# REALLY black comedy
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [August 19, 2012, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948 "2012-08-19T07:08:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/1 "2012-08-19T07:08:09Z")
A lot of stuff advertised as black comedy is nothing of the sort, the label is meaningless and overused. What are some instances of REALLY black comedy you’ve seen?
Julien Donkey Boy film- A story about a deranged family, the sister is pregnant by her brother and proudly announces this fact to the astonishment of outsiders. Their father spends his days stumbling around a bedroom wearing a gas mask high on cough syrup. This is played straight enough it is disturbing rather than silly.
Moral Orel TV show- In the second season the show became a BLEAK meditation on abusive families, an entire episode was spent with an alcoholic father snarking on how much he hates his wife and kids.
Happiness film- In this film a pedophile father sodomizes his sons friend, when confronted he confesses to his son and when his son asks dejected why he has never molested him and his father says he would never do that, he jerks off thinking of his son instead. :eek:
---
### Author:  [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/2 "2012-08-19T08:03:09Z")
Very Bad Things
Father of the Year
Bad Santa
Dark Star
Green
Super
Ravenous
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
---
### Author:  [@Becky2844](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Becky2844)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/3 "2012-08-19T08:08:27Z")
**grude** / I don’t know that I’d call that black humor—deranged and perverted maybe. To me it would be more something like this: “The building burned to a crisp!” “Yeah, but the bodies were only scorched.”
---
### Author:  [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/4 "2012-08-19T08:34:22Z")
What are the elements of a Black Comedy? Judging from what’s been mentioned, I’d say:
–No happy ending
–Traditional morality is not upheld
–Cavalier attitude towards death and suffering
Tragedy with laughs. I’d add _Duck Soup_ and _A Thousand Clowns_.
---
### Author:  [@postcards](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/postcards)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/5 "2012-08-19T12:03:20Z")
M_A_S\*H (the movie)
---
### Author:  [@Drain\_Bead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drain_Bead)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/6 "2012-08-19T12:28:24Z")
Citizen Ruth, maybe?
---
### Author:  [@Biggirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biggirl)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/7 "2012-08-19T12:28:25Z")
Wesley Snipes and Eddie Murphy starring in a Tyler Perry movie.
Wait. . . that’s not what you meant by REALLY black, is it?
---
### Author:  [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/8 "2012-08-19T13:52:07Z")
> [@Krokodil](#):
>
> What are the elements of a Black Comedy? Judging from what’s been mentioned, I’d say:
>
> –No happy ending
> –Traditional morality is not upheld
> –Cavalier attitude towards death and suffering
>
> Tragedy with laughs. I’d add _Duck Soup_ and _A Thousand Clowns_.
I’d go further and say that the tragic part has to be played straight and be affecting. If it’s Daffy Duck getting crisped to a cinder and still cracking wise, or smacking himself silly against trees going “Yoicks and away!”, there’s nothing to be cavalier about. If you laugh at a black joke - and I for one don’t - you have to know it’s wrong, but somehow, not care. There has to be that disconnect at the core - that flash of sociopathy.
The Marx Brothers weren’t black comedy. They were too verbal (well Groucho and Chico were), too zany, and they didn’t transgress anything their audiences really cared about - only caricatures of the bluenoses and stuffed shirts of the real world. And nobody thought Harpo was a threat to those girls he chased.
---
### Author:  [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/9 "2012-08-19T14:03:42Z")
**Klown** , **Bad Santa**.
---
### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/10 "2012-08-19T14:42:01Z")
This might make me sound like a horrible person, but from the few episodes I have seen of _Breaking Bad_, there are lots of dark comedic moments. The two that most come to mind are
When one of the methheads wakes up still alive in the trailer, and is limping and gasping down the street trying to escape Walter who is slowly rolling after him in his van. I don’t know why I found this funny, I think it was just the utter absurdity of that moment. Walter was definitely after him, but in such a resigned and stupified way, and since Walter seemed so mild-mannered, the methhead’s (justifiable) terror of him just seemed ridiculous.
The other one is
‘‘So right now, what I need is for you to climb down out of my ass.’’
I haven’t been able to make it past the fourth or fifth episode of that show because it is just so horrifying, but I can’t deny it’s an excellent show with some very effective black humor.
---
### Author:  [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/11 "2012-08-19T14:49:45Z")
If you haven’t seen [Man Bites Dog](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Bites_Dog_(film)) you don’t know diddly squat about how dark comedy can get.
---
### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/12 "2012-08-19T14:56:58Z")
**Kind Hearts and Coronets** is about a cheerful serial killer. The British version is a bit darker than the US (edited) version.
**[Where’s Poppa?](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066563/)**. I haven’t see it, but it clearly fits. Here’s a description:
> [@](#):
>
> Director Carl Reiner, most closely associated with the homey values of situation comedies, shocked, surprised, and (in some cases) delighted his admirers with the jet-black comedy Where’s Poppa?. George Segal plays Gordon Hocheiser, a New York attorney whose love life is constantly being sabotaged by his senile mother (Ruth Gordon), who constantly asks the question of the title. (She doesn’t realize Poppa is dead). Every time Gordon has a prospective bride or lover lined up, Mrs. Hocheiser gums up the works with her insane behavior. The attorney at last finds a kindred spirit in the beautiful caregiver Louise Callan (Trish VanDevere), who has likewise been a victim of someone else’s eccentricities (her first husband used the conjugal bed as his own personal toilet). When Mrs. Hocheiser chases Louise away like she has all the others, Gordon begins entertaining notions of killing his mother. In desperation, Gordon begs his brother Sidney (Ron Leibman) to take his mother off his hands, which leads to several comic vignettes in deliriously bad taste. The film’s incest-themed original ending (trimmed from the video version but still included in cable prints) finds Gordon climbing into bed with Mrs. Hocheiser, only to be greeted with a “Here’s Poppa.” The celebrated “tush scene,” wherein Mrs. Hocheiser bites Gordon on his bare backside while Louise looks on in horror, packed a real wallop back in the early '70s, as did a courtroom scene involving a disgruntled hippie (Rob Reiner) and a psychotic U.S. general who graphically describes his homicidal acts against the Vietnamese. [(Rotten Tomatoes](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wheres_poppa/))
---
### Author:  [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/13 "2012-08-19T15:05:16Z")
Sometimes I wonder if black humor is inserted as Easter Eggs for us evil people to enjoy while the squares are having their recreational outrage. At the movie **Affliction** , we were glared at by the rest of the audience when we laughed at the scene where James Coburn makes his sons break up a frozen cord of firewood barehanded as he calls them weaklings. Or, watching the documentary **Just Melvin, Just Evil** , like everyone else I wondered why they didn’t just kill the child molester instead of interviewing him. But when his daughters/victims came to his funeral drunk and acted out, it was funny, dammit.
---
### Author:  [@Slade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slade)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/14 "2012-08-19T15:20:20Z")
Chris Morris’s Jam is the only TV comedy series I’ve ever seen which was genuinely disturbing.
---
### Author:  [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/15 "2012-08-19T15:48:36Z")
> [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](#):
>
> If you haven’t seen [Man Bites Dog](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Bites_Dog_(film)) you don’t know diddly squat about how dark comedy can get.
I still have a copy of that on VHS somewhere. I may have to dig that out; I haven’t watched it in quite a while.
---
### Author:  [@Mister\_Owl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Owl)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/16 "2012-08-19T16:29:16Z")
**Freeway** with Reese Witherspoon And Kiefer Sutherland.
---
### Author:  [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/17 "2012-08-19T16:42:06Z")
I don’t know if it’s dark enough for the OP, but **Heathers** is one of my favorite movies.
---
### Author:  [@Curiosity\_Kills\_Her](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Curiosity_Kills_Her)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/18 "2012-08-19T17:04:54Z")
> [@Mister\_Owl](#):
>
> **Freeway** with Reese Witherspoon And Kiefer Sutherland.
Freeway is pretty close to being my favorite movie.
\*Holy shit! Look who got beat with the ugly stick. Is that you Bob? \*
---
### Author:  [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/19 "2012-08-19T17:11:11Z")
The Mad Men episode, “Commissions and Fees” got pretty dark:
[spoiler]Lane Pryce, an Englishman who’s never been happy in the US, has been fired for misdeeds brought on by financial woes. His wife, unaware of their financial situation, buys him a new Jaguar. Lane tries to kill himself by piping the exhaust into the Jag… _but the notoriously unreliable English-manufactured car won’t start._ So Lane hangs himself.
It was always painful to watch poor Lane pushed around by life, and his death may be the ultimate instance thereof.[/spoiler]
---
### Author:  [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2012, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948/20 "2012-08-19T17:13:28Z")
> [@Curiosity\_Kills\_Her](#):
>
> Freeway is pretty close to being my favorite movie.
>
> \*Holy shit! Look who got beat with the ugly stick. Is that you Bob? \*
_Freeway_ is awesome, and that line cracks me up every time. Her delivery is perfect.
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/really-black-comedy/631948.md?page=2)