TOP SECRET

US, 1984, 86 minutes, Colour.
Val Kilmer, Omar Shariff, Jeremy Kemp, Warren Clarke, Lucy Gutteridge, Michael Gough, Peter Cushing.
Directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker.

Top Secret is a piece of lunatic entertainment. It was written and directed by Jim Abrahams, David and Jerry Zucker, the team who produced the first Airplane/ Flying high film (not the sequel).

The team has a skill in sending up the genres and conventions of traditional Hollywood movies. Their films provide an excellent catalogue of such conventions and the way that they can be ridiculed. After working successfully on the popularity of the disaster film, they turned their attention to espionage and war.

The setting is ambiguous ? contemporary East Germany or, on the other hand, Germany during World War Two. The characters and the incidents seem to interchange. The hero is an American rock and roll star, Nick Rivers (played excellently by Val Kilmer, especially in his imitations of Elvis Presley). He has to give a concert instead of an opera star ? but it is to an elite audience and he performs 'Tutti Frutti'. This brings him to the attention of the German Command. There is satire on the typical Nazi officers ? led by Jeremy Kemp. There are also a number of visual gags including jokes about the perspective, for example of telephones in filming.

The plot then becomes a typical war thriller with the heroine (the attractive Lucy Guttridge, Little Gloria, Happy At Last) and her science expert father working for the enemy on a secret rocket. By chance Nick destroys the rocket and the formula but is captured and imprisoned. Suddenly a group of French Resistance appears linked with the heroine Hillary. The Resistance is led by Nigel, a seemingly gay character and there is a flashback parody of Christopher Atkins’ and Brooke Shields' Blue Lagoon. Needless to say, there is a shoot-out, the arrival of the police, the rescue of the doctor from the prison and the rendezvous with the R.A.F. who bring them all to freedom. There is satire in the entry into the castle with the cast disguised as a herd of cows!

A number of stars appear as guests including Michael Gough as Dr. Flammond, Peter Cushing doing an odd piece with a magnifying glass in a bookshop and Omar Sharif getting into all kinds of trouble and sending up him image.

The blend of irreverence, highlighting the strong entertainment points as well as the silliness of the genres and a blend of all kinds of music along with visual and verbal jokes make Top Secret zany entertainment.