Motel Hell (1980)
Backwoods Brutality Comedy
Studio-backed attempt to enter the Backwoods Brutality genre ends up as an uncertain black comedy that fails to push the envelope anywhere near what its models do
Black Comedy
Black Humour is a special type of comedy. While most mainstream Comedy derives its laughs from plays on words, incongruities, embarrassments and absurdities, black comedy is that which laughs at matters that people usually take seriously. Typical subjects in black comedy are matters like death and murder, war, illness, suffering and the general miseries of life.
A protagonist in a black comedy may be akin to a character in a Franz Kafka novel, finding the world and society around them seemingly run by madmen or to operate on insane principles that frequently seem to be conspiring against them. In the horror genre, Black Comedy will also laugh at murder, dismemberment, bloodshed and cruelties inflicted on people – there is a strong vein of Black Comedy in Horror Comedy.
Black Comedy also frequently maps over onto absurdist humour. This derives from the popular Theatre of the Absurd movement and involves characters caught in frequently surreal and nonsensical situations. The mix of absurdism and black comedy is frequently prevalent in British humour. Many of the entries here are listed under Gonzo Cinema.
Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (1980)
Surrealism
Surreal and plotless British film based on a radio show about the happenings around a country mansion
The Ninth Configuration (1979)
Military Asylum Black Comedy
The directorial debut of William Peter Blatty, the writer of The Exorcist, a strange and unclassifiable black comedy set in a military asylum. Imagine One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest directed by Robert Altman
Monty Python’s The Life of Brian (1979)
Accidental Messiah Absurdist Comedy
The Monty Python team’s finest hour, a wickedly irreverent spoof on Christianity that contains some of their most side-splitting gags
Jabberwocky (1977)
Mediaeval Quest Black Comedy
This was the first solo directorial outing from Terry Gilliam outside of Monty Python, a fantasy film that is a dark and frenetic skewering of the cinematic portrayal of the Middle Ages
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Absurdist Parody of the Arthurian Legends
The first of the Monty Python films, a wickedly funny, willfully nonsensical take on King Arthur and the knightly quest. Contains many classic Python gags
Death Race 2000 (1975)
Future Road Race/Black Comedy
Satiric hit produced by Roger Corman, a spoof of Rollerball, with David Carradine as a driver in a futuristic road race where points are won by running down pedestrians. Also featuring a young unknown Sylvester Stallone
Theater of Blood (1973)
Mad Shakespearean Actor's Revenge
Following on from the success of the Dr Phibes films, Vincent Price is cast as a mad Shakespearean actor who employs comically grotesque deaths from Shakespeare’s plays to kill his critics
O Lucky Man! (1973)
Social Satire
The second of Lindsay Anderson and Malcolm’s McDowell’s social satires with coffee salesman McDowell passing through increasingly more surreal adventures
No Way to Treat a Lady (1968)
Psycho Actor/Comedy Thriller
Amid the host of Psycho copies that came out during the 1960s, this was one that played everything as a comedy. A wildly overacting Rod Steiger is a psycho actor who adopts a different disguises every time he goes out to kill
How I Won the War (1967)
WWII Absurdist Black Comedy
A World War II comedy from Richard Lester that heads into a wild absurdism, a film that is both brilliant and numbingly noisy. Most did not get the surreal blacker-than-black tone and the film was not a success
Bedazzled (1967)
Pact with the Devil/Black Comedy
British comedy made with an acerbic bite featuring Dudley Moore as a hapless loser who makes a pact with Peter Cook’s Devil to win the love of his life but has the wording of each wish contorted around on him
Dr Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Nuclear War Black Comedy
Stanley Kubrick decided the only way to make a film about nuclear war was to resort to black comedy. Aided by three sidesplitting performances from Peter Sellers, the result are mercilessly funny
The Comedy of Terrors (1963)
Murderous Morticians Comedy
Droll black comedy with Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone as morticians who decide to drum up business by murdering people. This assembles much of the team behind the Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe films
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Brainwashed Assassin/Political Satire
John Frankenheimer film. concerning a Communist plot for creating a brainwashed assassin, Frankenheimer shoots with stark and blackly funny effect and this has duly become a cult classic
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
Killer Plant Black Comedy
The original, Roger Corman’s zero budget film about a killer plant is an hilarious black comedy that has become a cult favourite and remains his most well remembered film
A Bucket of Blood (1959)
Murderous Beatnik Artist/Black Comedy
A quirky low-budget black comedy from cult B movie director Roger Corman with Dick Miller as a wannabe who suddenly receives artistic acclaim when he exhibits dead bodies in plaster as works of art
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Grand Guignol Comedy/Murderous Old Ladies
Blackly funny Frank Capra comedy adapted from a very popular Broadway play of the era in which Cary Grant discovers that his two old dear aunts have been killing off their boarders
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Universal Frankenstein Sequel
The first sequel to the 1931 Boris Karloff Frankenstein, which many prefer to the original. Director James Whale comes into his element and provides a whole other level of droll humour that the first film did not have
Snowflake (2017)
Meta-Fiction/Hitmen Discover They Are Characters in a Screenplay
A insanely madcap work of meta-fiction. Imagine stupider versions of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction mixed with Stranger Than Fiction as they discover they are fictional characters