What are some of your favorite titles? I don’t mean how good the actual work is, just how awesome and memorable the title is. Literature, movies, TV (including individual episodes), fiction, non-fiction, whatever.
For me, it’s the book The Hawk That Dare Not Hunt by Day, by Scott O’Dell, and the movie Live Free or Die Hard.
I Spit On Your Grave
I’ve never seen it and I don’t know anything about it, but it sure is catchy.
Mildred Pierce. The name just promises huge gaseous explosions and heart pounding car chases.
Repent, Harlequin, Said the Tick-Tock Man
Come back to the five and dime store, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
There’s a Good Reason these tables are numbered, honey, you just haven’t thought of it yet.
ETA also from the same album: Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off
For a while in the 1960s they had a love of ridiculously long titles:
Oh dad, poor dad, Mom’s hung you in the Closet and I’ve Feeling So Sad
Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
*The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade *
In books, there’s always Fredric Brown’s mystery
We All Killed Grandma
I like the mystery by Sharyn McCrumb that’s a send-up of SF convrentiions:
Bimbos of the Death Sun
It has a lesser-known sequel
Zombies of the Gene Pool
I also admit to a love of
The Platypus of Doom and other Nihilists
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream
I always thought this would be a great subtitle for one of the Dilbert books.
Dolly Parton.
If we’re sticking to “serious” literary titles, I’ve always liked:
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
Mine are, oddly, both Three Stooges-related. After the film Valiant Is the Word for Carrie came out in 1936, the Stooges made Violent Is the Word for Curly. Genius.
And there is a Three Stooges bio called The Last of the Moe Haircuts.
I like great parody titles. There was an episode of the TV series The vOdd Couple about Felix Unger getting into the boxing ring. It was dcalled The Fight of the Felix.
Get Smart did quite a few of these, with Valerie of the Dolls and Tequila Mockingbird, which I suspect was the inspiration for one Doper name.
The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test
The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamlined Baby
Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
Wonderfully evocative, even if it turns out to be a bit too literal.
Children of A Lesser God
The most evocative title I’ve ever encountered.
This thread reminded me of Henry Miller’s reaction to a title he liked. From Tropic of Cancer:
In the same window: A Man Cut In Slices! Chapter one: the man in the eyes of his family. Chapter two: the same in the eyes of his mistress. Chapter three:-No chapter three. Have to come back tomorrow for chapters three and four. Every day the window trimmer turns a fresh page. A man cut in slices… You can’t imagine how furious I am not to have thought of a title like that! Where is this bloke who writes “the same in the eyes of his mistress . . . the same in the eyes of … the same … ?” Where is this guy? Who is lie? I want to hug him. I wish to Christ I had had brains enough to think of a title like that-instead of Crazy Cock and the other fool things I invented. Well, fuck a duck! I congratulate him just the same.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
If you haven’t, you should.
Snakes on a Plane
C’mon, top that!
Hold The Candle Mother Dear, While I Shave The Chicken’s Leg is some obscure Irish country/folk song. I’ve never heard it, so I’ve no clue what it’s about, other than the obvious…
I always liked that title…
Is that possibly the longest episode title ever?
Babylon 5 had a lot of good episode titles, but these strike me as really outstanding ones:
“The Parliament of Dreams”
“The Geometry of Shadows”
“Falling Toward Apotheosis”
“Intersections in Real Time”