I’m working two different film production jobs and spend quite a bit of time editing various programs. I once remarked to someone that whenever you’re rewinding footage, everyone sounds like they’re speaking Swedish – and then I watched the delightful 80’s spoof film Top Secret! and one scene in particular had me cracking up…
Val Kilmer and his gal pal Lucy Gutteridge go into a Swedish bookstore, where our scene unfolds:
[I couldn’t find a clip with the English subtitles that were in the original; click here to watch the same scene backwards to hear what they were saying]
Top Secret! is full of various visual gags (à la Airplane!), doing so with some great special effects that had me regularly rewinding and pausing to figure out how they did it. Along with Kilmer’s other 80’s comedy Real Genius, definitely check it out.
-Remington Smith
The Filmsmith 
Thanks a million for including “the ‘Swedish Scene’ “!!
My Three Other Favorite Scenes/ “Real Genius”
One of the “punny” metaphor moments in “Top Secret” is the restaurant scene: Lucy Gutteridge & Val Kilmer are talking, and one tells how they can speak a bit of a foreign language. The other responds that “I know a little German…And he is sitting right over there!”– A very petite older man is sitting at another table with the shorts & bib-like top, lederhosen & the fedora-like cap— his “ensemble” is sometimes referred to as “Tyrolian.”
A second favorite scene of mine is when “Nick Rivers” (Kilmer’s Characters’ Name) and his agent are travelling by train into an East Germany-like country: Rivers is listening to German Language audio tapes:One German phrase allegedly translates as “….I have sauerkraut in my lederhosen. ”
A third scene is when Rivers meets a father and the fathers’ very attractive daughter–Rivers asks the father (in German) : “How Old is Your Daughter?”
/”Real Genius:”
There is a special school for super “talented & gifted” students, and a 6th-to-8th grade aged student is accepted at the school: His problem is that all the other students are either Senior-High-School aged, or college/university aged, students, and he has issues about trying to fit in (peer group: peer acceptance, peer relationships, etc.).
A male support/character actor that is frequently cast as a proverbial boor (a. k. a. “lower rear body orifice” (“l.r.b.o.”) ). He has red hair, is white, appears to be in late-thirties/forties–He was a jerk-like character in one of “Die Hard” films and was terrified of McClean’s wife, claiming that he had a restraining order against her!
Watch for actor portraying super-reclusive super genius named “Lazlow/Laslow”: (Kilmer’s character tells the young 6th-to-8th grade student : “(Lazlow) is smarter than the both of us— put together!!…) “Lazlow,” was the “werewolf” in “Monster Squad,” and also played a similar character in “Fright Night: Part Two.” (Do not know his name-apologies.)