Airplane! (1980)

It purportedly spoofs the airplane-based disaster movies so popular at the time of its 1980 release, but much of the main plot (a scarred war pilot must attempt to land a passenger jet during a storm when the crew falls ill) and even some specific scene are lifted from the little-known 1957 B-movie Zero Hour! ; it simultaneously satirizes one particularly obscure film, ’70s disaster films, and every bad B-movie you’ve ever seen.

The reason for this is because the ZAZ team framed their zaniest conceits (having Barbara Billingsley trade jive with two unreceptive African-Americans, sparking a ferocious, furniture-smashing barroom brawl between two Girl Scouts, undercutting a scene of plane cabin panic by having a big-breasted woman run in front of the action for a single jiggly second) with an uncredited, scene-for-scene fabrication of a forgotten ‘50s airplane actioneer called Zero Hour (based on a novel by Airport author Arthur Hailey).

It took a team of three writer/directors (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker) to run with the comic baton that Mel Brooks temporarily passed along after “High Anxiety.”

Other movies with a similar style predate this one; Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run, and the Mel Brooks genre spoofs like Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles come to mind.