Monster-movie cliche: If there’s a dog around it will become aware of the monster’s presence before the people do, and will bark its head off, but nobody will pay much attention to it. In most cases, the dog will not get eaten even if it goes recklessly chasing after the monster.
If a female character is shown to be pregnant in the first hour of the movie, she will give birth before the end (exception: Fargo).
The one-in-a-million last-chance attempt to defeat the villain will always work.
Before killing the hero, the villain will alway stop to gloat and/or explain his evil plan.
In today’s movies, if someone is shown smoking a cigarette, this person will generally turn out to be a Bad Guy or Gal. What a turnaround from movies of earlier eras, where smoking was often depicted as a hallmark of sophisticated, witty, sexy people.
Not so sure about that one. Smoking is still a generic tough guy behavior in a lot of action movies. The various Die Hards, for example? Bruce Willis & Mel Gibson both do it a lot.
If a brilliant scientist or team of scientists is attempting to create/discover something, they’ll always lose control of it. The more brilliant & ambitious the project, the more spectacularly it will go awry.
In horror movies, when you see that one girl wears less makeup and has smaller breasts than the other girls, you know that she is a virgin and that she and her boyfriend will be the only survivors of the crazed killer’s rampage.
A co-worker and I came up with a bunch of these for family films in order to maintain our sanity while the children in our care watched a tape of “Free Willy”:
A man with horseshoe pattern baldness is a Good Guy. Any other pattern of male baldness is evil, especially a combover widow’s peak.
A red pickup truck will always be driven by a Good Guy. Any other color pickup is suspect, ESPECIALLY one sporting fog lamps.
Plaid, if worn at all, must have a red base color if owrn by a Good Guy. Other colors of plaid are not worn by those with pure intentions.
It’s been 12 years, that’s all I can remember…
But hell, I can think of more:
If the less honest cop in a buddy cop movie suggests they seek out some informant, the very next shot in the film will feature a topless pole dancer in some bar.
If a window or shutter blows open, there’s a couple having sex nearby.
All explosive device digital countdown timers stop at 1 when the correct wire is cut to disarm the bomb
all homemade explosive devices use red and blue wiring, the really cheap ones also use the standard analog wind-up alarm clock as a timer
the hero will always be confused as to which wire to cut, but somehow, always makes the right choice (usually the blue wire) (exception being “48 Hours”)
i always thought Family Guy had a good point, in one “flashback” scene, Meg is attempting to disarm a bomb, she pulls the cover off the bomb, discovering that all the wires are blue…
“what do you mean, ‘cut the blue wire’ , they’re ALL blue wires!”
why doesn’t the villan use a single color wire in his bomb, it’d make it harder to disarm…
And much more dangerous for himself while trying to wire it up.
Not always. If a fat guy is also tall and broad-shouldered - like John Goodman - then not only is he not a coward, he is also capable of incredible feats of strength when angered.
This only applies if said fat guy is working-class, or rides a Harley.
The black guy in a horror movie will always be one of the the first to die. Having sex in a horror movie is the same as painting a big target on your chest. Acting like a slut will reall screw you.
Anyone without a name is pretty much screwed in James Bond films, Star trek films, horror films and usally war filsm.
Anyone in a war movie who is going home soon, or talks about what they are going to do after the war, is going to die.
Supervillians will go through the trouble of creating giant death rays and overly elaborate death traps, but will have gaping holes in their security grid that facilitate easy infiltration/escape.
Supervillians are able to build cool lairs and superweapons on credit, because how else are they paying for all this stuff prior to blackmailing the UN with said superweapon?
For that matter, anybody wearing a red shirt in the original Star Trek is likely in big trouble. But maybe that shouldn’t count because it’s TV.
If a civil servant (anyone from desk clerk to police captain) is Black, s/he is likely to be an obnoxious petty bureaucrat.
Any obviously Jewish supporting character will be either wise, materialistic, morally upright, or comedy relief. Any one of these can be effectively combined with obnoxious.
If a phonograph record is shown playing (old movies only), the tonearm will be lifted off and a line of important dialogue delivered.
Obvious yes-men or neatniks usually become turncoats.
If a movie begins with a long drawn-out aerial landscape or cityscape shot, it is was made in the 1970s or 1980s and is most likely tepid and derivative.
Men wearing bow ties are eccentrics and/or twits.
A woman carrying too many grocery or shopping bags is about to meet with complications, usually either romantic or violent.
Anyone in a parking garage is in immediate physical danger.
Dreary soap operas made in England are a gritty and searing indictment of the class system. This is still Mrs Thatcher’s fault, although she’s been out of power for 15 years.
Dreary soap operas mysteriously become melancholy and profound insights into the human condition if they are in French. That goes double if they have won the jury prize at the Trondheim Film Festival.
You are too stupid to understand dreary soap operas if they are in any Scandinavian language.
If your wife or girlfriend wants to go and see a dreary soap opera in any language, either get the blow-job before you’re dragged along, or stay home and watch The Scorpion King.
In action films cars are powerful explosive devices that can be trigged with mild impact. A car that flips over will always explode.
The more of a good guy you are the larger an explosion you can dive away from in the last possible second.
If an action hero has rope strapped around him he’ll always end up using it.
A similar fate befalls anyone who meets Hanibal Lector…
I’ll be right along. You know what might be fun though? You go ahead and hold your breath till I get there. :rolleyes:
If a movie features a frightening and seemingly unstoppable professional assassin, the assassin will choose to use a remarkably exotic and unusual firearm which he carries around, in separate components, in a shiny metal suitcase.
Dogs can always tell who the bad guy is even when all the people are fooled.
When the dog growls at the bad guy for the first time, he will be reprimanded because the boy friend/neighbor/new wife is OK. The owner won’t know “what got into Sparky” and will apologize to the bad guy.