In Atomic Cafe, there’s footage of US servicemen “informing” the inhabitants of a Pacific island about the wonderful, fun new things they’re about to carry out there, and then get them to sing “You Are My Sunshine” while there’s intercut images of planes and bombing. Heaviest part in film for me.
Speaking of “…Sunshine”, in a Twilight Zone episode, in a scene that’s brilliantly comic and creepy at the same time, drunken buddy starts singing that song to that annoying little “you better think good thoughts about me” little Billy Mumy fucker, who eventually sends said alkie to a place that the SDMB has since been apparently much indebted to.
More on the absurd side, in Blue Velvet, a suave Dean Stockwell lipsyncs Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” to a somewhat aroused? discombobulated? Frank.
(Indeed - here’s to your fuck, Frank.)
The capper, though…
In the at-times quite spooky Night of the Hunter*, we see, at night, on the horizon, evil Bob Mitchum on a horse slowly ambling along, singing the traditional hymn “Leaning On the Everlasting Arms”, as he casually closes in on his quarry.
Goose-bumpy.
Badfinger’s “Stuck In the Middle With You” got some love in the dancing, ear-lopping scene in Resevoir Pugs.
*total sidebar - seriously? Cahiers du Cinema ranked …Hunter second alltime greatest behind Citizen Cane?!? Like - wwwwwwwwwwwwwooowwww!
Huh!
The TV spot for “It’s Alive” back in the early 70s, with the tinkly music-box version of Rockabye Baby as the bassinet rotates, eventually revealing the outsize talon of the movie’s baby-monster.
Much like “We’ll Meet Again” sung by Vera Lynn at the end of Dr. Strangelove with the atomic bombs and the beginning of WW3 occuring in the background.
That is so cool. One of my favourite ridiculous/scary ads I’ve ever seen. Yeah that freaked me out when I was a kid. Made me see it. Will always remember that fucking hilarious shot in the film of the top of the baby’s head as it moves along, behind a table.
At the beginning of a scene that later becomes a brawl, Alex and his droogies in Clockwork Orange pass around a naked, unwilling girl to the strains of Beethoven. (I always thought that bit was…“a bit much”.)
In the infamous X-Files episode “Home,” the inbred family members break into the home of avuncular town sheriff Andy Taylor (yes, Andy Taylor!), and savagely beat him and his wife to death, while the Johnny Mathis standard “Wonderful! Wonderful!” plays on the soundtrack.
“You Are My Sunshine” is sung (in two-part harmony) in the TV series The A-Team by Hannibal and Face while they’re being held hostage to cover up the Morse code tapping Murdock is doing to signal them.
damn I haven’t woken up yet - that particular part could actually be to Rossini.
In an old made-for-tv movie with the sunny Susan Dey playing a dangerously abusive mom, the ending shows her clutching her young daughter (whom she had just killed) while dazedly singing “Hush Little Baby”.
While I can’t think of any examples, I’m sure the work of Todd Solondz would have something in this kinda neighbourhood.
Mia Farrow sings whimsically over Rosemary Baby’s end credits.
In the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre, for some reason I have this totally obscure memory of a laid-back hayseed honky-tonk number coming over the radio while girl victim is sitting/waiting in what looks like a rag-tag butcher’s shop (before she’s hauled off to the house).