I just remember a tiny snippet of a movie in which a man has to wear a tie and is seemingly attacked and nearly strangled by it, just getting it off in the nick of time.
Seems kinda Top Secret! or Airplane, but I’m pretty sure it was not from either one.
There was a character in The World According To Garp (the book, anyway; I don’t think he made it into the movie) who was born without shin-bones. He had to get around by walking on his hands. He was killed when his tie got caught in an escalator on his way to a job interview.
It made me think of the gag in The Naked Gun (and Police Squad? I can’t remember) where someone throws a pillow in Drebin’s face and it starts to suffocate him by itself.
Hogarth, that Lt. Drebbin scene has the exact comic tone and frantic feeling of my recollection – so much so that I fear I’m the victim of memory confabulation.
In the absence of anyone coming up with something specifically involving a murderous tie, I’m included to think that scene was it Thanks for playing, everyone.
When he was on SNL, Dan Ackroyd has a character named Irwin Mainway, who made insanely dangerous children’s toys, and offered incredible weak defenses of his product while being grilled by Candice Bergen. While defending (IIRC) his “Johnny Human Torch” Halloween costume (a bag of gasoline soaked rags with a lighter), he argued that his costume was no more dangerous than any other item of clothing, which he attempted to demonstrate by showing how a man driving in a convertible could choke to death on his own tie.
There’s a scene in one of the Pink Panther movies where Clouseau is performing a strip tease and gets tangled up in his neck tie, then his shirt. Could that be it?