Paramount execs flew into a panic, and I had to replace that shot just about six hours before the show aired (this was roughly 3PM in LA, and the show aired around 9PM or 9:30PM in NY, 6-ish LA time). Easily done, but man, there were like 8 nervous people in the room when that was fixed.

 

Probably the best line of any TV series. My favorite, at least.

 

It's pure genius in its blatant simplicity.

I do wonder if that entire episode was based around that one gag? Risky as it's so downplayed a lot of people miss it.

 

A lot of people miss most of the gags, sadly.

 

The films certainly had one advantage over the TV series...............Priscilla.

 

Priscilla and her nice Beaver.

 

The TV show is definitely better than the movies. Love the TV show--watched it during its first run. Of course, I was a Kentucky Fried Movie/ Airplane/Top Secret fan going in.

The movies...? They are OK. There are some funny jokes. But it's a case where more is less.

 

Loved the show but knew after the first episode that it was too smart for TV. Me and my Airplane-loving friends gathered to watch every episode.

 

In the "Japanese garden"! Ah-hahahahahaha!

 

These are particularly funny if you grew up in the era of the late sixties-mid seventies cop shows. You had to grow up in that era to appreciate the golden throated announcer mentioning the guest stars' names and the episode title on each show.

I can still hear the phrase "A QUINN MARTIN PRODUCTION".

 

undercover cop - "I've got green"
Thug with poor hearing - "you've got Lorne Greene?"
undercover cop - "no, I've got cash"
Thug with poor hearing - "you've got Johnny Cash?"

One huge area that the movies were lacking is that they didn't have Johnny the shoe-shine guy. Johnny was the key to each episode, and he knew a lot.

 

You're saying they're not??

My mom and I were watching "The Naked Gun" on the MLB channel last night, and while she may have dementia, she was in tears laughing at the antics on the TV screen. I mentioned to my mom Priscilla was the ex-wife of Elvis, and my mom commented, "That guy knows how to sing!" Doesn't recall who's OJ though.

 

I wish I could watch movies on MLB Network but they refuse to get rid of their ticker during them.

 

Has the Belushi ever Ben released? I had heard it was believed lost. I can't get over OJ in the films. It bugs me knowing he murdered his wife and he's playing a comedy role.

 

I think it's difficult to sustain that type of humor successfully in films.

 

I loved it. So muchso that I married it (sorry Pee Wee Herman for borrowing your one-episode Pee Wee's Playhouse line, another of the several 1980s TV shows I liked...) I decided to get the tape right away. Only I wasn't getting "The tape right a away" I wanted "Police Squad"It, the "parent source" "Airplane," and the "in-turn" offshoot theatricals "The Naked Gun" were all produced by Paramount Studios, so, yes, Viacom WOULD own all of those, "Police Squad!" inc;uded..and I believe have it, given the major success of both previous "Airplane" and the "Police Squad" blockbuster theatricals I refer to above, "Naked Gun", the "Police Squad" has GOTTA be on video, especially what with the long way video has come. And I don't mean in the R rated "come" sense (sorry)!!