Skip to content
Dom Robinson reviews
Paramount
- Cert:
- Cat.no: PHE 8076
- Running time: 81 minutes
- Year: 1988
- Pressing: 2001
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 27 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English, German
- Subtitles: 13 languages available
- Widescreen: 1.78:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Trailer, Audio Commentary
Director:
- David Zucker
(Airplane!, BASEketball, For Goodness Sake, The Guest, Naked Gun 1 & 2, Ruthless People, Top Secret)
Producer:
- Robert K. Weiss
Screenplay:
- Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Pat Proft
Music:
- Ira Newborn
Cast:
- Lt. Frank Drebin: Leslie Nielsen
Jane Spencer: Priscilla Presley
Capt. Ed Hocken: George Kennedy
Vincent Ludwig: Ricardo Montalban
Nordberg: O.J. Simpson
Queen Elizabeth II: Jeannette Charles
Himself: “Weird Al” Yankovic
I don’t know what happened. I was a big fan of Police Squad, a 6-part TV series about inept cop Lt. Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) and his inability to catch the criminals set against a backdrop of endless and hilarious sight gags that made rewatching possible time and time again and I could STILL find them just as funny.
Not so then with this first feature-length spin-off as Frank has to stop an assassination attempt on the Queen of England, recently referred to by Countess of Wessex, Sophie Windsor, as “the old dear” and portrayed by the-only-woman-who-ever-does-the-Queen, Jeannette Charles.
I was a massive fan – and still am – of the cloud-bound comedies Airplane!, Airplane II: The Sequel and one with slightly more risque comedy to it, Top Secret and considering the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team were responsible for those too, what went wrong?
For reasons best known to themselves, the production team brought in George Kennedy to replace Alan North, who died in January last year, as Captain Ed Hocken, Drebin’s boss who, as usual, was already on the scene. Similarly, the character of Drebin’s associate Nordberg was originally played by Peter Lupus before being replaced in the film series by one-time sports star-cum-fugitive, O.J. Simpson, who definitely won’t be starring in a remake of The Man Who Loved Women.
Early scenes are grainy, leading to many artifacts, but they improve as the film progresses. The print’s presented in an anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen ratio. The average bitrate is a high 7.51Mb/s, briefly peaking over 9Mb/s.
The remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack isn’t really used to a great achievement here with sound effects not coming out much different to the standard surround sound version and it’s in English only, while the Germans get mono.
Extras are thin on the ground with this series, only including a 2-minute 16:9 anamorphic Trailer and a feature-length Audio Commentary from director David Zucker, producer Robert Weiss and it’s hosted by Peter Tilden (who he?)
It’s the only one in the series with a decent number of chapters – 27, with subtitles in 13 languages: English (and hard of hearing), Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish and Turkish. The menus are silent and static.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.