Subgenre Sampler
Black Comedy: 497 Films to Buy & Rent
Cul-de-Sac (1966)
- Dir. Roman Polanski
Feat. Donald Pleasence
- Polanski's influential, absurdist comedy concerns an eccentric couple taken captive by a pair of old gangsters in their Northumbrian castle. Stars…
Morgan - A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966)
- Dir. Karel Reisz
Feat. David Warner, Vanessa Redgrave, Robert Stephens…
- David Warner as Morgan goes to eccentric extremes to try to win back his wife (Vanessa Redgrave) after she divorces him. Quaintly weird comic tale is…
Wrong Box, The (1966)
- Dir. Bryan Forbes
Feat. John Mills, Ralph Richardson, Michael Caine…
- A classic black farce where two Victorian siblings (Richardson and Mills) scramble tooth and nail to collect a massive legacy, each trying to outwit…
Fists in the Pocket (1965)
- Dir. Marco Bellochio
Feat. Lou Castel, Paola Pitagora, Marino Mase
- A ferocious intensity pervades this bitter yet utterly startling tale of a family afflicted with epilepsy, blindness and frustration, unafforded the…
Loved One, The (1965)
- Dir. Tony Richardson
Feat. Robert Morse, Jonathan Winters, Anjanette Comer…
- Satirical take on the funeral business in which a young British poet goes to work at a Hollywood cemetery.
Doing for funerals what that DR…
Addams Family, The (TV Series) (1964-1966)
- Feat. John Astin, Carolyn Jones, Ted Cassidy…
- Macabre 1960s sitcom about a family whose gothic lifestyle and trappings make for a mordant contrast with 'apple–pie' America.
22 episodes…
Americanization of Emily, The (1964)
- Dir. Arthur Hiller
Feat. James Garner, Julie Andrews, Melvyn Douglas…
- Plucky black comedy with James Garner as the scapegoat for a wacky US admiral's grand plan to have a American naval officer be the first killed at…
Nothing but the Best (1964)
- Dir. Clive Donner
Feat. Alan Bates, Denholm Elliott, Harry Andrews
- Ruthless real estate agent Alan Bates grubs and grafts a way upwards, out of his working–class background and into the snobbish…
Strait-Jacket (1964)
- Dir. William Castle
Feat. Joan Crawford
- Joan Crawford fans won’t want to miss her slumming it as an axe–murderess, ‘reformed’ after twenty years in an asylum, but whose attempts…
Dr. Strangelove (or; How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) (1963)
- Dir. Stanley Kubrick
Feat. Peter Sellers, George C. Scott
- A brilliant black comedy in which the U.S. president and his henchmen await imminent nuclear retaliation from the Russians. A landmark satire with…