Before he was Jim Morrison, Iceman, or Batman, Val Kilmer made his big screen debut as Nick Rivers, the doltish American rock 'n' roll idol who is unwittingly embroiled in an East German underground resistance plot in Top Secret!. Skewering everything from WWII romances and Cold War spy thrillers to ‘60s popstar musicals, this delightfully silly spoof from the team behind Airplane! is jampacked with sight gags, double entendres, and multi-layered setpieces delivered at such a manic pace that you’ll need several rewatches to exhaust all of its comedy. Its lowbrow style means that some jokes are undoubtedly dated, but there’s a lot of timeless wit on display here, including zinging one-liners, tongue-in-cheek lampooning of cinematic clichés, and slapstick gags in the vein of masters of the form like Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton. Top Secret! is blessedly under no illusions as to what we want from a movie like this, so the fact that there’s no comprehensible plot in sight only adds to the enjoyment here.
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Actor: Alan Harris, Andrew Hawkins, Billy J. Mitchell, Billy Mitchell, Burton Zucker, Charlotte Zucker, Chas Bryer, Christopher Villiers, David Zucker, Derek Lyons, Dimitri Andreas, Eddie Powell, Eddie Tagoe, Gertan Klauber, Guy Standeven, Harry Ditson, Harry Fielder, Ian McNeice, Jack Cooper, Janos Kurucz, Jeremy Kemp, Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jim Carter, Jim Dowdall, John J. Carney, John Sharp, Kathryn Mullen, Lee Sheward, Louise Yaffe, Lucy Gutteridge, Mac McDonald, Marc Boyle, Marcus Powell, Martin Grace, Michael Gough, Nancy Abrahams, Nicola Wright, Omar Sharif, Orla Pederson, Paul Weston, Peter Cushing, Richard Bonehill, Richard Mayes, Steve Ubels, Stuart Fell, Susan Breslau, Sydney Arnold, Tina Simmons, Tristram Jellinek, Val Kilmer, Warren Clarke
Director: David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams
