Ever wondered what a special effects-driven disaster movie like the upcoming “2012″ would look like if all the FX were removed? Well, an editor has done just that, posting a minute and a half of footage from “2012″ with just the actors. John Cusack and company do a lot of screaming and reacting, and it’s hilarious. Want to know what the end of the world really looks like? Stick around for the closing shot!

Tags: 2012, actors, CGI, cusack, cut, effects, funny, Hilarious, no, video

I’m so proud of our sitegoers. Less than a week ago, I said we would give away 50 free passes for a KC advance screening of “The Hangover” to the readers with the best hangover/Vegas/drunk/bachelor party stories. We only had two days, though, to collect them all and give out the tickets.

Boy, did you ever respond.

We got so many responses that the studio upped our ticket count from 50 to 100! I have to assume that some of these stories were made up just to get tix, but some of them have a level of detail so high and personal that they can only be true (even if they “happened to a friend”)!

First we’ll start with a highlight reel; then we’ll get on with the longer, really scary stories. Remember, these were all submitted by you. Again, you guys rule. Plain ans simple. We have the best readers and we love you.

It’s a good thing that social media tools like Twitter and facebook have taught us to overshare. Congratulations to everyone who opened up these painful moments to the public for a pair of free tickets to a movie. WARNING: THE STARK FACTS AND PHOTOS CONTAINED BELOW MAY SHOCK AND DISMAY MORE SENSITIVE VIEWERS. Here is a highlight sampling (with the names of the submitters removed to protect the not-so-innocent) of some of the scariest entries:

“…came home, went to the refrigerator looking for something to sober me up. Dove into what I thought was corned beef hash. Woke up the next day, suffering from a severe hangover headache and a churning stomach only to discover an empty can of dog food sitting on the counter.”

“I woke up with my partner and 2 other persons naked in one of the other person’s condo.”

“…many hours later, I awoke to find my friend Ted asleep on the floor of the guest room at the end of the bed. I was cold. And wet. And smelled of urine. Awesome. He’d peed on me in my sleep.”

“The lenses were basically stuck to her eye because they had dried out from the smoky atmosphere of all the bars, plus keeping them in while she slept. She got the contacts out of her eyes, but her eyes burned like hell. Turns out she the dried contacts absorbed moisture from her eye and caused her to tear off several layers of her cornea.”

“My old roommates and I got drunk in Manhattan before a Ultimate Fakebook/Anything But Joey show and found a [severed] turkey head and leg in someone’s lawn while walking to the venue. A “certain band member” watched us put the dead animal on Anything But Joey’s van. The best part is—we carried it with bare hands, but the band removed it with plastic bags.”

“About 8 in the morning I awoke from a deep sleep on my porch swing which was covered in hair. My friend was passed out on a couch with a fresh, crooked mohawk that I found out later in the day I had given him around midnight…”

“I once went out for dollar drinks down at what used to be Mickey’s Irish Pub and ended up waking up next to Kohl’s under a tree not having a single clue how I got there, then I hitchhiked home in Overland Park! Still don’t know what happened that night.”

“You know that you did a good job of drinking the night before when you wake up someplace that you don’t recognize and the first question that you ask yourself is, ‘Wasn’t I wearing underwear last night?’”

“…the rest of the night is hazy, but I know it ended with me head-butting the door on the way out of the bar, followed by a midnight trip to a golf course to look for an alligator named Elvis.”

“I hollered up at a buddy of mine on the top of the houseboat and asked for a beer. Unfortunately he threw 2 - I caught the first one, but the second one hit me right above my left eye, knocking me out and cutting my eyebrow open in two places.”

“I tried to get her to leave with me so I could take her home; however, someone convinced her to go home with this guy so she wouldn’t get in trouble for coming in too late. It turns out that this “guy” was really a girl and my friend found this out the next day.”

“We drank 4 bottles of Hennessy, got kicked out of a few strip clubs because one of the girls said we ‘touched’ them, while they were dancing, in an inappropriate place. Then we drove and got lost, ended up in some corn field and passed out. Woke up and was being towed by a tractor.”

“Watching a random crazy girl COVER a passed-out friend in ketchup! Pictures do it more justice!”

Those were just teasers. The stories that follow recall in harrowing detail some very specific moments that will live in infamy. These are a little longer, but worth the time. Thanks again everybody, and enjoy the movie tomorrow night. (Just think, all the people whom these stories happened to will under the same roof tomorrow night watching the same movie. Scary. And awesome.) Here’s the full stories:

1. So me and my friends went out for my buddy’s bachelor party and got pretty wasted in the bar district. My buddy Clay wasn’t aware that the bachelorette party was also going on in the same area, but due to planning ahead of time, the two parties wouldn’t interact. After getting pretty toasted we all left the bar to go to another one and Clay wasn’t with us. He had wandered off and thought we had already left and was trying to find us at a random bar across the street. When he was there, he saw a group of hotties and approached them and they were doing a game for a girl who was to be married the next day. For a dollar, you could grab a lifesaver from her shirt with your mouth. Clay decided he didn’t want to pay for that and just threw his head straight into her boobies then looked up and kissed her on the lips. The girls around him went insane and got him thrown out of the bar. He then wandered down the street and found us at another bar and told us the story of how he got thrown out. Needless to say, we were all rolling in laughter and brought our buddy over to hear the story. Once Clay connected the dots and realized that he had just planted his face in the bosom of our buddy’s “bride-to-be,” he insisted that he took a slap in the face from him. What followed was the hardest slap I’ve ever seen which took Clay down to the floor. Next day at the wedding, Clay had a pretty noticeable hand imprint on his face and the look on the bridesmaids when they saw him was priceless!

2. I got married in my early 20s (the first time). My college buddies arranged for my last night out the night before my rehearsal dinner. To say the least, we tied one on. Though we did avoid arrest when a cop in the Westport area caught us relieving ourselves in the alley way…who can find a bathroom among all the bars in that area? That night we stayed at a friend’s apartment (instead of taking me back to the apt. I shared with my future first wife). I proceed to relieve myself of all my day’s meals in a visiting friend’s duffle bag…hey, it was the first thing I saw to throw up in! The remainder of the night, I spent on the cool relief of the bathroom’s tile floor. Sometime during the evening, my lower intestines relieved themselves of all of their contents. In the morning, I was found still asleep, but with very awake bowels. They helped me get cleaned up—helped lifting me into the shower with my clothes still on in a kind of combination body and clothes wash cycle.
I rested as much as I could, but to be honest I was never (and still am not) much of a drinker. When they took me home late in the afternoon. My fiancée was not amused, since I was still very, very hungover.
I made it to the church, with only one stop on the way to throw up. I made it through the rehearsal and only excused myself once to throw up.
Before heading to the rehearsal dinner, my father took me aside and commented how angry my soon-to-be-wife was with me…and he was justified in being upset and that it probably won’t be the last time. WOW, thanks Dad for the “rah, rah, go get ‘em tiger” speech.
I made it through half of the rehearsal dinner before throwing in the towel and excusing myself. I thanked everyone for attending and said I look forward to seeing them all tomorrow. To my fiancée’s credit, she gave me a few choice words that night, but put it all behind her the next day.
Being a good friend, he left my soiled jeans in an airtight plastic bag under his apartment stairs. Being frugal, I did pick up the jeans after our honeymoon. I think the jeans lasted longer than my marriage.

3. I went to Vegas on business with my secretary and we stayed at the Hard Rock. Our flight gave us no food so being very hungry, we decided to have dinner. Unfortunately, the restaurant was booked for the next 2 hours. We decided to start drinking martinis at the bar. After the 5th martini, I could barely stand and was feeling dizzy. We decided to adjourn to our rooms. When we got to my room, I opened the door and pretty much we both fell through the door and landed on the floor. Sorry, this is not going to be a Penthouse forum story. After about an hour, she started to wake and did some of those dry throw-up heaves, but nothing was coming out. This went on for a few minutes and it was making me sick. As we were laying about a foot away on the floor, I started to vomit all over her. Within about 30 seconds of this, the foul smell caused her to vomit, and of course, she aimed her vomit on me. We started to laugh at each other, and laughed so hard we again ‘purposely’ vomited on each other. We then dry-heaved (in rhythm) for a bit more (as we were out of stomach food) and then I walked her to her room to get cleaned up. The looks of people as we were both walking down the hall were priceless as we were covered from head to toes with smelly vomit.

4. Before kids, my girlfriends and I would hop a plane and head to Sin City for a weekend of frolic every Spring. This was long before the slogan “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” but the feeling was the same. I don’t know if it is all the oxygen they pump into the casinos or just the warm sunshine but Vegas has a way of allowing you to let go. And let go we did. A particular night in question involved riding the camels outside the Luxor until we got kicked off the property. Mind you - that isn’t a pun for something else. We literally jumped the small chain keeping you off the grass and hoped on the backs of three huge camels. I do have the photos - but you won’t find them on facebook. We staggered our way, cocktails in hand to MGM where we thought it would be “fun” to kidnap Toto from the Wizard of Oz scene and skip around the casino singing “Follow the yellow brick road” - I still don’t remember if Toto ever made it back safely to Dorothy but we definitely weren’t allowed back to MGM. Or were we? We ended the evening or should I say morning loading up on a senior tour bus to Lake Mead. Luckily one of us had the sense to realize we wouldn’t be able to get any more booze if we stayed on the bus and we headed happily on our way after well wishes of our new friends. It sounds juvenile and ridiculous in the recounting of it all. Of course it was but man did we have a good time. If posted, please use an anonymous name, since all these things really did happen in Vegas.

5. On my 21st birthday, I woke up in the hospital with my mom staring down at me. The last thing I remembered was leaving the bar with my girlfriend. Come to find out, I had gotten out of her car at my apartment without her assistance, stood up, and then fell face forward onto the parking lot cement - without bracing my fall. I then tried to get up, without using my hands and proceeded to push my face across the pavement.
My girlfriend, seeing my face covered in blood and one of my front teeth missing, took me to the emergency room. I passed out on the way there. After the nurses and docs pulled my shirtless, bloodied body from the car, they ran a blood alcohol test on me, and it came back at .342. No, that’s not a typo - my blood alcohol level was .342.
Hence, my waking up in the hospital looking up at my mom. My first questions was, “How f’d up is my car?”
She replied, “There wasn’t a car wreck, you did this to yourself.”
I spent the next week w/ relatives and friends parading in and out of my apartment, all stopping by to get a look at the toothless, scraped up, idiot who had just celebrated his 21st birthday. I also need a root canal to replace my missing front tooth.

6. There’s nothing unusual about drinking at a wedding. It’s not really that strange to jump in a pool, fully dressed, at such an occasion. But waking up the next day only to discover you’re still at the reception and were supposed to deliver the bride and groom to the airport for their honeymoon is a bit daunting.
The horrible feeling you get when you see you have no less than twelve voicemails waiting for you on your phone, which you left in your car, at someone else’s house, which you now have to walk to, in a wet, crumpled bridesmaid dress, while passing a church just ending its service on a Sunday morning, really is best described in three words: more alcohol needed.
Let’s just say there’s one anniversary I won’t be forgetting. And it’s not mine.

7. I had a great time at a friend’s bachelor party. A couple of weeks later, I was having a few beers with my wife and her father. The groom showed up and proceeded to tell every minutiae of his bachelor party with a bit of a focus on my part. A few of the anecdotes raised my father-in-law’s eyebrows–to say the least! I am not going to put the details of the party online. Imagination will have to suffice. That evening, I could not shut the guy down from spilling all the f#%king beans. All the fun and seemingly innocent insanity of the party became another night’s damnation. I will say I earned a greater respect for the reasoning behind the line, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

8. The best hangover I had in Vegas was when I woke up in my hotel room with a 2500$ check on my bed…not remembering because I drank wwwaaaayyyyy tooooo much…i won a jackpot on at a slot machine..till this day I cant remember what kind it was… :):):)
The funniest part is…a month later I received a letter from the casino with my winning picture..boy did I look trashed, I’m suprised they even gave me the money.

9. On my one and only trip to Vegas I impulsively married a guy I barely knew. It quickly turned into a bad deal because as soon as we returned he took off with my car for 3 days, purse inside, cashed out and overdrew my checking account, and ran up my credit cards. There was nothing I could do at this point because this guy was now my “husband.” I was stuck paying the credit cards and overdraft fees with money I no longer had and of course eventually had to come up with money to turn around and divorce him so he couldn’t continue to take advantage of me.

10. Before I was even old enough to REALLY enjoy the fruits of Vegas, I was there with my Uncle and my cousin visiting for the weekend. To give us something to do, we picked up a mutual friend of my cousin and mine (a girl). Her parents looked skeptical, probably because uncle looks like the perfect Mexican stereotype; pudgy, with a mustache, just put a sombrero on him. Later that night, while my uncle went out to get drunk and gamble his money away, my cousin, myself and our friend wandered the streets of Vegas causing havok and picking up as many fliers with boobs on them as we could. The girl was supposed to be home at 10, but had to say the night because my Uncle was too drunk to drive her home. The next day we took her back to her house with cop cars in the driveway, only to find out we were hours away from an Amber Alert and a city wide search put out on my Uncle. The End.

WOW. A MULTIPLE OFFENDER BARES ALL: Well, I woke up recently after a pub crawl with a broken, bloody nose & 2 black eyes. I can put some of the pieces together, but still not 100% sure how it happened! Good news is that the hangover headache was dwarfed by the incredible pain I was in.
Or there was the time I went shot for shot with a bartender and woke up with a broken arm. My friends & boyfriend put the pieces of the night together for me and I guess the broken arm happened when I fell in between Lucky’s and The Claret Room. It obviously didn’t bother me at the time because I proceeded to go into the Claret Room and, after making an obnoxious scene, threw up in the trash can. Then we went back to my boyfriend’s place and I was still a bit wobbly. I bit it in the kitty litter and I just sat there with cat poop surrounding me for a second looking at the mess I made. I still have absolutely no recollection of any of this.
And then there was the time I went to the Plaza right after I graduated college and I was still living with my parents. We met up with some random dudes and went back to their place for an after party. I accidentally left my phone there when we got picked up from their house by my friend’s ex-boyfriend ‘ he took us to his place where we all crashed. I woke up with an awful hangover, but suddenly realized I had to go to my sister-in-law’s wedding shower at my mom’s friend’s house. I think the guys that had my cell phone called one of my friends, so we rushed to their place to pick it up … After which I noticed my mom had called me about 20 times wondering where I was, thinking I was in danger or something. We rushed back to Overland Park where we all made the walk of shame in front of my parents, my grandma and my aunt & uncle. I got ready as quick as I could and we all headed to the wedding shower. I couldn’t talk to anyone at the party because I reaked of alcohol and the second I stood up, I felt pukey, so I just sat next to my grandma (who had a touch of alzheimer’s, so I got to hear the same story over and over for 2 hours) the entire time. I finally couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up to talk to some of my mom’s friends (who were mostly my old elementary school teachers). Before I could say 2 words, I could feel the vomit coming up .. So I rushed into my mom’s friend’s bathroom and proceeded to barf all over the place. Not my classiest moments.
And, I had a pretty crazy bachelorette party myself. A bunch of girls went to the lake and rented a condo down there. We all went partying at the Horny Toad and had a fantastic time, but I was still ready for more action when we all came back (although everyone else went to bed). The first thing I did to continue the party was to give everyone a fashion show of my new lingerie - one of which was a naughty santa outfit. Of course, plenty of pictures were taken (and one of my friends actually has one displayed in her apartment for everyone to see - awesome). We got bored of that, so a couple of girls and I snuck into the community pool (at 3 am) where we met some guys who were celebrating a bachelor party. They promised us that they had an awesome “hot tub” back at their place, so we went with them to continue the party. The “hot tub” actually ended up being their jetted bath tub - and they didn’t even have any hot water, so they had to bring buckets of water from the kitchen sink to fill the bath tub up. We were about to leave when the strippers showed up. Now, strippers who come to you from the Lake of the Ozarks at 3:00 are not necessarily the classiest of ladies. One of my friends decided to tell them that it was my bachelorette party, too, so one of them made me lie on the floor (while I was still in my bikini), poured chocolate syrup all over my stomach and then gave me a very graphic personal dance on top of me. This was definitely one of the most unforgettable experiences in my life - not the most enjoyable, but very memorable!
I have a billion Vegas stories, as well, but I’ll leave those for another time.

Tags: BACHELOR PARTY, BACHELORETTE PARTY, DRUNK, EMBARRASSING, funny, HANGOVER, HAPPENS IN, Hilarious, LAS VEGAS, reader, REAL, STAYS IN, STORIES, STORY, TALES, TRUE

Our good friend Alan Rapp from Transbuddha.com created this very funny slideshow synopsis/review of McG’s mind-bogglingly mishandled “Terminator Salvation.” Please be aware that if you have not seen “the movie and you still want to, THIS CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS! Don’t say you weren’t warned. It also starts automatically on the page, so click away now if you don’t want any spoilers.

What’s great about this slideshow is that it points out some of the similarities “Terminator Salvation” has to other, better sci-fi movies in a pretty spot-on and hilarious way.

Here is a link to my on-camera review of the movie.

Tags: comparison, filled, Hilarious, of, off, rip, slideshow, spoiler, spoilers, synopsis, Terminator Salvation

The box office performance of “Observe and Report” this past weekend proves that subversive comedies usually have a way harder time finding an audience than a nice, family-friendly picture, even when that movie stars Seth Rogen. Funny thing is, subversive comedies often make a bigger impact and have a longer shelf life. To make this list, the movie has to challenge some culturally accepted notions or possess a generally rude rebellious streak. Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers,” for example, doesn’t make the list because for all of its posturing and flashiness, it’s completely obvious and says nothing new about the media. If you have a Top 10 list of your own you’d like to contribute, email me at eric@scene-stealers.com. Enjoy!

Runners-up: Obviously, I like subversive comedy. I’ve already written about “Borat,” “Harold and Maude,” “Office Space,” “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut,”  “Series 7,” the original “Dawn of the Dead,” “Bulworth,” “Happiness,” “The Graduate,” “Brazil,” and “Dr. Strangelove” on other lists, so I’ll make them runners-up (even though “Dr. Strangelove” should probably be #1 here—I can’t have it on every list!) and include links to the other Top 10s they appear on here. Click on the title to see the original post.

10. Nurse Betty (2000)

On the surface, Neil LaBute’s black comedy is about a sweet little soap-opera-obsessed waitress from a diner in Kansas (Renée Zellweger) who travels to Los Angeles to meet her favorite actor (Greg Kinnear). What actually happens, though, is that the innocent Betty goes into shock, entering a psychological fugue state after watching her drug-dealing, cheating husband (Aaron Eckhart) get scalped(!) by two hitmen (Chris Rock and Morgan Freeman). These killers chase Betty—who has broken from reality so hard that she thinks she’s actually a part of the fictional soap opera—as she drives west to find Kinnear’s fictional doctor. Soon everybody starts playing by her rules, as Betty sucks Kinnear’s actor character into her reality and he thinks she’s a struggling method actor. In uniquely bizarre climactic scene, he gambles on her never-breaking-character routine and puts her on live TV. Lost you yet? While this is all happening, Freeman falls in love with his prey, and two bumbling cops rush cross-country to try and protect her. Like “Observe and Report,” “Nurse Betty” switches its tone on a dime and is a juggling act that doesn’t always work. Like “Observe and Report,” it’s also alternately ugly and charming—an absurd look at identity and societal roles where everyone falls under the spell of an ordinary woman who radiates goodness and purity.

9. Putney Swope (1969)

Directed by Robert Downey Sr. (yes, it’s his Dad), this spotty but inspired black-and-white B-movie was a sensation when it came out but is somehow nearly forgotten today. A black man named Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson, voice dubbed uncomfortably by Downey himself) becomes the head of an otherwise all-white New York ad agency after all the other executives vote for him to be the new boss thinking that no one else will. Re-dubbed “Truth and Soul, Inc.”, Swope hires militant blacks and gets to work making outrageous attack-style anti-consumerist ads right away. His new motto for Truth and Soul is: “Rockin’ the boat’s a drag. You gotta sink the boat!” He refuses to make commercials for cigarettes, war toys, and liquor, instead making ludicrously shocking commercials (in color even) like the interracial duet for Face-Off Acne Cream (“Pimples are simple”) and the ad for Dinkleberry Frozen Chicken Pot Pies (“Miss Redneck, N.J. is a social worker and her favorite hobby is emasculation”). Not enough for ya? There’s an Abraham Lincoln dartboard in the boardroom and the President of the United States is played by a pot-smoking German midget. This low-budget curiosity is all over the place, but every moment thumbs its nose at conventional society.

8. They Live (1988)

Since I’ve already covered Terry Gilliam’s brilliant and disturbing dystopian future in “Brazil” on my Top 10 Movies That Prove the Future Will Suck list, I’ve decided to shine the spotlight on that film’s looser, shaggier stepchild. John Carpenter’s “They Live” takes place in an America in economic crisis (sound familiar?) and when unemployed construction worker Nada (pro wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper) puts on a pair of sunglasses, he is the only one who can see that all the bankers and politicians in power are actually aliens with metallic skull faces. Laughing yet? You will be. Nada also notices subliminal messages on billboards that read “OBEY” and “CONSUME,” while our currency reads “THIS IS YOUR GOD.” Carpenter’s movie falls too often into action/thriller cliché, but its central theme—that upper-class greed is taking over the world like an alien invasion—is even more relevant today than it was in 1988. Add in some hilarious dialogue (“I’m here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum!”) and a seemingly neverending fight scene over a refusal to put on the special sunglasses, and you’ve got an erratic but nevertheless subversive comedy classic. Oh yeah, and—a remake is in the works. Hurm.

7. Pink Flamingos (1972)

Trying to summarize the plot of this filthy little film in one paragraph is futile, so let’s just say it involves a couple who kidnap and impregnate young women to sell their babies to lesbians, which, in turn, finances an elementary school heroin trade. The film’s tagline is truth in advertising: “An exercise in poor taste.” Despite being filmed for only $10,000, “Pink Flamingos” immediately launched its star (drag queen extraordinaire Divine) and its director (John Waters) into the collective consciousness of film fans across the globe. Waters narrates the film in—what had to have been a last minute attempt to make some kind of sense out of it—an annoying shout that matches the film’s campy tone and exaggerated “acting” style. It’s not a good film by any normal standards, but who can apply a value-driven checklist to a movie that revels in its lack of technical know-how, happy as a pig in shit? You can’t. What even the most jaded film fan will find, however, are a large number of “huh?”moments that are kind of liberating. How else would I be able to describe a movie where a mother gives her son oral sex and enthusiastically eats dog feces as “fun”?

6. Citizen Ruth (1996)

What’s funnier than abortion? Well, almost everything, but that didn’t stop writer/director Alexander Payne from making this subversive comedy starring Laura Dern as a paint-huffing pregnant woman who finds herself in the middle of a raging political debate. This comedy could have been a dismal wreck. After Dern pukes on the hood of his car, a policeman actually says to his partner about her: “I’ll drive her by the pound on the way to the station and get her spayed.” The question you have to ask through all of this, though, is who’s crazier—the cash-strapped, pregnant drug user (who’s had and lost four children already) or the zealots on either side of the pro-life/pro-choice debate? Payne skewers both in equal measure and his screenplay (co-authored with Jim Taylor) manages to say some bleakly funny things that a drama about the same subject would never be able to approach. One particularly inspired bit of casting comes in the form of Burt Reynolds as a pious, over-the-top televangelist. Like “Dr. Strangelove” parodied the military-industrial complex, “Citizen Ruth” mercilessly lampoons the abortion debate and Ruth becomes a political tool for extremists on both sides.

5. M*A*S*H (1970)

Although it is set in Korea, Robert Altman’s anti-establishment comedy was actually a not-so-thinly veiled and pointed attack on the then-raging Vietnam War. Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould are two military surgeons struggling to maintain their sanity through boozing, sex, and an utter contempt for authority in this cultural watershed movie. Altman’s almost complete disregard for Ring Larder Jr.’s script and his improvisatory style of shooting scared not only the studio, but also the film’s stars. “Donald and Elliott went in about a quarter of the way through the picture and tried to have me fired because they said I was going to ruin their careers,” Altman said. Struggles with the studio finally ceased after a wildly successful preview screening and the movie went on to gross $80 million and signal a new era of filmmaking in Hollywood. Not everyone agrees it’s a classic, though, as one of our user-contributed Top 10 lists had this film at #3 of the Most Overrated Movies.

4. Heathers (1989)

Question: When is teen suicide funny? Answer: When it actually turns out to be murder! What? Yeah, you read that correctly.  In addition, “Heathers” plays it all for laughs. This hilarious and shocking movie is still the nastiest and most bizarre of all teen comedies even after 20 years. Winona Ryder and Christian Slater are a high school Bonnie and Clyde making their way through the popular clique. Armed with a battery of surreal dream sequences, its own biting vocabulary (“Well, f*ck me gently with a chainsaw.”), and a sympathetic Ryder who manically expunges her demons and explores her conscience in her diary (giving us her outrage and sympathy), “Heathers” gave every teenaged outsider a screaming voice of discontent and a healthy amount of violent wish fulfillment at the same time. It’s really too bad that director Michael Lehmann (“Hudson Hawk,” “40 Days and 40 Nights,” “My Giant”) and writer Daniel Waters (“Batman Returns,” “Happy Campers,” “Sex and Death 101”) haven’t even come close to the dizzying highs of their first movie project.

3. The Great Dictator (1940)

Charlie Chaplin’s “Monsieur Verdoux” was certainly subversive in that Chaplin broke from his Tramp character completely and portrayed a cold-blooded serial killer, but it was this movie that took on Adolf Hitler and the entire Nazi movement before America was even at war with them. This was also Chaplin’s first feature-length “talkie,” and it saw him taking the dual role of a tyrannical dictator named Adenoid Hynkel (guess who?) and a lowly barber. Chaplin portrays Hynkel and his followers as stupid bullies and arrogant buffoons, including one famous scene that has the dictator dancing with a globe to a Wagner overture. The movie was a great success and became Chaplin’s highest-grossing film ever. As more details of Nazi war atrocities were made public, however, Chaplin admitted that had he known the extent of their crimes, he wouldn’t have been able to portray the stormtroopers in the movie in such a slapstick manner. The final scene, where the barber delivers a message of hope in disguise as the dictator (and many in the audience felt Chaplin himself was making the plea), may seem a little schmaltzy now, but in the context of World War II, it definitely resonated with audiences.

2. Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)

I don’t think this will be on the Heartland list of Truly Moving Pictures anytime soon, but what better way to engage with the absurdities of the Bible than with a side-splitting satire of the New Testament? Before the idea had even been hatched really, Monty Python troupe member Eric Idle offhandedly remarked to the press that their next film (following the hugely successful “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”) would be titled “Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory.” That sparked the idea of Brian—a man (Graham Chapman) who is mistaken for the Messiah, tries to evade worshippers and enemies alike, and is eventually crucified to the tune of a catchy little ditty called “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” The movie mercilessly criticizes those pesky antithetical side effects of organized religion, and even director Terry Jones admits that the movie is “heretical.” However, he also believes that “it’s not blasphemous.” Even though most of the pointed satire is delivered through the story of the decidedly non-Messianic Brian (thereby avoiding blasphemy - kind of a technicality), the rampant fanaticism and hypocrisy that the Pythons poke fun at is universal.

1. Starship Troopers (1997)

This is the most subversive comedy ever made because it’s possible—if you close your eyes to its overtly fascist ideology and all the Nazi-like military dress—to think that “Starship Troopers” is simply a dumb action movie with bad acting and giant bugs. In fact, director Paul Verhoeven’s film is subversive  in more ways than one.

It also deserves the top spot here because the movie purposely does something that few films actually do on purpose: It subverts the entire message of the Robert Heinlein sci-fi novel on which it’s based. Ouch.

The book—which envisions a society where the government only gives the right to vote to youths who fulfill their “terms of service,” which was usually in the military—was criticized as fascist when it was published in 1959. Verhoeven keeps Heinlein’s ideas intact, but pokes fun at them mercilessly throughout the movie with hilarious mini-propaganda films (one featuring soldiers giving guns to little kids), tons of Nazi iconography, and cruel military training that includes public flogging and “friendly” fire.

Moreover, he uses an enthusiastic young cast and has them act as if they just stepped out of the latest “Saved by the Bell” episode. They begin the war a bunch of idealized lemmings and come out changed by the horrors of war. It’s never explicitly said who started the war (though the humans are the ones invading the “bug” planets), but to anyone in military service, it doesn’t matter. Graphic depictions of said actors getting ripped in half by giant bugs underscore the consequences of a jingoistic worldview. You may be thinking, “Wait one minute—this was supposed to be a list of comedies!” “Starship Troopers” is a comedy. From the cheesy, naïve dialogue and acting (again, this was on purpose, to achieve an effect) to the laugh-out-loud absurdity of the Federation’s slanted news shorts (Fox News, anyone?), “Starship Troopers” is the funniest movie to have such scary foresight into what would become post-9/11 extreme patriotism. Plus, you get to see Neil Patrick Harris mature into Joseph Mengele. How is that not funny?

I Twittered/Facebooked yesterday while I was writing this list and got tons of great suggestions. Here’s a sampling to get the comments started:

@TreyHock: It’s a Wonderful Life is basically a treatise for communism wrapped in a christmas movie. Pretty awesome.
@ToServeMan: Does THEY LIVE qualify as a comedy?
@worleygirl: One fave is the much overlooked Parents, from ‘89. Bonus: the kid in it looks just like Ron Hayes. http://bit.ly/1LuNrr
@danielc: An old roommate of mine had a soft spot for Cry-Baby. I’d say Election is up there. (I would too, but I didn’t want to put two Alexander Payne movies on the list and I’d already included “Citizen Ruth.”—Eric)
@ManMadeMoon (or Duncan Jones, director of the upcoming film “Moon,” starring Sam Rockwell) retweeted @jpgardner’s suggestions: Robert Altman’s MASH to @SceneStealrEric for subversive comedies. Also, The Graduate, Catch 22 & Dr. Strangelove
@softreeds: Tapeheads.
@BeckIreland: And the original of The Out-of-Towners and Fun With Dick and Jane
@kcklo63: I think every Michael Moore movie fits into that category. Super Size Me? Born on the Fourth of July? 9 1/2 Weeks?
@dumbwhore: Brazil or Office Space. can’t decide

Sorcha Father Ted
Tim M. Neighbors
Tim V. heathers, hudsucker proxy, high school high, they live
Laura Oh. Okay. Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Brazil, Dead Alive, Dawn of the Dead (1978), The Big Lebowski
Sara Dr. Strangelove of course. I also second Life of Brian and Brazil. Harold and Maude, Desperate Living (since John Waters was mentioned), Series 7.
Dustin the dudesons.
Richard Hot Rod. Definitely Hot Rod.
Scott Bunuel movies like The Milky Way, Viridiana, or even Discreet Charm. Oh, don’t get me started!
Colin “Josie and the Pussycats,” now and forever.
Brad nurse betty, citizen ruth
Adam M. I vote Man Bites Dog or Tromeo and Juliet
Adam S. hank and mike. its very funny, and subversive, and even from canada.
Jeremy putney swope!

Tags: 10, best, biggest, films, funniest, funny, Hilarious, list, most, movies, shocking, subversive, ten, top, Top 10 Subversive Comedies, Top ten Subversive Comedies

Today’s user-submitted Top 10 comes from Ryan Magnuson, a musician and film student at Kansas University in Lawrence, KS. Ryan proves that there is more than one way to read a film, and sometimes it’s better if it’s not the way it was originally intended. If you’d like to submit your own Top 10, just email me at eric@scene-stealers.com. Here’s Ryan:

There’s usually only one way a bad movie can be entertaining. It has to be bad enough to make a person laugh. An unintentional comedy is either a comedy that is not funny (or funny in a way that’s not intended) or a film outside of the comedy genre that does not intend to be viewed as a comedy. There’s nothing funnier than seeing a film take itself too seriously. This list contains movies that unintentionally flip the genre that spawned them. In the process, they become accidental “hit” films. These films are similar in that they all reflect played-out Hollywood trends of their day. Sometimes trendy 90s social commentary is attempted and unsuccessfully conveyed. This list salvages 10 sad failures of film and gives them new life! These are the Top 10 Unintentional Comedies of the 90s.

10. Sister Act 2: Back In the Habit (1993)

This Whoopi Goldberg sequel is a true cornerstone of disasterpiece cinema. Nothing “keeps you off the streets” quite like a viewing of this accidental laugh riot. I say “accidental” because when you’re laughing, you’re not laughing with the movie—you’re laughing at it. These rag-tag group of misfits—the disadvantaged choir students in Whoopi’s class—understand that giving up is not an option. Add some “crazy” goody-goody nuns and things get hysterical! One scene gets this film in: The choir concert at the end will give you chills to the funny bone as well as head-cracking raps about God: “You down with G.O.D.? Yeah you know me! You down with G.O.D? Yeah you know me! Who’s down with G.O.D.? Everybody!” The class comes out in street clothes and their performance includes a section where two rappers come out and “crush the mic.” “Sister Act 2” is safe enough to be shown in the classroom for inspirational purposes, and the fact that its suitable for all ages means that kids have a better chance of seeing what unintentional comedy is all about early on! This hopelessly clean movie is a slam dunk—a 10 on the corny meter. The unintentional jokes just continue to roll. It almost got beat out by “Dangerous Minds,” but saved itself by having such an un-punny title.

9. A Time to Kill (1996)

Oh my. This John Grisham adaptation is offensively hilarious. The acting (not to mention—the inconsistent accents!) from an all-star cast including Samuel L. Jackson, Matthew McConaughey, Ashley Judd, and Chris Cooper is over-the-top bad. These are great actors. This proves how weak the script, written by Oscar-winner Akiva Goldsman (for “A Beautiful Mind”), really is. It is a scream how unfunny the “comic relief” role played by Oliver Platt is. He is not charming or witty, and is surprisingly disposable for such a prominent role. Any thought-provoking intentions or ideologies the movie might have been trying to achieve are killed, given the melodramatic shift of focus to the lawyers. For example, there’s an extended hospital scene with Sandra Bullock (the hot-shot add-a-piece to the legal team of Matt and Platt), but none with the prepubescent rape victim that the story supposedly centers around. We do not see the victim’s family throughout most of the film. Instead, we see the lawyers’ late night sessions, relationships, and personal struggles with the case. The light-hearted attitude of these characters negates any serious subject matter that might be at hand. This film is about racism in the Deep South, but it forgets what it’s about to the point of ignoring it completely. This cheapens anything worthwhile it might be trying to say. I’m embarrassed for director Joel Schumacher, who must answer to this steaming pile for the rest of his life. At its worst, it almost resembles contemporary Hollywood Klan porn.

8. With Honors (1994)

“Boy oh boy.” This box-office flop-turned-underground-classic, the audience is constantly treated to kernels of wisdom from a rather unlikely source—a homeless bum (Joe Pesci) who goes to Harvard. An archetype “Did the teacher teach the students or did the student teach the teacher?” scenario occurs when he moves in with four college students. The laughter roars with honors and without regret. Brendan Fraser and Patrick Dempsey help deliver the goods, but it’s Pesci that steals the show. He secretly crashes at the university library, making him an “educated” bum, but still with all the laughs and pitfalls of an ordinary bum. It also contains one of the unintentionally funniest death scenes ever, as Fraser weeps as he reads the last letter written by Pesci, predicting the honorable graduation of Fraser’s character. Quite possibly the worst catch phrase in motion picture history—”Boy oh boy”— is repeated to rolling eyes from characters who will one day learn and grow to miss this really annoying smelly homeless guy. The makers of this film really stink up the joint when they keep mistaking this movie for something with worthwhile and intelligent moral significance.

7. Multiplicity (1996)

This Harold Ramis-directed “comedy” makes the list based on sheer ridiculousness alone. A work-obsessed Michael Keaton needs a way to spend more time with his family, so a quirky scientist makes a clone to help him out. That clone makes another clone, and when a fourth clone is added, all hell breaks loose. That’s when all the most atrocious jokes really come at you. You see, the fourth clone is mentally handicapped. Dressed in wacky clothes, says funny stuff like, “I like pizza.” and “I got a wallet.” The jokes are not funny and the “serious marriage problem” talks between Keaton and wife Andie McDowell turn into a barn-burning laugh party when Keaton begins to shed real tears as he tells his wife how much he loves her. No convincingly serious moral dilemmas are ever established and the clones are simply not funny. The movie actually suggests that the third clone didn’t come out right because it’s gay, and the fourth clone really didn’t come out right because he is obviously mentally handicapped. I could see where someone might get offended, but the real joke is on the writers that called these characters interesting or funny to begin with. Buddy, we are laughing at you, not with you. “Multiplicity” is an unintentionally funny comedy to be reckoned with.

6. Kuffs (1992)

As if the 8Os cop theme wasn’t played out enough, along comes the empty and formulaic “Kuffs.” This movie is unintentionally funny because the punchlines are some of the weakest and most stock Hollywood has ever seen. One multiple offender: Slater talks bad about his girl throughout the movie, than says shruggishly, “women.” Ha-ha funny: Cops get kicked in the nuts and their voices go falsetto. Christian Slater breaks the fourth wall and talks to the audience throughout the film with the most laughably boring narration ever. There is a cheap imitation of a “Beverly Hills Cop”-type score, some completely meaningless gunfire porn, and one of the most ridiculous love stories I’ve ever seen. From “Saved By the Bell”-type heartbroken phone calls to the continuous 8th-grade love sentiments, it is impossible to take co-stars Milla Jovovich and Slater seriously. I left this at #6, but one could make an argument for this one potentially cracking the top 5 someday. It is the “Coupon the Movie” of cop films.

5. Primal Fear (1996)

This “thriller” cracks the top five because it is so serious and somber yet impossible to take seriously. Ed Norton got an Oscar nomination for the most melodramatic part ever, a stuttering Southern man with multiple-personality disorder on trial for double murder. Laura Linney and Richard Gere combine for a vicious laugh team in this one. Gere is the take-no-crap defense lawyer who goes up against the vulnerable prosecutor (Linney). They turn in classic depictions of alcoholic lawyers who also—once in a while—cuss and match wits in hilarious insignificant fashion. “I wish you two would do your fucking goddamn jobs!” is a classic Gere quote that provides endless unintentional laughs! Their hilariously unbelievable and hollow characters are dropped into a premise that actually had potential, which ends up making serious scenarios mutate into unintentionally funny ones. It is nearly impossible to take the narrative as seriously as the actors do. It also has a really pretentious operatic and choir-filled score that inflates the ridiculousness with every soprano. If you need an unintentionally hilarious Oscar movie, this would definitely be my recommendation.

4. Higher Learning (1995)

John Singleton’s wannabe-“Do The Right Thing”-on -campus is an absolute slaying of any reflection on reality whatsoever because the characters and situations are so ridiculous. The only kind of higher learning we get is of the unintentional comedic genius Singleton can be when his dramatic intentions automatically flip to comical ones. Ice Cube is funny because he is Ice Cube. However, his character amounts to nothing, lost in this movie’s lack of ideological significance. I almost put this at number one because it is literally a laugh a minute. Unrealistic scenarios (from the neo-Nazis that recruit Michael Rappaport to shoot minorities on campus to the “lesbian only” depiction of homosexuality on campus) and way too many ideological black holes make it hard to take this movie’s “message” seriously. That is, unless one takes it seriously as a comedy. Great success!

3. Indian Summer (1993)

This film’s message: “some things never change.” When it comes to bad movies, this is certainly the case. Writer/director Mike Binder’s “Indian Summer” is the most unintentionally funny coming-of-age adult flashback film I’ve ever seen. A pretentious movie gets even more pretentious in one scene when characters try to tackle racial injustices of the past. They talk about the time when their camp counselor didn’t hire a guy because he was African-American. The title of the film and the fact that everyone in the film is white only makes Bill Paxton’s flashback that recalls the incident even funnier. Everyone gets more than they bargained for—such as unending clichés passing for genuine life lessons—when they revisit a childhood summer camp. The kicker in this one, however, is a melodramatic bridge scene where a one-on-one talk between Kevin Pollak and Elizabeth Perkins turns into a surface-value reflection and laughable introspective sentiment. As he talks about how much smaller the camp has gotten, Pollak gets sage advice from a friend: “Nothing has gotten smaller. You have changed.” All of the jokes are wickedly bad and all the characters are tragically unfunny. Camp counselor Uncle Lou, played by Alan Arkin, and his mentally handicapped assistant (played by “Spider-Man” director Sam Raimi!) provide for some great unintentional laughs. This movie tries embarrassingly to tug at the heart strings. Instead, it tugs itself right into the lake. It was rescued from drowning after this list flipped its intended effect. You’re welcome.

2. Congo (1995)

This movie is one of the greatest shams of all time. Laura Linney, one year before her raucous turn in “Primal Fear,” turns in an unintentionally masterful performance here. “Put ‘em on the endangered species list!” Make no mistake—she holds the key to this film being as unintentionally funny as it can be. Supposedly she is sent into the African jungle to rescue her missing ex-fiancé, but secretly her boss (the laughably hostile Joe Don Baker) just wants her to find diamonds. Baker is laughably hostile, and Tim Curry is out-of-his-mind bad as the foreign diamond expert. Instead of doing the book justice, we get almost no graphically violent gorilla scenes, and actors in gorilla suits pale in comparison to CGI effects in other movies like “Jurassic Park.” A talking gorilla and a disastrous foreign accent by Ernie Hudson “The Great White Hunter” also help lower the boom on any hope of taking this movie seriously. Not until this list has it gotten the credibility it deserves. Frankenstein-esque comparisons about humans and the limits of technology are squandered for gut-busting ridiculous high-horse scenes about diamonds. We thought we were getting a bloodier Jurassic park through the previews and the violent reputation of the novel. Instead, we get a film that disappointed many fans of the book by making it a soft movie about nothing that worthwhile or satisfying. I bask in its unintentional beauty.

1. Bye Bye Love (1995)

Something about Paul Reiser’s performance makes me think that he really thought this movie was going to be good. How could it be any more unintentionally hilarious? It’s got everything. Three divorced fathers (Reiser, Matthew Modine, and Randy Quaid) find solace in one another as they go through the daily grind of divorced life. The funniest scenes are when Paul Reiser interacts with his daughter. After getting mad at his daughter and throwing money at her in frustration (bad call), she storms out of the house. The door closed, he reflects. “Shit!” Later, he “risks his life” by scaling a branch that is literally 10 ft. off the ground to “rescue” his daughter from their old tree house. Heartwarming! Folks, Reiser’s communication issues between him and his daughter are so cringe-riffic, they will have you begging for more. Modine is a true player. When multiple women come over for dinner and run into his girlfriend—oops! Things get “scary” when he yells at his son for crying about his friends not being able to sleep over. Modine’s “Joker “character from “Full Metal Jacket” resurfaces and erupts more than once! This is especially true when Reiser almost sleeps with Modine’s ex-wife. Don’t forget how terrible Rob Reiner is as the divorce D.J., but give Jack Black credit for his cameo. At times, Randy Quaid is funny, but only because he is Randy Quaid. The script is terrible and most of his scenes are like most of everyone else’s scenes—unintentionally hilarious. James Taylor spawn Ben Taylor offers an unbelievably ineffective musical closer, covering “I Will” by the Beatles during a laugh-inducing epilogue montage, and he absolutely murders it. It cements this little-seen (only $12 mil at the box office) film’s place at #1. “Bye Bye Love” is a true champion because the dramatic scenes are far and away the most hilarious unintentional laugh-grabbers I’ve ever encountered on the silver screen. (Yes, I saw this in its original theatrical run.)

Tags: 1990s, 90s, bad, films, Hilarious, movies, terrible, Top 10 Lists, unfunny, Unintentional Comedies, Worst

It’s tough. I still haven’t gotten over it. “Watchmen” was a disappointment. For as many things as it did right (the opening credit sequence, the Dr. Manhattan flashback, the adherence to so much of the book) there are as many things that were just deal-killers (the fetishized violence, the slo-mo “cool” factor, the bland performances).

I even rented “The Tales From the Black Freighter” last night and watched the DVD “documentary” that’s included on the disc called “Under the Hood.” (It’s based on a supplement of the graphic novel.) My conclusion? “Under the Hood” was a complete mixed bag with a couple of inspired moments (mostly due to its meticulous recreation of a 1970s news magazine) and some more bad acting and laughable dialogue. (I’m sorry, Carla Gugino, but your character just isn’t convincing at all. And the guy that play’s Rorschach’s psychiatrist? He’s saddled with the worst line in either the movie or the companion DVD: “I really do hope that I’m able to psychoanalyze one of these masked heroes someday. That would be something.” Really? Do they think we’re twelve?)

“Tales From the Black Freighter” is well done, but without being used as a parallel story, there’s not much point. The narrative doesn’t comment on anything. After all, “Watchmen” the graphic novel achieved what it achieved because it pushed the limits of its own unique art form.

Comic Stripjoint contributor and Kansas City artist Daniel Spottswood summed it up perfectly (including my denial reflex that tells me I’ll get over it someday and just enjoy the film) in this comic-strip “Watchmen” review from Rorschach’s perspective:

Tags: accurate, comic strip, Daniel Spottswood, disappointing, graphic novel, Hilarious, review, says it all, watchmen