Today’s question comes from Kirk, who wants to know:
Do you have any favorite “memorable moments” from otherwise forgettable films?
Kirk continues:
I was reminded somehow of a moment from A Man Could Get Killed, one of James Garner’s lesser successes. In it there’s a scene where a cargo of rice has been placed on a pier because it’s suspected of having something-I-forget hidden in it. Unfortunately, it then rains and the small pile of rice bags becomes a growing mountain of rice. Robert Coote then comments, “Eerie, isn’t it,” in that patented Brit deadpan. That’s virtually all I remember from the movie, but the visual and Coote’s delivery of the line is still burned into my memory.
Another one is from Merry Andrew – a lesser Danny Kaye film, but there’s a musical number near the beginning ‘Everything is Tickety-Boo’ (sic?) that I remember quite distinctly. Don’t have a clue what the rest of the movie is about.
Nothing is coming to mind for me, so I’ll leave you all to it…
(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTD sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.)
I like Christopher Walken’s tap-dance number in Pennies from Heaven. If you haven’t seen it, there are several different versions on YouTube.
Gamer is a terrible terrible movie but I’m a sucker for a dance routine.
I can’t tell you what the movie is. When I was a teenager in the mid-80s, there was a pile of us who got together and riffed on bad bad horror movies (when I first encountered MST3K a few years later, I had lost touch with those friends, and it was very much an ‘oh yay, I have snark again!’ moment).
Anyway, in one of the movies, there was a massive pile of dead bodies found in a swingers club, and the detective was looking at the carnage, when a forensics type dashes up to him, and says, “Sir! It could be worse! Necrophila *could* be involved.”
After that, whenever anyone shrugged, and said, “Well, it could be worse.” *someone* would pipe up, “Necrophilia *could* be involved!” While I don’t say it out loud, because it would take 10 minutes of explaining, and no one else would find it really funny, no one can say that aphorism without my brain filling that in after.
The blood in the kitchen scene in a bland 70’s telemovie called “The House on Greenapple Road”. Nobody remembers it now – but it scared me silly as a kid.
You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnU02BYs8f4
There’s an early Schwarzenegger action movie Raw Deal where he’s playing a crook trying to infiltrate a Chicago mob by wrecking a competing mobster’s gambling den. He’s starting up a truck to slam into said den when one of the passing bystanders shout out “Hey! Your lights!” Ahnold says “Thanks for reminding me,” turns the headlights on, then barrels into the building. It’s the little things…
Parker Posey’s spirited defense of the Dewey Decimal System in the otherwise forgettable comedy Party Girl comes to mind.
NEVAR! The Dewey’s gotta go…
The fight scene between Clark Kent and Evil Superman in Superman III. Also the scene where Superman/Clark Kent is sitting in a chair watching in grim silence about nuclear proliferation on his television in Superman IV: The Quest For Peace.
(If either of those films had used those two respective scenes and their dramatic gravity to set their tone, Superman III and IV would not be considered the most forgettable Superman movies.)
I love this scene from The Losers, where Jensen (Chris Evans) clears an elevator with a horrible rendition of Don’t Stop Believin’. It comes to mind every time I have to step into an elevator with a dozen other people:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKU7l5JykIo
Fantastic Four 2 where Stan Lee (the creator of the Fantastic Four) isn’t on the guest list and so can’t get into Reed and Sue’s wedding. That was the only good part out of both rotten movies.
All the appearances of “Du Jour” in the Josie and the Pussycats movie
Paul Giamatti painted blue in Big Fat Liar.