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Our high school English teachers tried to drill the difference between parody and satire into our soft skulls, with little success. Then they threw in the even trickier concept of homage, and we cut class to go smoke behind the portable.
So assembling a list of the top 10 spoof movies is tricky business. Waiting For Guffman doesn't make the cut, because it doesn't parody amateur theatre so much as gently satirize it. And Monty Python's Life Of Brian pokes all kinds of fun at religion, but it's not really a spoof of anything.
Or is it? Man.
Meet you behind the portable.
Scary Movie 4, in theatres today -- now that's a spoof, from jokemeisters David Zucker and Jim Abrahams, two of the creators of the classic Airplane!
Surely Airplane! must be the zenith of any list of the all-time best spoof films.
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It is ... and don't call me Shirley.
1. Airplane! (1980)
The high-concept and overwrought disaster flicks of the '70s were fodder for Zucker and Abrahams' first mainstream foray into spoofdom. It's lowbrow stuff, no question, but the background sight gags and actors' deadpan delivery basically created a new mini-genre of film comedy. It was also the beginning of Canuck actor Leslie Nielsen's reign as the king of spoofs, which he extended a little too long with crap like Wrongfully Accused and 2001: A Space Travesty.
Classic line: "Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?"
2. Young Frankenstein (1974)
The Mel Brooks trifecta is complete, and the black-and-white Young Frankenstein, starring Gene Wilder as Dr. Friedrich Von Frankenstein ("that's FRONK-en-steen"), is arguably his tightest work. Brooks's jokes tend to be a little more, well, writerly than Zucker's stuff, if you can call gags about giant knockers cerebral. Marty Feldman as the bug-eyed Igor steals more scenes than he does cadavers.
Classic line: "Put ... the candle ... BACK."
3. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Post-Meathead but pre-Sleepless In Seattle, Rob Reiner collaborated with Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean on this mockumentary about a heavy metal band's fateful promo tour. The film cleverly pokes fun at everyone from Zeppelin to Sabbath, and Guest would carry the improvised satire torch in the less overtly spoofy Waiting For Guffman, Best In Show and A Mighty Wind.
Classic line: "There's a fine line between clever and stupid."
4. The Naked Gun (1988)
Zucker, Zucker and Abrahams took the Airplane! formula of rapid-fire straight lines and sight gags and transplanted it to cop shows, starring Leslie Nielsen as bumbling Lieut. Frank Drebin (with O.J. Simpson as his suffering sidekick.) You know you've hit comedy gold when you have Priscilla Presley making jokes about stuffed beavers.
Classic line: "I can't hear you! Don't fire the gun while you're talking!"
5. Blazing Saddles (1974)
Mel Brooks parodied Western movies and riffed on racism in this classic that proved fart gags can be funny -- when it's the '70s, and they haven't been beaten to death by 200 teen comedies in a row. The rampant use of the N-word, even by the movie's most comically ignorant characters, probably wouldn't fly today in today's politically correct climate.
Classic line: "How 'bout more beans, Mr. Taggart?"
6. Scream (1996)
The first Scary Movie was sort of a second-generation spoof, since it parodied the Scream movies, which in turn were playing with the conventions of the horror genre in a sly, self-aware way. Well, it was sly in the first film. Then it just got kind of precious and annoying and reminded us why teen slasher films died out in the first place.
Classic line: "You will not survive the movie if you say, 'I'll be right back.' "
7. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
Mike Myers kept alive the stereotype of bad British dental hygiene in this spoof of early Bond movies, Dean Martin's Matt Helm character, In Like Flint, Alfie, you name it. But by the third movie, you've got Tom Cruise in a movie-within-a-movie cameo that has Austin Powers emulating Mission: Impossible ... it's enough to make even a non-Fembot's head explode.
Classic line: "Begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism!"
8. Scary Movie (2000)
Before Zucker took over the franchise, the Wayans brothers parodied everything from the new breed of ironic teen slasher flicks to The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects and The Matrix in this spoof. The movie poster's tagline was, "No mercy. No shame. No sequel." That last one didn't quite stick.
Classic line: "Oh, is this the climax? Well, I hope you don't mind if I fake it."
9. South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut (1999)
The South Park feature film was more than just a subversive send-up of parental hysteria, featuring an animated Saddam Hussein waggling his python-sized manhood. It also managed to spoof movie musicals by being a really great movie musical, with Satan warbling in note-perfect Little Mermaid style about his longing to leave hell and live with regular people on earth. Disney couldn't have done it better.
Classic line: "Satan, your ass is gigantic and red. Who am I going to pretend you are, Liza Minnelli?"
10. Spaceballs (1987)
Mel Brooks has made a career out of making fun, but Spaceballs is his most overtly spoofy movie, and, maybe not by coincidence, one of his least clever. At the tail end of the sci-fi craze, though, someone definitely had to take the piss out of Star Wars, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica. The old one, not the new one with the hot chick robots.
Classic line: "I see your Schwartz is as big as mine!"