Stupid Movie Lines
Page 13
On Turtles, Why They Step on People:
Gamera doesn’t mean to step on people. He’s just lonely. Even turtles get lonely sometimes.
Child defending a giant turtle who is terrorizing Tokyo in Gamera, the Invincible, 1965
On Twin Peaks, Costarring:
What a Guy! What a Gal! What a Pair!
Ad for Stroker Ace, 1983, starring the well-endowed Loni Anderson and Burt Reynolds
On Two-Headed Men, Possible Benefits of:
Girlfriend, looking at her now two-headed boyfriend’s crotch:
Honey, I was wondering … um … do you have two of anything else?
Chelsea Brown to two-headed Rosie Grier/Ray Milland man in The Thing with Two Heads, 1972
On Two-Headed Monsters:
These things have a way of attracting attention, you know.
Concerned scientist to his wife after the two-headed-man-monster escapes from his lab in The Manster, 1959
On Tycoons Who Won’t End Up on the Cover of Forbes:
If only your father could see you now: the world’s richest man, crazy like a fox, wearing a dress, with parrot shit on his shoulders.
Alcoholic wife (Jane Lapotaire) to sad but wacky and rich Gene Hackman in Eureka, 1981
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On Ultra-cool Sayings, Too Cool:
Bam, et cetera!
George Maharis being ultra-cool in the face of ’60s-a-go-go violence in The Happening, 1967
On Understatements, Great Moments in:
What a crazy day! The first time I’ve seen you in three years and we’re buried alive!
A woman, making conversation with an old boyfriend in Cave-In!, 1983
On Understatements, Medical:
You’re sure it isn’t measles?
Lee Strasberg to famous doctor Richard Harris, who has trapped a demented terrorist afflicted with a horrible plague virus in The Cassandra Crossing, 1976
On Understatements of the Century, Titanic:
This is bad.
Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, 1997, as the ship hits the giant iceberg
On the Under-30 Crowd, Why to Watch Out for:
We outnumber the fuzz. We got more cats than little ol’ Mahatma Gandhi had.
Christopher Jones as a twenty-year-old rock star trying to take over the world from the over-thirty crowd in Wild in the Streets, 1968
On Untranslatable Unpronounceable Names:
Although his name is untranslatable to any known Earth language, it would sound something like … Zontar!
NASA scientist explaining an alien invader in Zontar, the Thing from Venus, 1968
V
On Vampires, Artificial:
We’re vampires, all right, but only in a synthetic sense.
Hip (and hippie) vampiress in The Wild Wild World of Batwoman (She Was a Happy Vampire), a.k.a. She Was a Hippy [sic] Vampire, 1966
On Vampires of Color, Proclivities of:
African vampires don’t go for Chinese women.
Jackie Chan’s Armour of God II: Operation Candor, 1991
On Venusians, Typically Uncooperative:
I think you’re wondering how you might get us to reveal our knowledge of interplanetary travel. And how you might force that information from us. Others of you are estimating the heights to which you might rise if you could personally arrange for our cooperation in space travel techniques. Well, forget it.
The Venusian (Helmut Dantine), dashing all our hopes in Stranger from Venus, 1954
On Viewing a Decapitated Head, Great Insights About:
Maybe his head just got loose and fell off!
Explanation given by detective (David Carradine) as to how a window washer was decapitated in Q, 1982
On Vultan, Those Crazy Habits of:
Mongo security man: The Earth people have been captured by hawkmen and taken to the sky city of King Vultan.
Ming: Where no doubt Vultan will compel the Earth girl to marry him. It is a habit of his.
Flash Gordon, 1938
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On Wabbits, Vewy Scawy:
The Terror of the Monster Rabbits—Out to Destroy Everything in their Path … They Multiply, They Weigh 150 Pounds, They’re Four Feet Tall—and They Kill … Dynamite Won’t Stop the Hopping of These Giants.
Ad for Night of the Lepus, 1972
On Warnings, Kind of Confusing:
Beware! Beware! Beware of the big green dragon that sits on your doorstep! He eats little boys! Puppy dog tails! Big fat snails! Beware! Take care! Beware!
Narrator 2 (Bela Lugosi), describing a scene of buffalo herds and atom bombs in Glen or Glenda?, 1953
On We Couldn’t Have Said It Better:
Takoora: Mahorib! Stop this. What will Liongo think?
Mahorib: Ogah yogo magia.
Takoora: Harango!
Mahorib: Hanama!
Takoora: Penagullem!
Mahorib: No. White devils kill.
Conversation between Takoora (Lois Hall) and the witch doctor Mahorib in Daughter of the Jungle, 1949
On We Want to Know, To …:
I want to know the connection between the elves and the Nazis.
Mike (Dan Haggerty) in Elves, 1989
On the Weird World of LSD:
We are about to take you into the world of the LSD user. A world that to him is real, yet is terrifying and unreal as anything ever imagined. We call his trip of terror: To Fly a Giant Bird.
Narrator in The Weird World of LSD, 1967
On Weirdos, Why So:
He’s not crazy. He’s dead.
Doctor explaining his girlfriend’s father’s bizarre behavior in Re-Animator, 1985
On Welcomes, Ones That Don’t Sound All That Great:
You will be welcome in Zukuru! The headman’s locust bean cakes—they’ll be your locust bean cakes! His fermented buffalo milk will be your fermented buffalo milk.
Sheena (Tanya Roberts) declaring her undying love for Ted Wass in Sheena, 1984
On Western Clichés, Clichéd:
That’s a lot of man you’re carrying in those boots, stranger.
John Carradine to new cowpoke in town, Johnny (Sterling Hayden), in Johnny Guitar, 1954
On What Doctors Say to Patients Who Have Turned into Brain-Eating Monsters:
It looks like you’re experiencing some complications.
Doctor to patient who is turning into a brain-eating monster after having received some experimental youth-serum injections in Rejuvenatrix, 1988
On What Life Really Is, World-Weary Thoughts About:
Nancy: We’re all spoiled for choice, aren’t we, darling? I knew after the first three days and nights that I’d blown it. I married for love instead of money. I came home and I found him sleeping in my garter belt. So, I left him and married a Mexican who owned an ocean liner and two hundred acres of Acapulco, and after about a week I knew that I’d really blown it. Here I am in the bathroom, utterly pissed, alone on my birthday, without love, without money, asking myself, “What else is there?”
Claire: Ambition and a half-hour of prime-time TV.
Jodie Foster (Nancy) complaining and Ellen Barkin (Claire) answering in Siesta, 1987
On What Not to Pack for Your Honeymoon:
A corpse has no place on a honeymoon.
Conversation in Dead Men Tell, 1941
On What People Who Give Names to Their Breasts Say:
Wife, showing one of her breasts to her husband:
Like it? Want to kiss it? Its name is Jasmine. But I can’t let you—because Cyclamen will get jealous.
Soon-to-be-dead wife Nathalie Delon to husband and soon-to-be-murderer Richard Burton in Bluebeard, 1972
On What They Talk About in Space:
First astronaut: Why, it’s a woman!
Second astronaut: You can say that again—with all the necessary ingredients!
Two astonished astronauts meeting a woman on the thirteenth moon of Jupiter in Fire Maidens of Outer Space, 1955
On What to Say After Your Lunch Partner
’s Face Has Been Eaten by Slugs:
Businesswoman: God! You never saw anything like what happened in that restaurant.
Businessman: Oh, put it out of your mind, Sue!
Businesswoman: How? His whole face was …
Mayor: Uh, can I freshen your drinks?
Businesswoman: I sure hope things like that don’t happen around here again!
Man and woman, who had been trying to consummate a business deal with the slug’s lunch, having a conversation with the town’s mayor in Slugs, 1988
On What to Say to an Alien:
Alien: It should interest you to know that I have visited hundreds of other worlds and your Earth seems most suitable.
Submarine commander: Swell!
Bug-eyed alien and Earth fellow having a conversation in The Atomic Submarine, 1959
On What to Say to Giant Evil Cucumbers:
I hate your living guts! You’re ugly! You think you’re going to make a slave of the world. Go on. Try your intellect on me!
Scientist’s wife (Beverly Garland), confronting the giant cucumber that is trying to take over Earth in It Conquered the World, 1956
On What to Say to Giant Man-Killing Apes:
I’m a Libra. What sign are you? No wait, don’t tell me. I bet you’re an Aries, aren’t you?
Jessica Lange as Dwan, the lady in distress, to Kong in King Kong, 1976
On What to Say to a Killer Whale:
I’d tell him I didn’t mean to kill his wife. I’d tell him I was sorry …
Sea captain Richard Harris explaining what he’d say to the killer Orca whale he is hunting in Orca, 1977
On What to Say to Lovely Russian Secret Agents:
I always think of you as two girls: Anna, the lovely kid I thought was a refugee, and Olga, a Soviet Tootsie Roll that made a chump out of me.
All-American pilot John Wayne, to his love, the Russian double agent Janet Leigh, in Jet Pilot, 1957
On What to Say to Psycho Commanders Before They Detonate Nuclear Warheads:
You need to get some sleep!
Navy SEAL to his psychotic commander, who is about to detonate a nuclear warhead underwater that will kill them all in The Abyss, 1989
On What to Say to Slow-Moving Women:
You’re moving like a deeply offended Tibetan yak!
Crazed movie director Peter Finch, to his new protégée Kim Novak in The Legend of Lylah Clare, 1968
On What to Say to Smiling Bad Guys:
It would be less repugnant to be strangled by a thousand serpents than to have to endure your smile.
Princess Mila (Lisa Foster) to the evil villan in The Blade Master, 1984
On What to Say to a Woman on a Deserted Isle:
If the gods had meant me for another, then why, why, did they send you? Marry me at once—or leave my island!
South Seas hunk (Dayton Ka’ne) to his deserted island find Mia Farrow in Hurricane, 1979
On What to Say to Your Other Head:
Moron: Who are you?
Maniac: I’m your brother.
Moron: I don’t have a brother.
Maniac: You do now.
Moron: My neck hurts.
Maniac: Our neck hurts, stupid!
The newly transplanted heads having one of their first discussions in The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant, 1971
On What to Say When You’re Making Love to Another Man on Your Dead Husband’s Grave:
I’ve never kept anything from him. He’d like to know.
Beautiful widow explaining her actions in Cemetery Man, 1995
On What to Say When You See a Burning Lake with Horrible Monsters Swimming Around:
I don’t like the look of this lake, sir.
Crewman expressing some doubts about the burning lake filled with horrible monsters in The Land That Time Forgot, 1975
ED WOOD: THE KING OF THE STUPID MOVIE LINE
The lover of stupid movie lines finds a gold mine in the films of producer/writer/director/actor Ed Wood, who also cheerfully delivers incomprehensible plots, wooden acting, bizarre continuity, and horrifyingly bad scenery. His magnum opus, Plan 9 from Outer Space, has been consistently voted the worst movie of all time, but other films of his are just as bad. Wood had a tragic life—among other things he was a cross-dresser (he wore pink panties underneath his Marine uniform during World War II) before such behavior became yawningly clichéd, and he suffered during the 1950s and 1960s as a misunderstood, perversely bad genius … if genius is the word.
Today, of course, it is all different, and Wood has achieved in death an odd sort of cinematic success that was denied him in life. His film career was brought to the silver screen in an eponymous movie starring Johnny Depp, and today he has a legion of fans who can happily repeat verbatim the many screenplay gaffes that truly make him the Dan Quayle or Yogi Berra of incomprehensibly odd or bizarre (stupid doesn’t seem to be quite the right word) movie lines.
On Comebacks to Aliens, Great Moments in:
Colonel Edwards: Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our Earth?
Eros the Alien: Because of death.
Because all of you of Earth are idiots!
Fighter pilot: Now, you just hold on, buster!
Tom Keene (the colonel), Dudley Manlove (the alien), and Gregory Walcott (the pilot), in Plan 9 from Outer Space, 1959
On Dialogues with Aliens, Great Moments in:
Eros the Alien: Your scientists stumbled upon the atom bomb—split the atom! Then the hydrogen bomb, where you actually explode the air itself. Now you bring the total destruction of the entire universe, served by our sun. The only explosion left is the solaronite.
Fighter pilot: So what if we do develop this solaronite bomb—we’d be even a stronger nation than now!
Eros the Alien: Stronger? You see! You see! Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Fighter pilot: That’s all I’m taking from you! [He punches the alien.]
Dudley Manlove (the alien) and Gregory Walcott (the pilot), in Plan 9 from Outer Space, 1959
On Baldness, Interesting Thoughts About:
Men’s hats are so tight they cut off the blood flow to the head, thus cutting off the growth of hair. Seven out of ten men wear hats, so the advertisements say. Seven out of ten men are bald! But what about the ladies? Yes, modern woman is a hardworking individual also. But when modern woman’s day of work is done, that which is designed for her home comfort, is comfort. Hats that give no obstruction to the blood flow. Hats that do not crush the hair. Interesting thought, isn’t it?
Psychiatrist (Timothy Farrell) in Glen or Glenda?, 1952
On Great Thoughts of Modern Man:
Modern man is a hardworking human.
Psychiatrist (Timothy Farrell) in Glen or Glenda?, 1952
On Things You Never Learned at the Police Academy:
Monsters, space people, mad doctors. They didn’t teach me about such things at the police academy.
Officer Kelton (Paul Marco) complaining in Night of the Ghouls, 1959
On Fantastic Stories, Fantastic!:
Colonel: This is the most fantastic story I’ve ever heard!
Pilot: And every word of it’s true, too.
Colonel: That’s the fantastic part of it!
Plan 9 from Outer Space, 1959
On What to Say When You See a Giant Man-Eating Bird:
Pilot 1: I’ve seen some mighty big chicken hawks back on the farm, but this one takes the cake.
Pilot 2: Honest to Pete, I’ll never call my mother-in-law an old crow again!
Pilots discussing the giant man-eating bird in The Giant Claw, 1957
On What to Say When You See a Giant Slime Mold:
What you are looking at is no ordinary plant!
Japanese scientist explaining a horrendous sight in the slime-mold thriller Godzilla vs. Biollante, 1989
On What to Say When You See a Ten-foot Chicken:
Where the hell did you get these goddamned chickens?
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br /> Morgan (Marjoe Gortner) to the farm wife, after he has been attacked by a ten-foot-tall chicken in the barn, in Food of the Gods, 1976
On What to Say When You’ve Been Rejected:
I’m gonna go see if I can scare up a gang bang.
Laraine Newman after unsuccessfully trying to seduce John Travolta in Perfect, 1985
On What Town Mayors Worry About:
How are we going to fight them? They’re all dead!
Worried town mayor in Return of the Blind Dead, 1972
On What We Always Say When Our Computer Crashes:
I lost … You know, I lost another day. What I lost was gold. Golden notions erased, smoke dreams, phantomness. What I crave is, you know, consolation.
Whitley Strieber (Christopher Walken), sensitive New York writer, explaining to his wife what happened when his computer crashed, in Communion, 1989
On Why Married Men Don’t Qualify for Deep Space Missions:
Crewman (thinking aloud): Imagine what would happen if a married guy came home after five years and found his wife was an old woman.
Another crewman (digesting this idea): That’s why married men can’t qualify for cosmic expeditions!