GROANS, GIGGLES AND GUFFAWS END THE SUMMER!
AIRPLANE! Lands at The Park Theatre on Thursday
One of Hollywood’s funniest disaster movies is the final film in The Park Theatre’s free Summer Movie Nights series this week on Thursday, August 19 at 7 pm at the Jaffrey Woman’s Club.
This 1980 film, AIRPLANE!, relies on outrageous sight gags, groan-inducing dialogue, and deadpan acting -- a comedy style that has been imitated for the past 30 years everywhere, including and especially, “Saturday Night Live”.
Starring Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges and Julie Hagerty, AIRPLANE! pulls
out all the clichés as an alcoholic pilot, who's developed a fear of flying due to wartime trauma,
boards a jumbo jet in an attempt to woo back his stewardess girlfriend. Food poisoning decimates
the passengers and crew, leaving it up to Striker to land the plane. Along the way, we meet a clutch
of stock disaster movie passengers like the guitar-strumming nun, a sick little girl, a frightened old
lady, and two African-American travelers whose "jive" has to be subtitled. Nielsen portrays the
plane's doctor, launching the actor's comedic career that carried him through the next 20 years.
Doors open at the Jaffrey Woman’s Club open at 6:30. Admission is free and the public is invited.
The film begins at 7 pm and popcorn, candy and drinks are available. The Park Theatre’s free Saturdays at the Cinema begins on September 18 with “Humoresque”, followed by “Ghostbusters” in October and the “Doomed Battalion” for the Theatre’s annual tribute to the area’s veterans.
The Park Theatre’s 2010 Season is the result of the Theatre’s collaboration with the Jaffrey Women’s Club and numerous performing artists throughout the region that intend to mount their productions in the reopened Park Theater. One of those partners, Monadnock Music, presents a free Summer Concert at the Cathedral of the Pines in Rindge on August 27 at 7:30 pm. Coming up in October and November are Actors’ Circle Theatre’s The Importance of Being Ernest, Branch River Theatre’s The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940, and Small Pond Production’s The Diary of Anne Frank.
