No laughing matter ... Javier Bardem in Goya's Ghosts
A month or so ago, at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, I watched an awful Spanish-Greek co-production called El Greco, made in English. Yet I sat through it all because it provided plenty of unintentional laughs. These are sometimes the most enjoyable kind. For example, when El Greco (bravely played by a British actor called Nick Ashdon) says to a priest that he expected the Inquisition to come for him, the priest replies, "They will, but there's backlog at the moment". The ludicrous happy ending has all the extras cheering the great painter and carrying him on their shoulders like a football hero after he is exonerated by the Inquisition.
A similar Euro pudding was Milos Forman's Goya's Ghosts in which Javier Bardem's English is particularly difficult to comprehend. So when Goya (played by the uncharismatic Swede, Stellan Skarsgard) goes deaf, and asks Bardem to speak more slowly and clearly, it's unintentionally funny.
Here are some of my favourite unintentionally funny lines from more ancient movies. In 1944's Four Jills in A Jeep, when one of the girls asks another what is wrong with their friend Carole, she replies "Oh, all she can think about is Dick".
In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Donna Reed as Gladys Hallward is waiting to go out to a ball with Dorian (Hurd Hatfield), who appears in his dressing gown. "But, Dorian, you haven't changed!" she exclaims.
In 1932's Tarzan the Ape Man, C. Aubrey Smith, as an explorer, seeing one of the black native bearers toppling over a cliff, says, "There go the medical supplies." In I Wake Up Screaming, Victor Mature, dining Betty Grable in a smart restaurant, impresses her with his sophistication by saying to the waiter, "We'll have the wine with the meal and coffee afterwards."
Then there are notorious lines such as those in King Richard and the Crusaders, when Virginia Mayo as Lady Edith, says, "War, war! That's all you ever think about, Dick Plantagenet! You burner, you pillager!". And Merle Oberon as George Sand in the Chopin biopic A Song To Remember tells the composer, "Discontinue that so-called Polonaise jumble you've been playing for days."
To take an extreme case, I sometimes wonder whether Ed Wood Jr could really have been unaware that his films were actually funny. Such as, for instance, when Bela Lugosi as The Scientist in Glen or Glenda, suddenly declares, with great solemnity, "Beware! Beware of the big green dragon that sits on your doorstep. He eats little boys ... Puppy dog tails, and Big fat snails ... Beware ... Take care ... Beware!"
Of course, there are tons of schlocky films which have gained a reputation for being so bad as to be hilarious. But there are some seemingly more respectable ones that trigger laughter because of the plot, the acting, the sets or the direction. Often, I can't remember why I thought something was so funny at the time. For example, I can't explain now, why, while watching Legends of the Fall on television with a group of friends, we were rolling about with laughter. There was also much giggling during a press screening of another Hopkins-Pitt teaming, Meet Joe Black.
However, I do recall, when I was very young, almost wetting myself during a sequence in 1955's Storm Over The Nile - a remake of The Four Feathers - when Laurence Harvey, literally blinded by the sun, struggles to walk in the desert but keeps falling down and getting up - over and over again. I haven't seen the film since so I can't tell whether it was just my extreme youth or whether I would still find it as unintentionally funny.
A few years ago, I remember the hilarity that greeted the portentous Brown Bunny at its first showing in Cannes. After an especially long session of Vincent Gallo's self-preening, someone in the audience gave a wolf-whistle, causing a wave of laughter. Yes, I know, you had to be there. And what about the line in Gigli, when Jennifer Lopez points between her legs and says to Ben Afflick, "It's turkey time! Gobble, gobble, gobble!"
I'm sure many readers have their own favourites. Come on, it's turkey time ...
