After Dr Rumack (Leslie Nielsen in his first comedic role) has just successfully stabilised a plane, a female passenger (Lee Bryant, who suggested that the gag should become increasingly ludicrous) gets stressed and is told to calm down by an air hostess, who shakes the passenger’s chair and shouts at her to get a hold of herself. Standard procedure. Nothing out of the ordinary. It’s hard work being an air hostess at the best of times. Thankfully, a fellow passenger comes along to relieve her of her duties, and proceeds to shake the passenger and slap her in the face. Not standard procedure. Kind of out of the ordinary. Romack arrives and relieves this passenger of his duties, and starts to shake the woman and slap her again. A nun appears behind and informs him that he has an urgent phone call, at which point he dutifully leaves, but not before giving the women another hard slap on the face (apparently this second slap wasn’t rehearsed. Ouch).
The nun will treat this woman with kind Christian charity, right? Wrong. She reassures the woman that she’ll be fine, but says this peaceful words of assurance while delivering a double slap, Jigglypuff style. The nun is then also relieved of her pastoral duties, as the camera pans back to reveal a queue of eager participants ready to administer some less than palliative care, with men seen wearing boxing gloves and wielding spanners, and women holding guns and baseball bats.
Then the scene just ends there. It’s dumb, it’s nonsensical, it’s repetitious, but that’s the kind of silly slapstick I love. It’s not exactly p.c., and these kind of films wouldn’t be made today, but I appreciate this film’s existence nonetheless. The increasingly inane humour as the situation escalates from a fairly standard exchange with an air hostess to a crowd of passengers holding weapons of destruction is wonderful, and similarly exaggerated gags are repeated throughout the film. Sometimes the best type of comedy is the extreme action-based comedy that makes no sense at all. Yes, I’m serious. And stop calling me Shirley.