We celebrate the top 10 lampoons of beloved Hollywood movies and genres

By Sean Axmaker
Special to MSN Movies

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then surely parody is flattery in its most backhanded form. At least it would seem so when it's done right... and please, don't call me Shirley.

Movies have been making fun of movies since the silent era, but it was generally doled out in small doses in film shorts (such as the brilliant Ingmar Bergman send-up "De Düva: The Dove") and TV sketch comedy ("Your Show of Shows"). Then Mel Brooks turned parody into a career when he tossed a pie in the face of film culture with "Blazing Saddles." It wasn't just hip to spoof the movies; it was profitable and everyone wanted in on the fun. The entire movie industry was fair game: whodunits ("Murder by Death"), disaster films ("The Big Bus"), foreign-legion adventures ("The Last Remake of Beau Geste"), Sherlock Holmes mysteries ("The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother"), slasher films ("Student Bodies") -- you name it.

In a culture where the media feeds itself in self-referential loop, there seems to be no stopping the impulse to skewer our social currency. As "Scary Movie 4" attests, wherever there's a hit, there's some clown waiting to launch a big-screen comic broadside. But the rush to ridicule every conceivable genre also proved that a lot of people in Hollywood were not as funny as they thought they were.

The following films not only sustain their comic inspiration from beginning to end but also carve out their own identity under the gags.

10. "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (1975)
Do the time warp again with the original midnight movie. The pajama party in the old dark castle pays tribute to matinee monster movies and science-fiction double features with a rock-and-roll beat and a jolt of free love, courtesy of cross-dressing queen of the manor Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry). Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick are the all-American couple corrupted in the den of polymorphous perversity, their libidos unleashed by the Transylvanian transvestite in fishnets and the irresistible beat of music. The cabaret decadence and camp sensibilities were too much for suburban audiences too timid to dream it, let alone be it. It took late-night showings and raucous (and ever evolving) audience participation to transform the studio musical flop into a cult phenomenon.

Favorite line: "Come up to the lab and see what's on the slab."

9. "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" (1982)
Steve Martin and director/co-writer Carl Reiner reportedly screened scores of film noir classics to construct this ingenious lampoon of Hollywood private detective films. Through the magic of editing, Steve Martin performs opposite Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Alan Ladd, Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster, Lana Turner, James Cagney and a dozen or so more classic Hollywood icons. He trammels the stars in a ridiculously gimcrack plot about a missing scientist with a cheese-making sideline. The illusion is almost perfect, and Martin turns every guest performance into a perfect straight-man role for his wild and crazy schtick.

Favorite line: "If you need me, just call. You know how to dial, don't you? You just put your finger in the hole and make tiny little circles."

8. "Scary Movie 3" (2003)
David Zucker (co-creator of "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun" series) takes over the horror-movie lampoon franchise and injects it with cartoonish caricature and anything-goes gags as he dismantles "The Ring," "Signs" and "8 Mile." Between the wrinkled nose and big-eyed, breathless gasps of the gamely oblivious Anna Faris and the sleepy intensity and deadpan blankness of Charlie Sheen, Zucker find just the right bewildered tone and never lets his rapid-fire delivery flag. Not everything hits the target in his scattershot approach, but his arsenal is never empty and his instincts are dead on. It's amazing what crack timing will do for a doo-doo gag, a ringing sock in the head and a swift kick to the privates.

Favorite line: "I found their weakness. They're powerless without their heads!"

7. "Movie, Movie" (1978)
A self-contained double feature (plus a coming attraction), Stanley Donen's affectionate spoof is a tongue-in-cheek love letter to the ridiculous conventions and success fantasies of 1930s movies. George C. Scott brings both gravitas and a light comic touch to an up-from-the-Bowery boxing picture and a Busby Berkeley-styled backstage musical with a Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell romance. The run-on clichés collide and commingle until the mixed metaphors are stirred into a cocktail of camp, but there is not a wink to be seen from the cast as they dance through every hoary cliché and add a few steps of their own. Donen isn't making fun of it as much as having fun with it and that fun is infectious.

Favorite line: "Such senseless killing. Killing and more killing. What's it getting us?" "Death, mostly."

6. "Hot Shots!" (1991)
Charlie Sheen's eyes twinkle, but he never cracks a smile as the maverick pilot who defies the laws of physics and plot mechanics to triumph over a troubled backstory and single-handedly defend America from the bad guys. "Airplane!" co-director Jim Abrahams pilots this energetic burlesque of "Top Gun" through rat-a-tat sight-gags, surreal nonsequiturs, rampant silliness and the most inspired tribute to "Lady and the Tramp" ever attempted in a live action movie. Valeria Golino quite literally sizzles in a "9 ½ Weeks" take-off (and Sheen grills breakfast on her belly), and Lloyd Bridges is endearing while doing doofus duty as the eternally befuddled Admiral.

Favorite line: "You have the whitest white-part-of-the-eyes I've ever seen. Do you floss?"

Next: The top 5 parodies