SILVER

After the smash hit success of AIRPLANE!, Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker followed up with the ambitious genre mashup TOP SECRET!, melding elements from World War II and Cold War spy movies with Elvis musicals. Val Kilmer, in his feature film debut, plays American rock 'n' roller Nick Rivers, who travels to East Germany to perform at a cultural festival. There he becomes embroiled in a secret plot by the regime’s authorities to conquer their West German neighbors, as well as the local resistance movement’s efforts to thwart their oppressors. As the charismatic young heartthrob, Kilmer confidently pulls off the film’s sublimely ridiculous lines of dialogue. TOP SECRET! features some of the most inventive sight gags and set pieces in the ZAZ oeuvre — not to mention parody rock 'n' roll numbers; no less an authority than "Weird Al" Yankovic has cited TOP SECRET! as his favorite movie. DIR/SCR Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker; SCR Martyn Burke; PROD Jon Davison, Hunt Lowry. U.S./UK, 1984, color, 90 min. RATED PG

In Memoriam: Jim Abrahams (1944–2024); Val Kilmer (1959–2025)