Jones Communications

This scene in "Top Secret" (1984) where Val Kilmer, Lucy Gutteridge go into the Swedish bookstore & talk to the owner, Peter Cushing, was staged, shot in English, and then run backward to make the dialogue sound "Swedish". Playing the scene backwards, all the dialogue is exactly what is shown in the subtitles except for the title of the book that Hillary asks for. The title she actually asks for is "Europe On Five Quaaludes A Day". Roger Ebert's thoughts on this scene: "The movie is physical humor, sight gags, puns, double meanings, satire, weird choreography, scatalogical outrages, and inanity. One particular sequence, however, is such an original example of specifically cinematic humor that I’d like to discuss it at length. (Do not read further if you don’t like to understand jokes before laughing at them.) The sequence involves a visit by the hero to a Swedish bookshop. Never mind why he goes there. The scene depends for its inspiration on this observation: People who run tape recorders backward often say that English, played backward, sounds like Swedish (especially, of course, to people who do not speak Swedish). What “Top Secret!” does is to film an entire scene and play it backward, so that the dialogue sounds Swedish, and then translate it into English subtitles. This is funny enough at the beginning, but it becomes inspired at the end, when the scene finally gives itself away." ("Top Secret!", Roger Ebert, 1984 & IMDb) P.S: On this day, 42 years ago, "Top Secret" (1984) was released in the USA.