New Delhi, July 31 -- There's a moment in the 1980 comedy Airplane!-one of the funniest films of all-time, available to rent on Amazon Video-where a worried passenger says, "Surely, you can't be serious," and Leslie Nielsen, as the doctor on board, retorts without the twitch of a muscle: "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley." It's possibly the most quoted joke in spoof history, and the magic of the moment isn't in the line itself. It's in the look. That straight face. That poker-stiff voice. That impossibly grave delivery of a ridiculous line, uttered by a man with all the solemnity of Shakespearean tragedy. Leslie Nielsen didn't wink. That, dear reader, is precisely what made him hilarious.

Nielsen passed away in 2010 after a hilari...