Airplane! to have never seen nor to have any desire to see "Airplane II". Airplane! Airplane! (alternatively titled Flying High!) is a 1980 American satirical disaster film written and directed by David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams, and produced by Jon Davison. It stars Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty and features Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Lorna Patterson. The film is a parody of the disaster film genre, particularly the 1957 Paramount film "Zero Hour!", from which it borrows the plot and the central characters, as well as many elements from "Airport 1975" and
Airplane! characters. Stack's role as the captain who loses his nerve in one of the earliest airline "disaster" films, "The High and the Mighty" (1954), is spoofed in "Airplane!", as is Lloyd Bridges' 1970–1971 television role as airport manager Jim Conrad in "San Francisco International Airport". Peter Graves was in the made-for-television film "", in which an SST was unable to land owing to an emergency. Nielsen saw a major boost to his career after "Airplane!"s release, and the film marked a significant change in his film persona towards a new specialty in deadpan comedy, notably in the three "Naked Gun"