That’s how you can be sure it’s a black comedy – when you’re not really sure it’s a comedy. 
American Psycho. Hilarious!
Donnie Darko
Say what? Sure it has some funny moment, but you consider that comedy?
Liquid Sky was a comedy? :eek:
Well, I thought so, but I admit I was at least stoned and maybe even tripping when I saw it.
Let’s see, The Producers features:
–a sleazy has-been Broadway producer who’s reduced to literally prostituting himself to old ladies so he can fund his next flop;
–a deeply disturbed and repressed accountant with a baby blanket fixation;
–a scheme put together by the producer and the accountant to find the worst play imaginable, mount a production of said worst play with the most incompetent people in American theater, and then, when it flops, to run off to Brazil with the life savings of all the old women the producer he had to seduce to fund; and
–a play that’s a musical celebration the one of the worse genocidal monsters in history (i.e., “Springtime for Hitler”) written by a deranged neo-Nazi.
Nope, I don’t see anything that people could find unfunny and offensive there.
As for other movies that might qualify, I suggest A Fish Called Wanda and Fight Club.
I’ve got to hand it to you, then, Boyo Jim: your sense of humor must be sicker and more brutal than even my own. And, man, that is no small thing; it may even be somewhat frightening.
Wow, nobody’s mentioned any of John Waters’ early work yet, from back before he started doing crowd-pleasers; classics of splatter/scat/schadenfreude like:
Pink Flamingos
Female Trouble
Desperate Living, and
Polyester. The humor in those four flicks goes from dark to cruel to downright savage and back again seamlessly.
If you’re in the mood for something a little more restrained and subtle and British, **Privates on Parade **is pretty grim and funny, too.
And why hasn’t anyone mentioned The Ruling Class yet, or** Putney Swope**? They may be somewhat dated by now, especially Swope, but the vicious edge and cynicism of their comedy is pretty timeless I think. The same probably goes for A Bucket Of Blood, too, but I love it – it’s got touches of realism like beatnik junkies, undercover narks and evil landladies, mixed into its wild tale of a near-retarded nobody who accidentally becomes an avant-garde snuff-sculpture superstar.
Lastly, am I the only person in the world who realizes that Re-Animator is actually a comedy? How could it be anything else, with lines like:
“Don’t expect it to tango.”
and scenes like the one where
the reanimated, decapitated professor gives his ladylove head – at arm’s length – while she lays blindfolded on a morgue gurney ?
Boyo Jimm has the answer. It is Catch 22.
In a similar vein, I’d like to suggest Jawbreaker. Not quite as good, but definitely worth a view.
How about a horror comedy? Try Slither . Good stuff!
And another suggestion? 9 Dead Gay Guys. It’s very british, very dark, pretty funny (in my opinion), and very un PC.
I’ll third The Last Supper and add Eulogy. I’d also add Nowhere, but I have a feeling that a lot of people would disagree even though comedy is one of the descriptors at Imdb. It’s funnier than Doom Generation, anyway!
Making her less unsympathetic isn’t necessarily the same making her sympathetic.
Yeaaaaah, but I thought the noise the bodies made when they hit the floor was hilarious.
Is Hamlet a black comedy?
But. Is there anyone out there who’s reasonably intelligent and openminded who Just Wouldn’t Get It? Or wouldn’t recognize it as broad and shticky? No.
That’s the test. It has to be deadpan and underplayed enough that if you don’t Get It, all you see is a kind of sarcasm - limp or depressing or just pointless.
I’ve always suspected that Kafka’s The Metamorphosis was black comedy. Man (albeit in bug form) is cruelly tortured to death by the people who claim to love him, and is ironically more humane than the parasitic people in his family.
The Cable Guy (i think that movie is under rated)
In Bruges
Raising Arizona
Waking Ned Devine. You are screaming in laughter at something truly horrible at the climax of the movie, and you don’t feel bad about it at all. That’s about as black as it gets.
Catch 22. It doesn’t get more surreal or Grimmer than that novel. I actually like the movie too. Arkan was the perfect Yossarian. Had MASH not been released just before it
that movie may have done so much better