Funny / Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines

• In the American version's opening, there's Red Skelton and other people cartoonishly and repeatedly failing flight tests through the ages, from jumping of heights with wings in ancient times to using bicycles, cars, a Jet Pack and whatever bizarre contraptions with engines and wings they can come up with. Ron Goodwin's music adds even more hilarity.
• The hilarious National Stereotypes, which concern pretty much the whole cast. It works especially well because not a single featured nationality is spared, and because each one of the actors who played a pilot matched the pilot's nationality and had a ball doing so.
  • Pierre Dubois (Jean-Pierre Cassel), the French pilot, is an incurable skirt-chaser (which nearly gets him killed the first time he's seen, crashing his plane because he was Distracted by the Sexy). And he never misses an occasion to provoke the Germans.^note A much less funny historical reason to that is revanchism, part of which would motivate both world wars.
  • The very Prussian Colonel Manfred von Holstein (Gert Fröbe), who firmly believes in Germanic Efficiency and beatboxes his own brass and drums band. And poor Captain Rumpelstoss, his Butt-Monkey Yes-Man.
  • Count Emilio Ponticelli (Alberto Sordi), the Italian pilot, is boisterous and proud of himself beyond measure, and brings all of his children (he has a lot of them) and wife with him in Great Britain.
  • Sir Percy Ware-Armitage is hilariously dastardly and typical of Terry-Thomas' portrayals of despicable British upper class fellows, and his cheating schemes often end up backfiring on him. No wonder he ended up one of the blueprints for Dick Dastardly.
• Patricia ends up losing two different skirts in two encounters with Orvil.
• The women Pierre Dubois constantly bumps into and woos are all played by the same actress, Irina Demick. He keeps confusing their names as a result.
• The flight training scenes before the start of the race are absolutely sidesplitting, especially when some of the pilots end up in the sewage farm.
  • Special mention to the Germans trying to stop their plane on the ground once it gets separated from its tail. Von Holstein gets into the sidecar driven by Orvil to chase the plane. Orvil jumps on the plane to help Captain Rumpelstoss stop it and pulls it off... and everyone forgot about von Holstein, who's still in the sidecar and can't control it as he can't move because of his weight (and that part is set to a full brass version of Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries for added hilarity). The sidecar and von Holstein end up falling in the sewage farm by the hole the firemen created minutes earlier.
  • Pierre Dubois and von Holstein want a duel of honor to settle an offense. The French team has to choose how to do it... and decides it will be settled with hot air balloons and blunderbusses, over the sewage pond. Von Holstein accepts.
    • Before the duel, von Holstein beat-boxes his brass marching band while loading his weapon.
    • During the duel, Holstein manages to shoot down the pesky French's balloon and laughs when the latter ends up in the sewage... then punctures his own balloon with his pointy helmet, and ends up in the sewage as well.
• During the race, Emilio Ponticelli has to land near a convent, and the nuns refuse to help him take off again. Then he states that it's too bad that the race will be won by a Protestant... which is enough to change their minds.

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