**Not looking for quotes, per se. **
Some of the best moments have had very little dialogue.
Looking for a particular scenes which stand out in your mind as quintessential moments in humorous movies.
Some favorites from the top of my head:
The robbery/escape/chase scene from Raising Arizona.
Interrogation of Rick Morranis possesed in Ghostbusters.
Bill Murray on the diving board, looking at his family in Rushmore.
Steve Martin confronting the airport car rental lady in Planes Trains and Automobiles.
Charlie Chaplain going through the gears in Modern Times.
Buster Keaton in The General, when he’s trying to unhitch the flatbed that’s got the huge mortar about to fire. He unhitches the car, but the hitch snags his foot and he’s trapped. As the train bumps along, the mortar tilts down at Buster. It’s amazing to see how terror he can convey with that deadpan expression.
Animal House, when Bluto and D-Day have Flounder shoot the horse in the Dean’s office.
The Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup; the “false-mirror” scene in which Chico has to mimic Groucho and everything he does.
In the same movie, the scene in which Harpo tries to crack a safe in the President’s Palace. Problem is, it’s a radio, not a safe, and the thing starts blasting out march tunes. Even when Harpo’s smashed the thing to smithereens it’s still blaring out music to wake the dead.
Lots of stuff from Ghostbusters (that’s got to be a big surprise given my user name), but my favorite is the sequence at the end when they have to choose the form Gozer will take. The look on Dan Aykroyd’s face followed by the appearance of the giant Sta-Puft marshmallow man slays me every time.
The scene in Nothing In Common when Tom Hanks is trying to film the airline commercial with the drunken grandmother and the cat. The way he loses it about the cat and grandma torturing small animals literaly had me falling out of my seat with laughter.
Same year, another quite forgettable movie, Back To The Beach had a classic line- Gilligan as a bartender to a drunk Frankie Avalon." You know, I lived for years with a guy who was a real genius. He could take two of those ( points at Frankie’s drink, which is in a coconut) -two coconuts and a piece of string and make a nuclear reactor, but he couldn’t fix a two foot hole in a boat."
Two from The Party (with Peter Sellers):
(1) The early “Gunga Din” scene, where he keeps blowing the trumpet.
(2) “Birdie Num-nums. Birdie Num-nums.”
Operation Petticoat, where Cary Grant discovers the pig in the latrine. The look on his face is classic “long-suffering disappointment.”
Chasing Amy, when Amy first reveals her sexual orientation by kissing a lady bandleader. As comprehension dawns on Banky’s and Holden’s faces, their faces reflect delight(Banky) and devastation (Holden).
At the moment, I would have to pick the chase sequence in The Princess Bride. All the way from when Inigo sees the ship behind them (“I do not think he using the same wind we’re using.”) to when Vezzini falls over dead.
I can’t watch that sequence of great scenes and lines without bursting out laughing.
“Do you have six fingers on your right hand?”
“Do you always start conversations this way?”
“You seem a nice fellow, I hate to kill you.”
“You seem a nice fellow, I hate to die.”
I forget which one, but in one of the Pink Panther movies, the world thinks Clouseau is dead, and his boss who hates him (Dreyfus) is forced to deliver the eulogy.
I caught a film on the way to Canada last year, but missed the title
It is possibly the most stupid thing ever, but it was hilarious.
It was a typical “mismatched cop” comedy, and one of the cops is sat in his car… He’s talking on his mobile to the other cop, who says “and stop smoking”. The cop flicks the cigarette at the window, which is closed, and it bounces back and lands on him.
I guess you had to be there
I would like to add the bathroom scene of the “The Party”.
In addition, in “What’s New, Pussycat” the scene where Peter Sellers is about to commit suicide wrapped in a Norwegian flag in the Viking fashion (not football team, burning himself in a boat) and Woody Allen comes in and decides to eat a birthday dinner by himself right next to Sellers’ suicide by fire attempt. Never have two so-very different comedy styles worked so well together. The follow-up scene where Allen is driving a 1938 Cord down the sidewalk is also very funny, but needs the previous scene to work.
May I also suggest the scene where Cary Grant finds the body in the windowseat in “Arsenic and Old Lace.” He was truly the king of the comic “takes.”
The “frank and beans” scene from There’s Something About Mary. You know, I like to think of myself as an intellectual person who in her adult years is not terribly amused by lowbrow humor, but damn, I was CRYING from laughing at that scene. I thought I was going to throw up, I was laughing so hard.
There have been a lot of other funny scenes in movies (“Ooh, that’s a lovely bit of filth!”, “Egon, remember that time you tried to drill a hole in your head? --That would have worked if you hadn’t stopped me”) but none that made me just double over with laughter.
The funniest credits I think I’ve ever seen were at the end of State and Main, which I am about to spoil for those of you who have not seen it.
At the end of the movie, a little notice pops up from the American Humane Society that says, “Only TWO (2) animals were harmed in the making of this movie!”
Man, I about spewed my Coke. Then after a few more credits, the real Humane Society disclaimer came up.
Some pretty good posts, but also some that I’m a bit baffled by. Oh well, there’s no accounting for taste.
My favorites:
Chico selling Groucho the multi-volume set of horse racing information in “A Day At Te Races” has to be added to the others listed above. BTW, it was Groucho and Harpo who did the mirror sequence.
W. C. Fields pulling the woman’s tooth in “The Dentist.”
The robbery and chase sequence from “Raising Arizona” is a great piece of film-making.
I love What’s Up Doc? too, Cal. You won’t catch flak from me. “I am Hugh.” “You are me?” “No, I am Hugh.” “You can’t be me, I’m me.” “No, no. I am Hugh.” “Will you please stop saying that, its very annoying.”
In Down By Law, the scene where Roberto Benigni gets the whole prison shouting “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!”
The scene in The Meaning of Life where Mr. Kreosote pukes on the cleaning lady… repeatedly.
Old Man Greaser calling to his son, Lamey Homo, and then shooting him in Greaser’s Palace. Also, the part where the guy tells Greaser (whom he calles “Seaweed Head”) about a smoke signal he received: “PS: Ugly Ol’ Hiney Ho says hello.”
