Funniest joke in an otherwise dark TV show or movie

Not a verbal joke, but the shooting scene in pulp fiction as the two hoods try to figure out what just happened after being shot at is priceless.

When the OP mentioned “the hat scene” I thought you meant the scene where Bubbles is putting hats on the Barksdale crew to point them out for the police cameras. Not really funny, but I think of it every time I see a picture of Carter Page.

Anyway, I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the accidental head shot in Out Of Sight. The only time I laughed in the movie. OTOH, I think you would have needed to watch the whole thing up to that point.

Marvin’s head getting blown off is pretty damned close.

*"What the fuck did you do **that *for?!?"
“The gun just … went off!”

With all the remorse of swatting a fly…

Hugh Laurie as House delivered some of the funniest lines ever. My favorite:

We have anal leakage.
All three of you?

I remember a moment of sincere laughter from the audience when Oskar Schindler says “If this factory ever produces a shell that can actually be fired, I’ll be very unhappy.”

My favorite from “Escape from Alcatraz” Either you’re too scared…

(You can even see Clint smile just a little bit)

I couldn’t stand more corrected - that was, without question, the funniest line in the film.
Thank-you.:slight_smile:

And while we’re there - the nod to the Tod Browning classic Freaks was kinda neat when she and Lyle Lovett started the “Gooble gobble, gooble gobble, one of us” chant in the office.

:p:p:p
Tom Cruise’s 2001 intro in Magnolia.

While not meant to be funny, I totally howled at De Niro taking Cybil Shepherd to a porn flick on their first date in Taxi Driver.
And Kietel’s pimpy look.

Some nice moments in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (greatest movie ever, kinda)

shoe chucking

ordering boubon like a man

dysfunction with a severed head

apologizing to the passenger for the heavy braking

Benny’s not-racist-in-the-least ‘eye’ observation

talking more to the bottle than the photo

THe Man in the Hgh Castle has a lot of them. Too many to count.

Memento, while a great neo-noir movie, is not a comedy, but it does have some nice (very dry) moments of humor in it. A favorite:

“Okay, so what am I doing? Oh, I’m chasing this guy. Nope–he’s chasing me.” [GUNSHOT]

There was also the scene where the SS tries to summarily execute a fleeing Jewish prisoner they’ve caught only for the gun to comically malfunction. Truly a pitch-black gag based on something that really happened to a Holocaust survivor.

In Near Dark, Bill Paxton played one of a group of vampires that was killing everybody in a roadside diner. He’s about to bite some guy on the neck when he stops, looks away, and says “I hate it when they ain’t shaved.”

That’s the one I came in here to say, but you didn’t get it quite right.

The only part of that movie I really remember (HA!!) is him looking around and thinking, “Am I drunk? I don’t … feel drunk.”

That moment where he pauses to take stock, physically (gravity seems normal? balance ok? am I even standing up?) just cracks me up.

I think we’ve already established The Wire was often a very funny show, but one of my faves :

[Carver dials a number to check who answers and makes a super racist impression pretending to be a Chinese restaurant confirming a delivery]
Herc : What the fuck was that ?
Carver : That was my Korean counterman.
Herc : Sounded Chinese.
Carver : [silent, annoyed, almost shocked stare at the audacity] Like you can fucking tell the difference.

I even love the follow-up - “The man says this here the Cadillac - he mean the Lexus, but he ain’t know it” :stuck_out_tongue:

What was supposed to pass for comedy “back then” sometimes doesn’t always sync up with today’s customs and mores, as evidenced in the scene in Dirty Harry where Callahan is being introduced to his new partner, who is informed that Harry hates “everybody” (read: minorities, gays). When the new partner, who is Mexican, inquired what HC though of Mexicans, Harry replied “Especially Spics”. I won’t lie - when I was a kid, I laughed too. Nice how time changes some things.

Robert de Niro in Goodfellas trying to juggle while hosting a Las Vegas tv show.
Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, whom the character was based on, maintains he never attempted juggling, and was quite particularly pissed at that scene. But how pissed, though?:eek:
Heh - it was still funny, though.:stuck_out_tongue:

That was Casino.

You’re wearing me out here, man.

Um, fair enough, then.

Tres fatigue, non?

"I’m sorry, what were you asking me?

Oh, yes, that stupid plastic container I asked you to buy.

You see, hydrofluoric acid won’t eat through plastic; it will however dissolve metal, rock, glass, ceramic…

…So there’s that."

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell: “Here last week they found this couple out in California. They rent out rooms for old people, kill’em, bury’em in the yard, cash their social security checks. Well, they’d tortur’em first, I don’t know why. Maybe the television set was broke.”