Movies - The Naked Gun

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	Movies - The Naked Gun

The Naked Gun is the name of a series of comedy movies starring Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy, and O. J. Simpson. The three films (The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear
, and The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult) chronicle the adventures of Nielsen's character, the bumbling police detective Lieutenant Frank Drebin.

The movie series is based on the character created by Nielsen in the television series Police Squad! The core creative team behind Police Squad! and the movie series includes Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Pat Proft in varying combinations.

The films all feature extremely fast-paced, off-the-wall, slapstick style comedy, including a lot of visual and verbal puns and gags.

In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted the first Naked Gun the 39th greatest comedy film of all time.

In addition to the aforementioned cast, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! co-stars Ricardo Montalban, Jeannette Charles, Raye Birk, and Nancy Marchand. "Weird Al" Yankovic, Joe Grifasi, Lawrence Tierney, John Houseman (his last film), and Mark Holton have cameo roles.

Major League Baseball players Reggie Jackson, Jay Johnstone, Randy Harvey, Brett Bartlett, and Charles Fick have cameo roles as themselves, as do umpires Joe West and Hank Robinson. Professional announcers Curt Gowdy, Jim Palmer, Tim McCarver, Mel Allen, Dick Enberg, Dick Vitale, and Dr. Joyce Brothers appear as play-by-play commentators.

Plot

The plot of the series is a basic parody of detective film clichés, featuring stereotypical characters, settings, and situations. Many other film genres and styles are mocked as well, and the movies are full of references to current events and contemporary pop culture.

The movie starts in a meeting in Beirut with a collection of anti-American leaders; Ayatollah Khomeni, Mikhail Gorbachev (who claims he has the Americans believing he is "a nice guy"), Yasser Arafat, Muammar al-Qaddafi and Idi Amin, who are planning a terrorist act. The man who is later shown to be Papshmir is seen at this meeting. It turns out that Frank Drebin has been posing undercover as a waiter and starts beating up everyone before escaping out the window.

Back in Los Angeles, officer Nordberg (Simpson) is investigating a heroin drug operation at the docks when he is seen by villain-in-disguise Vincent Ludwig (Montalbán), and is shot numerous times by Ludwig's goons before falling in the harbor. (It is a running joke that Nordberg keeps getting badly injured, but somehow manages to survive.) After being briefed on the case by his collegue Ed (Kennedy), Frank visits Nordberg in hospital, where there is later another attempt on the injured man's life. Frank chases the assassin (a doctor) in a commendeered car operated by a panicked student driver and Houseman's unflappable instructor, until the assassin crashes an army rocket into a fireworks factory. Over the ensuing carnage, Drebin proclaims "There's nothing to see here!" to the assembled onlookers.

Papshmir is seen meeting with Vincent Ludwig in his office, where Ludwig says that he will assassinate Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom (who is on a state visit to the USA) for $100 million. Ludwig demonstrates that he has a way of turning anyone into an unknowing assassin at the press of Ludwig's beeper; it appears that the victims are responding to a post-hypnotic suggestion, but the film makes no effort to clarify the point.

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