The team behind Airplane! first turned their wicked talents onto the police force with the short-lived cult TV series Police Squad!, but it was this hilarious feature-length spoof that introduced Leslie Nielsen's inspired Frank Drebin to a worldwide audience. Nielsen remains wonderfully stone-faced as the inept lieutenant, who wreaks havoc in Los Angeles while investigating the shooting of a colleague around the time of a visit by the Queen. The supporting players - George Kennedy as his captain, Priscilla Presley as the equally clumsy love interest and OJ Simpson as the wounded colleague - are also delightfully deadpan, and the determinedly juvenile gags never stop flowing.

When the bumbling Lieutenant Frank Drebin investigates events following the shooting of his partner, he stumbles upon an attempt to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II.