Broadcast from a deserted TV station in Los Angeles in The Slime People, 1962
On Television News, Typical:
The level of the mysterious radiation continues to increase steadily. So long as this situation remains, government spokesmen warn that dead bodies will continue to be transformed into the flesh-eating ghouls.
TV newsman giving the world the bad news in Night of the Living Dead, 1968
On Therapy Sessions, People You Don’t Want to Sit Next to:
You know, I want to get back to this participant thing. I didn’t want what they did to me. I didn’t want a rectal probe, Laurie!
Psychiatric group patient Sally (Irene Forrest) explaining to other former abductees why she objected to the aliens’ actions, in Communion, 1989
On There, There:
Pilot: Aw, you’re the only thing I do worry about! Forget about the flying saucers. They’re up there! But there’s something in that cemetery—and that’s too close for comfort.
Wife: The saucers are up there and the cemetery’s out there. But I’ll be locked up in there [pointing to bedroom]. Now. Off to your wild blue yonders.
Pilot (Gregory Walcott) saying good-bye to his wife (Mona McKinnon) before heading off to space in Plan 9 from Outer Space, 1959
On Things Cabdrivers Hear, Weird:
Do you carry a revolver? Because, if you did, you could kill me.
Paranoid Elizabeth Taylor to puzzled cabdriver in The Driver’s Seat, 1973
On Things Not to Tell Your Local Police Force, Part 1:
I think I saw a flame ball shoot out of that guy’s head and blow up my car.
Bill Paxton to Lindsay Frost, in the paranoid the-government’s-got-an-alien-but-they’re-not-telling-anyone Monolith, 1993
On Things Not to Tell Your Local Police Force, Part 2:
Excuse me, sir. There’s breathing in my barn.
Elderly farmer, telling police of the Invisible Man’s (Claude Rains’s) whereabouts in The Invisible Man, 1933
On Things to Remember, Important:
Remember, the difference between “champ” and “chump” is u.
Jack Palance in Cyborg 2, 1993
On Things to Say to Your Buddy When You Watch a Man Melt:
And you think we’ve got problems.
One bum to another, while watching a man melt in The Incredible Melting Man, 1978
On Things to Tell Your Editor:
I’m not a nudie. I’m a writer!
Writer and innocent Ann-Margret when editor Tony Franciosa suggests she pose for pictures rather than write in The Swinger, 1966
On Things to Worry About After Eating Humans:
Could you just promise if you eat me that you’ll clean your plates?
Worried plane crash survivor stranded in the snow-covered mountains in Alive, 1992
On Things We Hope We Never Hear on a Date:
If I didn’t really work for the government, if I was just a guy who accidentally killed his parents, would you still love me?
Arsonist Anthony Perkins to schoolgirl Tuesday Weld in Pretty Poison, 1968
On Things We Never Want to Hear:
The town is infested with man-eating cockroaches! Repeat: man-eating cockroaches!
George Peppard calling Jan-Michael Vincent to tell him about what the nuclear fallout has wrought in Damnation Alley, 1977
On Things You Don’t Want to Hear Your Sexual Partner Saying:
Erogenous zones responding … sublingual glands secreting.
Kristina Holland as a medical student recording her own sexual responses in Doctors’ Wives, 1970
On Things You Might Hear at 3 A.M. on New Year’s Eve:
There is a herd of killer rabbits heading this way!
Panicky sheriff warning teenagers at the drive-in of impending doom in Night of the Lepus, 1972
On Things You Should Never, Never Do:
Producer: Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve just masturbated in front of all Paris!
Nijinsky: It wasn’t me. It was the faun.
Alan Bates to George De La Pena playing the famed dancer Nijinsky, after the scandalous performance of “Afternoon of a Faun” in Nijinsky, 1980
On Those Constantly Returning Volcanic Urges, Aging Socialites and:
When that volcanic urge of yours comes back—and it will—you’ll come to me!
Aging socialite Genevieve Page, losing her young lover (James Franciscus in the title role) in Youngblood Hawke, 1964
On Those Crazy Scientists:
Man! The doc must have been brewing some of that Jekyll and Hyde joy juice in here.
Deputy inspecting the trashed lab after the two-headed transplant has escaped in The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant, 1971
On Those Darn Space Kids, Hobbies of:
Teenagers From Outer Space.
Hoodlums from another world!
On a ray-gun rampage.
These strange teen-agers from outer space invade the earth and prepare to possess the women!
They blast the flesh off humans!
A moment before she was a beautiful young woman. Now, she’s a skeleton!
promo from Teenagers from Outer Space, 1959
On Those Goofy Teens:
The junkies call them goofballs, and Cassandra was about as goofed up as the physical limitations of the human body can stand.
Narrator in Teenage Devil Dolls, 1952, a “case history” of a teen junkie
On Those Old New Guinea Traditions:
According to New Guinea tradition, the monster Barugon will follow the shimmering of a six-thousand-carat diamond anywhere.
Narrator, in War of the Monsters, 1966
On Those Ubiquitous Seth-ites:
Over there is the Temple of Seth. Two years ago they were just another snake cult. Now they’re everywhere.
Conan the Barbarian, 1984
On Those Wacked-Out Hippies:
You’re stoned out of your mind, aren’t you? Oh, man! What’s the matter with you guys? Isn’t the real world good enough for you? Love freak!
Waitress to Paul (Peter Fonda) in The Trip, 1967
On Those Wacky Psychologists:
What’s wrong with you people? They’re dead … and you want to teach them tricks?
Military man to psychologist in Day of the Dead, 1985
On Threats, Spacy:
Decrucify the angel or I’ll melt your face.
One of Jane Fonda’s better lines as the futuristic space beauty in Barbarella, 1968
On Throbbing Dix:
YOU HEAR HIM MAKE LOVE!
DIX—the dashing soldier!
DIX—the bold adventurer!
DIX—the throbbing lover!
Ad campaign for The Wheel of Life, 1929, starring Richard Dix in his first “talkie” role
On Ties, the Martian Fashion World and:
These ties serve no functional purpose. The Red Planet abandoned the use of ties fifty years ago as a useless male vanity.
Martian getting into Earthling disguise and complaining about it in Mars Needs Women, 1968
JOKES THAT FALL FLAT
A bad joke is truly a bad thing. Most bad jokes are happily forgotten—the teller quickly moves on to other jokes as he or she surveys the blank faces of an uncomprehending and hostile audience. But flat, stale jokes that are preserved on film are there forever, and remain to annoy or bore countless audiences in the future.
There are many purveyors of bad jokes in film, but the cinematic work in 1960s Dean Martin films perhaps stands out as the exemplar of awful taste in hilarity. One must realize that it takes a special something to produce jokes so awful they produce more than loud groans, an inverse talent happily denied most screenwriters. Here are some of the best of the worst jokes in movie history.
On Double Entendres, Pitiful:
Matt Helm (Dean Martin) to his buxom costar: Oh, when you say you’re a thirty-eight you ain’t just kidding.
Linda: It’s not a gun, Mr. Helm. It’s t
he new weapon they gave me, developed right here in our labs.
Helm: Developed pretty well, too!
Linda: May I point out—
Helm: You already do!
Linda:—that’s why you’re here. To become familiar with our latest equipment.
Helm: You’re right. An agent should always keep abreast of the times!
The Ambushers, 1967
On Broads, Enlightening:
Matt: We have a long wait ahead of us so let’s get comfortable.
Sheila: How comfortable?
Matt: It’s broad daylight!
Sheila: What’s the matter with a broad in daylight?
Dean Martin and Janice Rule in The Ambushers, 1967
On Congressmen, Typical:
Erin: Hi, I’m Erin Grant.
Congressman: Uh, I’m Congressman Dil … Dildo. Uh, Dilbeck.
Stripper Erin Grant (Demi Moore) meeting Congressman David Dilbeck (Burt Reynolds) on a yacht where she has come to do a command performance strip show in Striptease, 1996
On Distinctions, Critical:
Stripper 1: Look, Steven Spielberg’s shower! Can you imagine me and him in that shower? Oh, that cute little beard!
Stripper 2: Yours or his?
Israeli stripper (known as “Ariel Sharon”) cooing over a magazine layout of Steven Spielberg’s house in Striptease, 1996
On Haven’t We Heard This One Before?:
Colleen Sutton: Nothing disgusts me. At the age of eleven I walked in on my father and the Shetland pony. Does that excite you?
Ford Fairlane: I don’t know, I never met your father!
Andrew Dice Clay, as Ford Fairlane, and Priscilla Presley in The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, 1990
On Puns, Pitiful:
Dean: 673 Wongs in the phone book.
Jerry: Hmm, that’s a helluva lot of Wong numbers.
Michael Kastorin and Scott Eddo in Bruce Willis’s Hudson Hawk, 1991
On Time Travelers, Typical Complaints from:
I’m from another time, another place. I don’t even know what you people have for lunch!
Traveler from the future having a discussion with a twentieth-century woman in Trancers, 1985, starring Tim Thomerson and Helen Hunt
On the Tingler:
Ladies and Gentlemen, please do not panic, but scream. Scream for your lives!
The Tingler is loose in this theater, and if you don’t scream, it may kill you!
Vincent Price narration for The Tingler, 1959, in which the audience theater seats started “tingling” as though the deadly crab monster “the Tingler” were loose in the theater. The ads for this “Percepto” technique claimed, “You actually feel real physical sensations as you shiver to its flesh-crawling action!”
On Tiny Eyes, What They Mean:
From your tiny eyes, I can tell you won’t be lazy in bed.
Sexpot Sharla Cheung Man in Holy Weapon, 1993
On Tired Robots, What to Say to:
You look like a pooped-out pinwheel.
Little boy to robot in Robot Monster, 1953
On Toasts, Clever Rat-Pack Style:
Ortega: Cheers!
Girl: Skoal!
Matt: Sure it’s cold. It’s got ice in it.
Dean Martin and friends toasting in The Ambushers, 1968
On Toasts, Really Irritating:
I drink to the Easter orphans, to all of us wicked little children banded together on the beaches and resorts from Florida to California to observe the rites of spring. Here’s to sex, sand, and suds!
Twentysomething Robert Conrad to the rest of the cast of supposed teenagers in Palm Springs Weekend, 1963
On Tough Guys, Really Modest:
Delilah: But you might have been hurt!
Samson: It was nothing. It was only a young lion.
Hedy Lamarr and Victor Mature in the title roles, after Samson wrestles a lion to death with his hands in Samson and Delilah, 1949
On Tough Guys, Tough-to-Follow Orders for:
Beat him out of recognizable shape!
English subtitle in Jackie Chan’s kung fu classic Police Story II, 1988
On Tough Talk, Painful:
Dr. Elizabeth Clay: I’ll give you a local.
Dalton: No, thank you.
Dr. Elizabeth Clay: Do you enjoy pain?
Dalton: Pain don’t hurt.
Conversation between astoundingly beautiful emergency room doctor (Kelly Lynch) and incredibly cool new bar bouncer in town (Patrick Swayze), while she’s stitching up his knife wound in Road House, 1989
On Tourist Traps, Literal:
Crazed townsperson (looking at the corpse of a tourist who was just pushed down a hill in a barrel with sharp nails hammered into it):
Doggone! If this ain’t the best centennial anybody ever had!
Two Thousand Maniacs, 1965
On Translation, Great Primate Moments in:
Amy the Talking Gorilla (pointing): Mother!
Peter: Mother?
Amy the Talking Gorilla: Ooh, ooh!
Peter: Oh, I see. Africa is your mother!
Amy the Talking Gorilla having a philosophical discussion with Dr. Peter Elliott (Dylan Walsh) at the end of Congo, 1995
On Translations, Great Prehistoric Moments in:
Engor: Jinay! Elko! Lito!
Narrator: He has asked her [Tigri], if she is so wise and superior, why doesn’t she see if she can move the rock?
Engor’s (Allan Nixon’s) dialogue being explained in Prehistoric Women, 1950
On Transplants, Bad Interracial Moments in:
The doctor blew it—he transplanted a WHITE BIGOT’S HEAD on a SOUL BROTHER’S BODY! Man, they’re really in deeeep trouble!
Advertisement for the blaxpoitation film The Thing with Two Heads, 1972, starring Ray Milland (as the white bigot) and Rosie Grier (as the soul brother)
On Trash, Trash, Trash:
I know what ya think, that I’m trashy like my ma! … Trash, trash, trash, trash, trash!
Half-breed Indian gal Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun, 1946
On Trees, Hard to Imagine:
Nurse: How did that tree get here?
Scientist: In plain English, it walked here.
Nurse: It’s hard to imagine carnivorous trees that move on their own roots.
Scientist: Not carnivorous: omnivorous. All-devouring. He’ll eat anything—even other trees.
Mamie Van Doren and Walter Sande having a scientific discussion in The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, 1966
On Trick Questions, Bizarre:
Abby: Have you ever had the bad mumps?
Postman: Never had the bad mumps.
Abby: Syphilis? Nothin’ like that?
Postman: [shakes head]
Abby: So, as far as you know, you have good semen?
Postman: Is that a trick question?
Young post-holocaust frontier woman, Abby (Olivia Williams), looking for a father for her wished-for child and hoping she’s found him in the visiting mailman (Kevin Costner) in The Postman, 1997
On Tricky Words Men of Medical Science Use:
Psychiatrist: You’re referring to the suicide of the transvestite?
Policeman: If that’s the word you men of medical science use for a man who wears women’s clothing, yes.
Timothy Farrell as the doctor and Lyle Talbot as the cop in Glen or Glenda?, 1952
On Trip Leaders, Good:
You can’t expect me to let you go trippin’ in a messed-up plane, do ya?
Bruce Dern in The Trip, 1967
On Trips, Cool:
I don’t want to bring you down, but, like, let’s sort out the real from the trip.
Bruce Dern, as a tour guide for Peter Fonda’s acid trip in The Trip, 1967
On Trips, Keeping:
I got a great deal: amphetamine caps, crystals, anything you want. No? Keep your trip.
Sleazy guy in a nightclub making a sales pitch in Once a Thief, 1965
On Truth in Advertising, Act
ual:
Filmed on Actual Locations Where It Could Have Happened.
Poster for The She Freak, 1967
On Truth, Indubitable:
Princess: What if they kill you?
Ator: Then I’d be dead.
Miles O’Keeffe and Sabrina Sari in Ator, the Fighting Eagle, 1983
On Truth, Ultimate Answers About:
You want to know what truth is? Truth is pimples and garlic and armpits. That’s what truth is.
Bad cop to a hooker in the blaxploitation film The Mack, 1973
On Truths, Obvious:
Time has little meaning here in the catalisosphere.
Alien explaining all in Beyond the Time Barrier, 1960
On Tubby Older Men, Realness of:
Student: I see you without your pajamas. I’m your link to reality.
Professor: That’s not reality, honey. That’s flab.
Student: Flab is reality.
Student Ann-Margret to lover and hip-but-old professor Anthony Quinn in R.P.M., 1970
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