This film was a touchstone of the late 1960s, when it was seen as an antiwar allegory for a world in which madness seemed to reign. Of course, that would probably be true whenever this movie was shown, wouldn't it? Directed by Philippe de Broca and set during World War I, King of Hearts stars Alan Bates as a Scottish soldier separated from his unit in France. He wanders into a small French ...

Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Starring: Jacques Balutin, Alan Bates, Jackie Blanchot, Robert Blome, Pierre Brasseur

Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Starring: John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Kathryn Walker, Cathy Moriarty, Igors Gavon
Directed By: John G. Avildsen

Manufacturer: Walt Disney Video
Starring: Shelley Duvall, Daniel Stern, Barret Oliver, Joseph Maher, Roz Braverman
Directed By: Tim Burton

A much-loved cult favorite often overlooked by the mainstream, Trust is a hip, witty film that stretches the definition of a "romantic comedy." Hal Hartley's quirky, minimalist masterpiece--miles ahead of such later attempts as Amateur and Henry Fool--comes from the same school of offbeat character studies that launched better-known directors Jonathan Demme (Married to the ...

Manufacturer: Republic Pictures
Starring: Adrienne Shelly, Martin Donovan, Merritt Nelson, John MacKay, Edie Falco
Directed By: Hal Hartley

Jasmin (Marianne Sägebrecht), a German tourist, has just walked off from her husband at the side of the road in the middle of the Mojave Desert; Brenda (CCH Pounder) has just kicked her husband out of the roadside cafe-motel they operate. When Jasmin arrives at the cafe, the two begin developing a prickly but ultimately rewarding friendship. Many other movies have tried to duplicate Bagdad ...

Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Starring: Marianne Sägebrecht, CCH Pounder, Jack Palance, Christine Kaufmann, Monica Calhoun
Directed By: Percy Adlon

Arguably the greatest black comedy ever made, Stanley Kubrick's cold war classic is the ultimate satire of the nuclear age. Dr. Strangelove is a perfect spoof of political and military insanity, beginning when General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), a maniacal warrior obsessed with "the purity of precious bodily fluids," mounts his singular campaign against Communism by ordering a ...

Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Starring: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens
Directed By: Stanley Kubrick

Neil Young's 1982 comic mess of a feature left many faithful fans baffled and was otherwise unappreciated at the time of its release. But with the benefit of hindsight and shifts in pop culture in the last couple of decades, much of Human Highway now feels warm and funny where it once looked disastrously undisciplined. Nostalgia helps: gilded memories of Devo's decadent antics long ...

Manufacturer: Warner Bros / Wea
Starring: Bob Casale, Gerald V. Casale, John Herzog (II), Dennis Hopper, Sally Kirkland
Directed By: Dean Stockwell

Black comedies don't come much blacker than this cult favorite from 1972, and they don't come much funnier, either. It seemed that director Hal Ashby was the perfect choice to mine a mother lode of eccentricity from the original script by Colin Higgins, about the unlikely romance between a death-obsessed 19-year-old named Harold (Bud Cort) and a life-loving 79-year-old widow named Maude (Ruth ...

Manufacturer: Paramount
Starring: Harvey Brumfield, Eric Christmas, Bud Cort, Cyril Cusack, Gordon Devol

Could a title be any more direct? New Zealand maverick Peter Jackson made a splash (well, more of a splatter) with this film debut, a slapstick gross-out comedy about an alien fast-food franchise that turns a small town into a cheap source of meat. All that stands in the extraterrestrials' way is the Alien Investigation Defense Service (yes, it's a tasteless gag), a bunch of would-be Rambos who ...

Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Starring: Costa Botes, Graham Butcher, Michael Gooch, Peter Gooch, Robin Griggs

Though this film is a relatively minor one in the massive canon of Peter Sellers, it has moments of absolute hilarity. Written and directed by Blake Edwards, one of Sellers's most fertile collaborators, the film stars Sellers as a would-be actor from India (let them try to get away with that today) who is a walking disaster area. After ruining a day's shooting as an extra on a film, he finds ...

Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Starring: Peter Sellers, Claudine Longet, Natalia Borisova, Jean Carson, Marge Champion
Directed By: Blake Edwards