Top Secret!
Short description
Top Secret! follows Nick Rivers, an American rock and roll singer who travels to East Germany to perform at a cultural festival. There he meets Hillary Flammond and becomes entangled in an underground resistance movement. The festival is a cover for a secret military scheme, and Hillary's father, a scientist, has been captured and forced to work on a weapon. Nick joins Hillary and others to try to rescue him.
The film is a comedy directed by Jerry Zucker, with Jim Abrahams and David Zucker also credited as writers; all three had previously made Airplane! in 1980, and this was the second film in each of their directing careers, followed by Ruthless People in 1986. Val Kilmer plays Nick Rivers, with Lucy Gutteridge as Hillary Flammond, Peter Cushing as a bookstore proprietor, Jeremy Kemp as General Streck, Christopher Villiers as Nigel and Warren Clarke as Colonel von Horst. The cast and crew lists run to 99 and 115 people respectively.
Made for 9 million dollars, the film took 20 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.2 out of 10 from 82,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.1 out of 10 from 1,474 votes, while a film critics' rating stands at 6.6 out of 10 from 53 reviews, so critics and audiences are fairly close in their assessment.
What's left behind the scenes
- The filmmakers played three German soldiers in one of the scenes.
- The Zucker brothers’ parents – Burton and Charlotte – also played small roles in the film.
- The songs that Val Kilmer sings in the film are actually performed by himself. They were released on the film's soundtrack under the name of Kilmer’s character – Nick Rivers.
- This is Val Kilmer's first role in a feature film.
- The "German" that Nick studies on the train isn't a language at all.
- When Nick Rivers is in prison, a picture of Cher can be seen several times on the wall of his cell. Val Kilmer was dating her at the time.
- For the scene with the cow in boots, the soles were cut off two pairs of rubber boots, and then the boots were simply taped to the cow's feet.
- The waiter, who addresses Nick as if in German, is actually uttering a curse in Yiddish.
- The "Swedish" that Hillary speaks to the Swedish secondhand bookstore owner is actually phrases in English spoken backward.
- On the newspaper photos reporting that Rivers will perform at a festival in East Germany, two headlines read: "Scientists extend orgasm to double digits" and "Meteorite falls near child."
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