Great and terrible titles.

Let's not discuss films. Let's discuss titles. Not title screen, just movie names.

Like, the awfully formulaic ones from keyword algorithms.

- Tonight we've got Extreme Action. Fatal Intercourse or Alien Mutant.
- Dunno. Can you read me the summaries ?

Or on the other extreme of the lame axis, my absolute title nemesis : the name. With its bigger meaner brother : the first name.

- Tonight we've got Fred, Anna, Herbert McLloyd, or Jeremy.
- Dunno. Can you read me the summaries ?
- No.

But what about great titles ? Titles that pick your curiosity, titles that make you go "ooh?". Titles that instantly capture your sympathy. Titles that lure you to very bad films that you won't regret watching because at least the title was awesome.

I'm always partial to long titles. Put a verb in it and I'm sold. Do you prefer laconic ones ? Super-evocative (or super misleading) technical one-word titles ?

- Tonight we have Palette, Screwdrivers, Liftoff or Condom.
- What's Condom about ?
- "Several wrongly accused escapees find refuge in remote jungle where try to build their own domain."
- Let's go with Screwdrivers then.
- The porn road movie ?

I have a fondness for cheesy paradoxical titles à la Bunker Palace Hotel or Kill Me Again. Do you prefer enigmatic or explicit titles ? What about poetic keyword mishmash (James Bond is back in Death Never Always Kills) ? Do you like your titles to be phrased as a question ? Did you ever check a movie on the title alone ?

This is a thread about titles we love and hate and why Sergio Leone's are the best even though italian westerns have the worst.

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Get working on your custom lists, people !

I love cheesy 50's sci-fi titles;

The Astounding She-Monster!
It Conquered The World!
It Came From Outer Space!
Devil Girl From Mars!
The Beast With A Million Eyes!
The Day The World Ended!
Terror From The Year 5000!
I Married a Monster From Outer Space!
The Earth Dies Screaming!

And I love long titles and poetic/cryptic titles;

The Place Promised In Our Early Days
The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent
The Strange Color of your Body's Tears
Bird With the Crystal Plumage
My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days
Scary True Stories: Tales from the Japanese Underground
Zero Dark Thirty
All The Colors Of The Dark
Inland Empire
As Above So Below
Until the Light Takes Us ( I watched this one immediately because the name was so good)


I generally don't like movies that are just one word. If nothing else, just for the fact that it's a bit boring to recommend them to people.

Here are a couple more movies with long titles:

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (1996)

Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971)

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 hours 11 minutes (1965)

The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (1967)

This is correct: "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World".


This is not: "Tyler Perry's ..."

Here are some titles that are great and terrible at the same time:
Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead
Lolita Vibrator Torture
All Women Are Whores
Naked Action: College Girl Rape Edition
Office Lady Rape: Devouring the Giant ****
Lesbian Rape: Sweet Honey Juice

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

I like titles that have a sequence of actions. It implies a minimum of narrative momentum.


Django Kill!...If You Live, Shoot!
Shoot First, Die Later
Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067142/

Eight Heads in a Duffle Bag

The :Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun

The League of Extraordinary Gentleman

Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills are some of my favorite movie titles.


One title I didn't like...Maggie Smith made a movie called Lady in the Van, which I didn't like because the title pretty much gives away what the movie is about. If it had been my call, I would have titled the movie after the name of her character Miss Shepherd.

Shriek of the Mutilated

Quantum of Solace
Freddy Got Fingered
eXistenZ
Gigli
Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
The Hudsucker Proxy
Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx
F.A.R.T: The Movie
I ♥ Huckabees
The Men Who Stare at Goats