Saturday I added to my movie library with the DVD of Paramount’s comedy Top Secret!. From the disturbed minds of Abrahams, Zucker and Zucker, this was their follow-up film to the smash hit Airplane!. (Yes, these guys do like their exclamation points.) Top Secret! failed to find an audience at the theaters and the movie, despite launching the career of Val Kilmer, quickly vanished. yet for many us the movie lives on as one of our favorite absurdist comedies. “Weird Al” Yankovic has this movie as a personal favorite.

American pop singer Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer) comes to East Germany to perform in an international cultural festival. However the East Germans, all uniformed and acting like WWII Nazi’s, are using the festival as a diversion while they destroy the NATO submarine fleet. Nick becomes involved with Hillary, daughter of a kidnapped scientist making a super weapon for the East Germans, and soon he and the French Resistance, yes the French Resistance in 1980’s East Germany this is part of the absurdist comedy, make a desperate bid the free the scientist and save the day, but there is a traitor among the resistance threatening everything.

If you have seen the previous film Airplane!Then you know the zany style that the filmmakers utilized in such an over the top plot. Unlike Airplane!, there were no parade of stars playing against type in Top Secret!, one of the elements that I think added to the box office failure. Additionally Airplane!came at the end of a nearly decade long run of disaster movies and satirized them perfectly but Top Secret!is parodying the WWII resistance move, combined with the teen pop musical, and neither style of film had been popular for decades so it was targeting forms that perhaps many in the audience had never seen.

The disc is spare on bonus features, boasting only an audio commentary track and a few deleted or altered scenes.

The movie has become a cult favorite and it still never fails to bring my mood up whenever I watch it.