Funny, I think it contributes to the scene quite a bit.
Radar is not, himself, noting what happened to the plane, he’s repeating the bloodless message he just recieved. It makes it all the more poignent that, firstly, it’s as much as he can do to simply repeat the words, and secondly, that the official message would include details that are unimportant to people who are actually grieving for him.
Wouldn’t spinning in mean that there was no chance for anyone to have bailed out?
I always wondered what happened to Col. Blake.
I’ll go get my Walkman!
Given the people involved I was long tempted to believe that there was some elusive brilliance in this line, but after six years I’m still not in on the joke.
From Damnation Alley, a deplorable screen translation of Roger Zelazny’s novel:
“This town is full of killer cockroaches!”
From Night of the Zombies, one of Elvira’s offerings on *Movie Macabre * back in the '80’s:
“We zombies are destined to conquer the universe.”
The last one literally had me doubled up on the couch, laughing so hard that my sides ached. I mean, come on, some grown man wrote that line, and didn’t see anything wrong with it!
From Dirty Dancing:
“Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”
Zev Steinhardt
From the long-forgotten (and deservedly so) 1990 TV movie Archie Andrews - Return to Riverdale
Betty (played by Lauren Holley)
“I want to be bad, Archie. Teach me how to be bad!”
McLean Stevenson’s career was shot down over the Sea of Japan. There were no survivors. As he spun into the water, he was heard to exclaim, “I quit the most popular show on TV. What was I thinking?..”
blowero
McLean Stevenson went on to do “Hello Larry”. So there.
I am amazed no one has referenced “Plan Nine From Outer Space”. Well, maybe they’d have to post the whole damned script. One great line is delivered by the police detective:
"Inspector Clay is dead … murdered … and somebody’s responsible !!! "
The same is true of Robot Monster (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046248/), but I’ll never forget: “I must! Yet I cannot! How do you calculate that?!”
BTW – I don’t recognize the thread title. “Brain and Brain! What IS brain?!?” Is that an actual line from an actual movie?
It’s from the Star Trek episode Spock’s Brain.
One of the uneducated servants of the evil computer that stole Spock’s brain reacts in exasperation to Kirk constantly ask about the brain - with that line.
Anakin Skywalker in Atttack of the Clones: “I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth.”
Ick.
OMG … I’ve never met anybody else who’s ever seen that movie before!
I’ve quoted that line many times as the most ludicrous line I’ve ever heard … .
I never assumed that he DIDN’T know what a tank is. I mean, it’s not like Indy pulled him out of some backwater village that had never seen twentiety century technology. My problem with it is that in the first and third movies, Sallah demonstrates his intelligence and competence in a variety of ways. Then, suddenly, he slips into what seems like superstitious native pidgin-English. Why not just say “The Nazis got them” or “They’re in that tank”? The line, as is, always seems so out of character.
And a very close runner-up from the same movie:
"IT’S A SPACE SHIP!!!"
OMFG!*
Read the third customer review in the amazon.com webpage for Starcrash. You must read it!
*) That’s an acronym for “Omicron Monocerotis is either spectral class F or spectral class G”.
Oh, yes - that was a runaway hit, wasn’t it? 
In his defense, the town was, in fact, full of killer cockroaches.
(Yeah, it irks me too that THAT was the only time one of Zelazny’s zillions of books and short stories ever made it to the screen).