Movies That Are Confused

Cafe Society
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I was searching IMDB for movies that combine DRAMA and COMEDY, as well as HORROR, (you can do a search for all 3 in a movie); I was trying to prove that all three genres can be utilized in the same story to a person on this board (which they can if worked right). So I’m looking for a few good movies to help illustrate my idea, when I come across “Leprechaun In The Hood”. Now… I had seen one of “The Leprechaun” movies and it could have passed for “comedy” and/or horror… but far from drama, (or the type of “drama” that I’m thinking of). I was curious about “Leprechaun In The Hood,” but I knew that I would probably never see it on account of me not wanting to pay money for renting that horrid crap. Just my luck, I saw it on TV the other day… and watched the whole movie. YEAH! There WAS a little “Drama” that didn’t fit the movies lame theme. Not too much, but… I would explain further… but it was stupid, and I want you all to keep reading.

I then started to think about what other movies I know that do the same thing. I thought of the movie “Gremlins.” The part where Phoebe Cates’ character talks about her father dressing up like Santa and dyeing trying to go down the chimney. I know that explaining a loved ones death and a monster exploding in the microwave SOUND like they belong in the same movie… but it really didn’t. “Gremlins” was not a serious movie, the movie had bird sounds after someone (or something), hit their head! I have no idea what the point of all that story was. They even spoofed it in the sequel where Phoebe Cates talks about her encounter with a dead Abraham Lincoln on Abe Lincoln Day, (and that’s why she hate’s both Christmas and Abe Lincoln Day).

So I ask all of you to tell me what movies you think are confused…

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Sony’s cinematic abortion, the horrific remake of Godzilla from the two twits who did ID4. They can’t even decide if the monster is the good guy or the bad guy!

(Okay, it’s probably not what you were asking for, but I thought it was definitely confusing.)

3

I started to write a post about movies that combined your above criteria fairly well like The Frighteners or Darkman when I realized that wasn’t what you were looking for.

So, starting over…

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Does it have to be limited to bad movies? The Brotherhood of the Wolf meets your criteria, but it’s actually pretty good. It’s just your typical French costume drama/romance with witty French poetry and intrigue among well-coiffed nobles. But everyone knows kung-fu, so there are many martial arts sequences. Also, there’s a monster. And a secret society. Plus the Catholic Church. It all works somehow, but I’ve never seen a crazier amalgamation of genres in one film before.

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Oops, hit submit too early.

So, startng over…again…

One movie I half enjoyed was Mute Witness a suspense/horror thriller about a deaf-mute make-up artist on a movie set who witnesses the making of a snuff movie after hours. When the killers discover they’ve been seen, the chase is on. The next 45mins or so are incredibly intense with some real nail-biting suspense scenes. Then, for some bizzare reason, the movie veers sharply off course and becomes an over-the-top comedy!! The change in tone was completely jarring and I still don’t know what to make of it. I love a black-comedy but you could actually draw a dividing line down the middle of the film between the suspense elements and the humour.

I keep meaning to re-watch it one of these days and see if I can find anything in the second half I may not have appreciated the first time around.

6

*Waterworld * was one confused movie, among other adjectives.
They couldn’t figure out whether they were doing some post-apocalyptic adventure, a pro-environmental screed, or a family drama.
:smiley:

7

BABE: PIG IN THE CITY was horribly confused.

steve biodrowski
www.thescriptanalyst.com

8

The Shining certainly has its comedic moments, as well as horror and drama.

Blade Runner is one of the finest combinations of science-fiction and hard-boiled film noir that I’ve ever seen.

In fact, science fiction is really a sort of “drunken” style that can be applied to almost any genre. For example, Outland is really a remake of one of the greatest westerns, High Noon, but set on a moon of Jupiter (I think).

And while we’re talking aboout those hard sci-fi films, The Thing is really a horror/suspense/gross-out film; Aliens is a horrific homage of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers; Starship Troopers owes a lot to Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda and a steaming cow turd; and Total Recall really owes allegiance to postwar spy-thrillers like 36 Hours (screenplay by Roald Dahl, by the way).

Star Wars is really more akin to pulpy western serial cliffhangers (and Akira Kurosawa’s work, often styled “Eastern Westerns”) than it is to the Hugo Gernsbach/John W. Campbell school of science fiction. My father nailed that one the first time he saw it: “I loved it! The bad guys even wore black hats!”

Are any of those films confused? Probably not, because most of them don’t suck, but they are genre-benders.

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No, these are all good ones…

It can be any type of movie that’s content doesn’t really blend well. It can be a little thing, like something someone says that doesn’t fit the movie or character. Or it could be big… like not knowing what style it’s going for.

I think a lot of people thought A.I. was all over the place as far as what style it was.

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Oh, and I don’t just mean Horror and Comedy and Drama…
Some of my fav. movies are blended… it’s not that drama horror and comedy can’t work together… it’s just hard to take anything dramatic with a little leprechaun running around acting goofy. American Psycho seemed to have a mix of Comedy Drama and Horror, (I wouldn’t know, I’ve only seen bits of it).

vivalostwages, I think the Postman was similar with the same types of problems.

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Thought of another one: Eyes Wide Shut certainly had me confused as to what the heck it was – Erotica? Thriller? Drama? All of the above, and none of the above…

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John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London (1981)

quotes

Jack (Griffin Dunne): Now, I’m really sorry to be upsetting you, but I have to warn you.
David (David Naughton): Warn me?
Jack: We were attacked by a werewolf.
David: I’m not listening to this!
Jack: On the moors, we were attacked by a lycanthrope, a werewolf. I was murdered, an unnatural death, and now I walk the earth in limbo until the werewolf’s curse is lifted.
David: Shut up!
Jack: The wolf’s bloodline must be severed; the last remaining werewolf must be destroyed. It’s you David.

…

Jack (Griffin Dunne): Have you tried talking to a corpse? It’s boring.

…

Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy star as themselves.

All characters and events in this film are fictitious. Any similarity to
actual events or persons, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental.
There were some funny parts too…

13

A lot of the zombie movies I’ve seen seem to at least attempt to combine horror, drama, and comedy. Most, imho, fail miserably and become rather “confused.” The same can be said for some of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequels–I never did figure out whether they were trying to make me laugh, make me scared, make me feel grossed out, or what. FTR, they made me bored.

MASH* on the other hand is a movie which to me seems to combine drama, comedy, and, in a way, some horror, in a successful way. It was a black comedy drama that made me laugh, it made me cringe, and it probably grossed some people out. Also perhaps Devil’s Advocate–it had gore, suspense, drama, a little bit of mystery, and comedy. Some of Satan Pacino’s rants made me laugh anyway.

The A Nightmare On Elm Street series combines horror, comedy, and, depending on your definition, drama (a couple serious emotional scenes), with mixed success.

The most recent example of a bad “confused” movie that I saw at the theater was, I believe, End of Days, with Arnold Schwartzennegger (sp?). What the hell was that? A horror? An action flick? What? Besides a crappy show that all the cool special effects in the world couldn’t save (and the special effects in EOD were over-rated in my opinion). It even had comedy, or at least attempts at comedy, but they didn’t make me laugh, the exception being the scene where Our Lord Lucifer got disrespected by the kid who wore the “Satan’s Cool” shirt.

A lot of Full Moon Entertainment’s movies are confused in that they don’t know whether they’re horror or comedy or a combination of both. Any video with a Full Moon Entertainment logo on it probably has a slightly better than fifty per cent chance of being “confused.” The others, of course, are future horror classics :).