Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #93202 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-07-16
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Colour, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 90 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
In between the disaster movie satire Airplane! in 1980 and the hardboiled cop show parody The Naked Gun in 1988, the comedy crew of Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker put together a picture that's almost as funny as their better-known hits. Top Secret! sends up spy movies and cheesy teen rock 'n' roll musicals. Val Kilmer stars as swivel-hipped American rocker Nick Rivers, a sort of blonde Elvis whose secret weapon is Little Richard's tune "Tutti Fruitti." On tour behind the Iron Curtain, Nick strikes blows for democracy overtly and covertly, with his music as well as his espionage skills. In short, this is a very, very silly motion picture. Some great gags, including a subtitled scene in a Swedish book shop, and an inspired bit with a Ford Pinto that not everybody may get anymore. (The Pinto, you may or may not recall, was notoriously prone to gas tank explosions when rear-ended.) --Jim Emerson, Amazon.com

Customer Reviews

Not just hilarious, but really inventive, too
A 'cult classic' is what we're talking about here. At the time, and even now, some just won't get it.

It is interesting that Airplane!, which came before, and The Naked Gun, which followed, were huge successes and this is probably because they were more disciplined parodies of highly recognisable genres. Here, though, as in The Kentucky Fried Movie where they began, the team just let ideas run wild. Although more surreal, this is no less funny and at times is probably the best work they've done.

The songs are sublime, from a razor-sharp Beach Boys spoof to a reworded Are You Lonesome Tonight? turned into an advertising jingle. The dialogue sparkles, the jokes are terrific and the fact that Val Kilmer is taking it so seriously (he always does - and this actually makes the film funnier now that he is so well-known) just adds to the brilliance.

Who can forget the city map turning into a Pac-Man game, the giant pigeon statue or the scene with Peter Cushing, filmed entirely backwards - a scene which was ripped off by an advertising campaign for Tennants Pilsner which must have lasted a decade?

Of course, today many of the targets sent up will perhaps have been forgotten. Who now remembers Midnight Express, The Blue Lagoon, any number of cheesy Elvis, World War II and Cold War movies...perhaps even Pac Man itself?

The fact that it's so brimming with ideas will just be too much for some viewers, like a cake that's too rich. Others will be in comedy heaven.

Soooooooooooo funny!!!
Any one who likes comedy has to get this, it is one of the funniest spoof comedys ever! Ok, so it might be a bit old now, but one you start watching it, you won't stop laughing.
It is one of the rare comedy films which continues to churn out the gags during the film, and never lets up.
The cast is brilliant, headed by the excellent Val Kilmer, and the charecters are very good too, especially 'de ja vous', a member of the french resistance, who's first line upon meeting people is 'have we not met before'.
This film has been my favorite since I was very young, and it still looks brilliant every time i watch it.

The Greatest Comedy of All Time!
The first time I saw this film was in a South African cinema in 1984 upon its initial release. I was 9 years old and laughed so much that I had to be excused to the bathroom midway through. This has never happened before or since I might add. As soon as I'd finished watching the film I wanted to see it again. I dragged all of my friends to go and see it - and each of them wanted to go and see it again too! In total we went to see this film 7 times at the cinema on its initial release, each time finding new gags to chuckle at.

Now, roll on 18 years and I've finally found this film on VHS. Is it still as funny as it was in 1984? Well, I suppose that I'm a little more discerning about comedy these days, but this film is just so full of gags that I was forced to laugh all the way through. I have not seen another comedy that manages to cram so much funny stuff into such a short space of time. And because the directors weren't satisfied with simply filling the length of the film with great gags, they also layered them deep into most scenes. So at any one time you will have a main foreground gag going on and one or more gags happening somewhere in the background that you'll probably only notice on the third of fourth viewing!

It's full of highly memorable imagery and brilliant comic performances throughout and is the definitive Zucker & Abrahams classic.