The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
Short description
Lt. Frank Drebin is a disaster-prone officer with the Los Angeles police. After his partner, Nordberg, is gunned down by a gang of drug traffickers, Drebin sets out to find whoever is responsible. His suspicions fall on the shipping magnate Vincent Ludwig, though he has no evidence to charge him, and he also has to contend with a mayor who keeps getting in his way. A visit by Queen Elizabeth II to Los Angeles raises the stakes, and Drebin comes to believe that Ludwig is plotting against her. He persuades his superiors to give him a chance to prove himself by protecting the Queen, a task that involves Jane Spencer, an old girlfriend of Ludwig's.
The film is a comedy directed by David Zucker, who wrote the screenplay with Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams, the same team behind his earlier features Airplane!, Top Secret! and Ruthless People. It came fourth in his directing career and was followed by a sequel a few years later. Leslie Nielsen plays Drebin, with Priscilla Presley as Jane Spencer, Ricardo Montalban as Ludwig, George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson and Susan Beaubian among the cast, which numbers seventy-two credited actors. Made for about 12 million dollars, it took in roughly 79 million worldwide.
Audience response has been warm: on IMDb it holds 7.6 out of 10 from 221,000 votes, while on TMDB it scores 7.3 from 4,680 votes. A critics' rating of 7.5 from 144 reviews places it close to those audience figures.
What's left behind the scenes
- When Jane is cleaning out Frank's refrigerator, she finds a package of Chinese food. The package’s manufacturing date is 1982. This is the year the series “Police Squad!” premiered in the US, which the film is based on.
- Despite the film being based on the series, only Leslie Nielsen and Ed Williams (playing the forensic scientist Ted) remained from the original cast, and Ted is not shown teaching children, as he was in the series.
- Director David Zucker mentions in the film's commentary that the studio insisted on attracting some Oscar laureate. This was George Kennedy, who actively offered his help, as he regretted not being in the producers' 1980 film “Airplane!”.
- The “breasts” that remind Frank of his ex-wife are the concrete structures of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California.
- Drebin accidentally destroys the painting "The Blue Boy"—a portrait by English painter Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). The original has been housed in the Huntington Museum in California since 1929.
- The terrorist organization that Frank defeats at the beginning of the film references "SPECTRE," the criminal organization from the James Bond series.
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