Tag Archives: Dark Comedy

Saturday Matinee: Mars Attacks!

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“Mars Attacks!” (1996) is a satirical alien invasion film directed by Tim Burton and starring a surprisingly large cast of familiar actors. It’s easy to forget that Burton, now a friend of the establishment, once made films with a misanthropic subversive element. This is in full view in Mars Attacks! which (similar to Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers) embraces its inherently xenophobic premise and pushes it over-the-top to skewer society’s most cherished institutions (ie. government, media, religion, and business). The movie bombed when first released but perhaps it was just a little ahead of its time?
Watch the full film here.

Saturday Matinee: Freeway

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“Freeway” (1996) is a satisfyingly dark retelling of Little Red Riding Hood written/directed by Matthew Bright and featuring excellent performances by Reese Witherspoon as the protagonist, a seemingly stereotypical “white trash” teen, and Keifer Sutherland as the “wolf”, a secretly psychopathic high school guidance counselor. While the film works on the level of a traditional exploitation film, it provides much welcome commentary on racism, sexism, class-ism and societal hypocrisy.

(Video may not stream on some portable devices.)

 

Saturday Matinee: The Day the Fish Came Out

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“The Day the Fish Came Out” (1967) is a Greek/British co-production written and directed by Michael Cacoyannis (who also designed the film’s bizarre costumes). The film is a satirical sci-fi take on an actual incident in which two military aircraft collided over Spain causing four hydrogen bombs to rain down amongst the debris. Two of the bombs partly detonated similarly to a dirty bomb creating radioactive contamination in the area that persists to this day. In the film version, when a deadly payload called “Container Q” is dropped over a Greek resort island Americans disguised as tourists and real estate developers race against time to recover it in a dark comedy of errors reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmt7hc_the-day-the-fish-came-out_shortfilms