So, here’s the scene:
Mrs. Skeezix and I are sitting at the computer, goofing off and unwinding, with a tape playing in the VCR, being mostly ignored. The film in question: Return of the Living Dead. We’re paying much more attention to the game and each other than we are to the flick, until…
The punks enter the warehouse and hear the female lead (Freddie’s girlfriend, the preppy looking chick) scream from the basement, where she’s being menaced by the “all black and slimy” zombie. Just as she screams, a bad spot in the tape passes through the read heads on the VCR, and the TV emits a little bloop/squeal noise. One of the punks yells, “What the fuck was that?”
Mrs. Skeezix pipes up with “A wrinkle in the tape, dipshit.” And I, your humble narrator, almost wet myself laughing, trying not to wake up the baby.
So, I ask for your own movie outbursts, the off-the-cuff ones that just leap into your head whilst watching a movie, and paralyze you or those around you with laughter.
[sub]Yeah, I know it wasn’t the epitome of wit, but her delivery was perfect, and caught me totally unprepared. I, quite literally, nearly fell out of my seat.[/sub]
Normally I don’t comment loudly in theaters, and look down on those who do. But one time…
The show: The World is Not Enough. The film which fused the phrases “Denice Richards” and “bad acting” (I’d hoped Starship Troopers was just a slump) together in my head for eternity. We can hear the groans of the audience whenever she opens her mouth during a non-action sequence.
The setup: Bond (Pierce Brosnan) and Dr. Christmas Johnson (Richards) finished sliding through an oil pipe or something. They have a conversation.
The joke: Johnson complains, to which Bond replies (along the lines of): “Sometimes we just have to do things that are really difficult.” Unbidden from my mouth at full volume come the words: “Like acting!”
Not that witty, I know. But it got a laugh from people around and made my friend snort Coke out his nose, so I guess that counts for something.
Watching Dragonslayer at the movies. When Peter McNichol throws the dust onto the Burning Lake in the Dragon’s Lair, you’re expecting some bit of impressive magic, but all that happens is that the flames go out. Our friend pipes up with:
[Marvin Martian] What happened to the Kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering Ka-Boom![/Marvin Martian]
Another one: I was watching Sam Peckinpaugh’s Straw Dogs at MIT. In this film Dustin Hoffman plays an astrophysicist working on a theoretical problem in a house in the English countryside. At one point, he and his wife have a fight. She stalks angrily out of the room and (unseen by him) past a blakboard filled with a single long equation. She erases a single “+” sign in the middle of it and replaces it with a minus sign ("-").
One guy in the audience stands up, and says with great feeling:
I had a good one while watching the wretched film White Palace, which starred James Spader and Susan Sarandon. He knocks over her mailbox with his car, and goes into the house to explain what happened.
Spader: Excuse me. I’ve accidentally destroyed your mailbox, and I’ve come to replace it.
Me: Okay. Go stand by the side of the road with your mouth open.
Set up: about 9 hours into the final fight scene on the beach, the villain takes a foot to the mouth. The camera pans back to show the guy lose some teeth and saliva in slow motion, which seems to glisten like metal in the afternoon sun.
Me: (much louder than I thought) NOOOO! My collection of dimes!!!
Result: Some laughter from the more immature people and my friends
Airplane Safety Video
(On an airplane)
Set up: Voice with visual aid - “to fasten your set belt, place this metal tab into this metal slot, then tighten using this strap”
Me: (loud and full of sarcasm) OH!!!
Result: Entire coach section bursts into laughter, and probably misses some important water landing information. Oh well.
This is a commercial, not a movie. A while ago, when Ralph Lauren introduced a website, the TV commercials consisted of a series of still photos of shiny, handsome, clever-looking people with tousled hair standing on beaches and yachts to the accompaniment of swelling music.
Me: “Insufferable.” The new fragrance from Ralph Lauren.
B-movie night at college (Carnegie Mellon). The evening’s feature is Zardoz, a sci-fi film set in a post-apocalyptic Earth, starring Sean Connery. One of the opening shots has Connery inside a giant floating stone head (don’t even ask). Cut to close-up on Connery.
Me, in the best Scottish brogue I can muster: “Welcome … to The Rock!”
I don’t think anyone else thought it was that funny.
Different movie night, this time The Avengers, coincidently also with Sean Connery. I and a few of my audio-engineering friends had gone to see it. Towards the end there’s a shot of Connery inside a plastic spherical bubble, controlling what looks to be a circular recording console.
Me: “He’s mixing the new Def Leppard album!”
Clearly, I only crack myself up.
The scene: a theatre where we were waiting to see the first showing of LOTR: FOTR. 8 am, opening day.
Since it was the first showing, it took them a while to get it cued up. While we were waiting, they had an ad up on the screen for some clothing store that featured several lovely young ladies modeling outfits. We stared at those girls for probably like 20 minutes.
So finally the movie starts, and the audience goes nuts. Until we notice that the sound is off. We get through all the previews, and most of the prologue chunk of the movie before the management realizes what’s going on.
So (almost to the punch line, I promise), they turn off the movie, and flash that ad back on the screen with those girls. Before anyone else in the audience can make a sound, without even thinking about it, I yell out at the top of my lungs, “WOW! Frodo’s HOT!!!” Everyone in the theatre howled with laughter.
CalMeacham: I will never be able to watch Dragonslayer the same way. Thanks.
To complete the circle:
When the Star Wars SE rerelease was in the theaters, we trotted off to catch a matinee. This one didn’t get a huge laugh (the theater wasn’t even half full) but more than a couple folks got the giggles…
When the infamous head-smackin’ stormtrooper scene was upon us, I blurted out, “Watch your head, stupid!”
Smeghead: Brilliant! It’s those slightly surreal gags that break me up.
And DynoSaur, you’re right; that’s one o’ those things that date you.
It was for TV. It one of the Hercules I never saw before. I was with my girfriend at the time. In the show it had Sorbo Herc beating up a huge guy. As there was this close up of the guy laying flat on his back for a few seconds, I said something about “After they beat him, they’re gonna eat him”. The VERY next clip was a closeup of a barbequed pig!!! My girlfriend was rolling in laughter as I was saying “Whoa, I didn’t meant that!!!”
I have nothing to contribute to this thread, but I think its way cool that another doper also saw Zardoz at CMU. A movie with sean connery wearing a wedding dress was one of my best moviegoing experiences (probably second only to watching Cool As Ice, the Vanilla Ice movie, also at CMU. My face hurt from laughing so much)
My friend and I did, and we loved it. Months later, at the Fellowship of the Rings premiere, we’re watching Saruman lay the smack down on Gandalf, and I lean over to my friend and say, “They’re breakdance fighting!”
Several years ago I was at a movie (Highway 61. Rent it.) with a friend and a preview came on for a Japanese movie about a crossdresser. There was a line on screen that said something like “Men called her beautiful, women called her a hero, but society called her The Dragon” and I leaned over to my friend and said, not loudly, “and John called her Yoko.” Suddenly everybody around us started laughing. I was pleased.
What a coincidence; I come across this thread while the MST3K of “Hellcats” is playing in the living room. Some personal MST3K moments…
Saturday was “Bad Movie Night” at a friend’s house and the first offering was “The Star Wars Holiday Special.” If you haven’t seen it, please do, but the only way to enjoy this late-70s attempt at a sci-fi variety show is with much sarcasm and Woodchuck Cider. Some of the better moments…
Shortly after Han Solo delivers lines minus any feeling: “Harrison Ford’s performance provided by AT&T.”
While Chewbacca’s grandpa is having a “fantasy” of a woman signing a sultry song: “Why are we watching Wookie Porn?”
When the four main Wookies gather together with lit candles: I start singing the “opera” part of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
And during the annual Sci-Fi Movie Marathon at Case Western Reserve University, we get some classics as well. Imagine a live MSTie involving the whole audience with riffs of varying quality:
After a main character has been informed that the only remaining trees in the universe are to be destroyed, the space-greenhouse carrying them floats across the screen: “Run, forest, RUN!”
Weeks after the release of “Galaxy Quest,” the audience is treating to Sigourney Weaver’s triumphant alien butt kicking: Guy in front row – “Never give up….” Audience – “…NEVER SURRENDER!!!”
Starship Troopers – At one point when the main character is calling home on his shiny video-phone thingy, the person on the other end says; “Johnny?” with this nice long pause after it, at this point my buddy pipes up with “Whaddaya mean Barq’s has bite?” …………It’s funny if you’ve ever seen the Barq’s root beer commercial with the blind guy, honest!
My other one was during the previews before some sci-fi movie, when they were releasing the new edition of Star Wars with the updated effects. At one point in the trailer they show the Death Star exploding and I holler out “Oh great! They spoiled the ending!”
Not the epitome of wit, I grant you, but it got a laugh out of most of the theater.
Kind of a dumb movie, F/X 2 with Bryan Brown and Brian Dennehy… Anyway, at one point in this forgettable flick, they’re out looking for munchies so Dennehy takes them to this Chinese food cart where he says they serve, “The best Chinese food in the city.”
Just after receiving their orders of lo mein, bad guys drive by and open fire with automatic weaponry, largely missing the two heroes and winging the Chinese food guy. The two protagonists pull their guns and run off to chase their bad guys. I lean to my friend and say, “They didn’t even consider that those guys might have been after the best Chinese chef in the city!”
Well, it was in line with our senses of humor at the time.
After that my mind began to wander thinking about how I wished the movie would’ve switched at that point to the story of the poor Chinese chef and his long road to recovery and if he ever regained his cooking status again…
This is odd, I have a Ralph Lauren commercial story as well.
It was during the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Me and my many housemates were watching them on TV (and making some funny comments as well). One of the commercials was for Ralph Lauren. It had a lot of patriotic stuff and pictures of pretty looking people. Basically it was just for Ralph Lauren in general. The narration was something like: “the tradition. . . the quality. . . the elegance. . .” and I came in with perfect timing “. . .the polo-ness!” Cracked my friends up. I wish I could remember exactly how the narration went because I’m really just paraphrasing it.
