TV Cream

Films: B is for...

Big Bus, The

We’ll take Messrs. Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker as read here, because this unfairly maligned Airplane!-on-wheels is, to our mind, every bit as much fun as the quickfire Neilsen-reviver, and in fact pre-dates it by several years. Top stuff it is, too – from the opening nuclear rod gag, Larry Hagman’s car park cameo, and the triumphant unveiling of the bus itself, complete with swimming pool and perma-grinning cocktail pianist, to the inevitable Stockard-Channing-in-beverage-related-jeopardy ending. This, the first Airplane! and Police Squad (and bits of Top Secret) are the peak of the quickfire goofball genre – shame about the hundred-odd mediocre films that followed, eh?

1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. THX 1139

    February 11, 2019 at 10:30 am

    “Six weeks to live!!!” Murphy Dunne as the cocktail bar pianist is hilarious in this.

    In fact there’s loads of good stuff here, I remember BBC1 showed it one night and it seemed everyone at school had watched it because the morning after it was the talk of the playground. The director was a veteran of Monkees episodes, and you can tell, it has that same sense of the ridiculous.

    “You eat one foot and they call you a cannibal!”

    “Looks like he got kicked in the nuts!”

    Richard Mulligan pretending to be dead to wind up Sally Kellerman!

    etc…

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