1980: "Airplane!"

                                       Airplane! is the first directorial effort of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker triumvirate and the standard for all absurd parodies to this day. It is a direct parody of disaster films (more prevalent during the 70's than it is now), more specifically the Airport films (even the title Airplane! is a hilariously sardonic jab at the bluntly uncreative Airport) and Zero Hour (taking most of its story structure and plot as foundation).
                                       Airplane! is, of course, a classic, though I would say this felt a little rougher around the edges than I remembered and lacking a bit of the confidence of their later films (Top Secret and The Naked Gun). Even so, the movie was (and still is) a breath of fresh air from the staleness of Hollywood and its annoying sense of self-seriousness. The ZAZ team didn't just parody genre conventions, they parodied moviemaking itself. Despite its deadpan silliness, its has an underlying anarchic sophistication that may not display itself to the naked eye.
                                       What's shocking to me is that movies have never been able to recapture the magic of Airplane (or Top Secret or The Naked Gun), mainly because they don't really understand what made those fundamentally work. As dumb and wonderfully silly as the gags are, they are meticulously constructed with a care and precision that modern filmmakers don't bother to understand. Comedy isn't simply throwing random gags out and expecting them to work. It's hard-ass work. In fact, there were times during my viewing when I wondered if the production was actually as fun as the movie's breezy tone seems to suggest. When you're watching Girl Scouts fighting in a bar, people on the set probably weren't laughing. They were bored out of their minds for hours and hours, making sure the actresses got the blocking and choreography right. But that's the price you pay for good comedy.