Everyone finds a sense of humor. It can be something as common as the clothes one wears, or nuanced as the way someone talks. Humor is a unique language that changes its words and meaning for endless laughs. Jokes, non sequiturs, and irony are the usual suspects when it comes to comedy. Then there are the misfit movies, the kind that have and define their own frame of reference.
The comedic brand they deliver is an outlier that makes light of anything and everything with wild abandon. Unpredictable, unceremonious, and unmatched, these movies have the strangest sense of humor.
8 Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996)
Beavis and Butt-Head Do America is based on the MTV animated series with the titular characters. Known for their debauchery and schoolboy crassness, the teen delinquents from the School of Hard Knocks. Sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll are their calling cards. The dimwitted cretins speak in hurried and delayed breaths, turning every moment into a contentious bout of silly high jinks.
7 Borat (2006)
Borat or Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is a mockumentary about the satirical Turkic journalist Borat Sagdiyev. He travels across the United States, interviewing Americans as a foreigner, whose still wet behind the ears. Borat makes social faux pas due to his language barrier and cultural differences, but his acts of assimilation are both candid and ironic.
6 Delicatessen (1991)
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Delicatessen is a black comedy taking place in post-apocalyptic France. Food is scarce, and the population barters for meat at the local deli. The meat however comes from the employees who work for the butcher. The country becomes cannibalistic, perhaps without knowing it, which would explain the strange neighbors.
A couple simulates the sounds of sex by rocking back and forth on their mattress, awkwardly forcing apartment dwellers to drown out their noise. One man lives in the basement, where he’s made a snail and frog habitat. Despite the surreal and absurd drastic measures, the comedy is serious food for thought.
5 Freddy Got Fingered (2001)
Freddy Got Fingered has no rhyme or reason. Cartoonist Gordon Brody gives up on his dream of having an animated show after a TV executive critiques his work. This prompts Gordon to return to and live with his parents. His first surreal act of comedy is to pull over at a farm and pleasure a horse until it neighs.
When his friend breaks his leg, Gordon licks his open wound. Gordon goes on to falsely accuse his father of sexually abusing his younger brother Freddy and uses their volatile relationship for a new and successful animated show.
4 Harold and Maude (1971)
Harold and Maude is a romantic black comedy following the exploits of Harold Chasen and Maude Chardin. Harold is a young adult preoccupied with death who drives a hearse, attends funerals, and stages fake suicides. Maude is an elderly woman who teaches him how to live life to the fullest; she steals someone’s car after the funeral they attended! The contrast and friction of the unlikely couple go beyond their noticeable age gap, showing the dark and bright sides of human existence.
3 Nacho Libre (2006)
Nacho Libre is a comedic sports drama about a Mexican monastery cook Ignacio who becomes a luchador to support the church’s orphanage. His lucha libre wrestler persona is Nacho, a rough-and-tumble, free-spirited fighter. Ignacio has a passionate, self-serious way of using the metaphor of wrestling to handle his faith and struggles. All while singing rockin’, Mexicali songs.
2 Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
Napoleon Dynamite defies all categories and definitions. The alternative comedy coined the phrase, the “Napoleon Dynamite Problem,” which denotes a movie that proves difficult for an algorithm to gauge a viewer’s like or dislike of it. The titular character and the supporting cast are complete with their eccentric awkwardness.
Napoleon Dynamite seemingly has no distinguishing skills to get a girlfriend. His only skill throughout the film is drawing ligers (his favorite animal) and the girls he likes. It isn’t until Napoleon perfects his imperfect dance moves that he learns what makes him dynamite. Unwavering, honest, and silly to the max, this film is a quirky masterpiece.
1 The Voices (2014)
The Voices is a comedy horror portraying the mental illness of schizophrenia through dark humor. Situational irony shows the internal conflict of someone who deals with reality through counterproductive lies in their mind. When Jerry Hickfang is stood up by his date, she gets a ride home from him instead, leading to a fender bender with a deer.
Jerry hears a voice from the deer asking him to put it out of its misery. The distraught girl runs away from Jerry trying to explain himself with hunting knife in hand, only to fall onto her knife first. The lighthearted approach to the misunderstandings and demonization of mental illness is a sobering piece of comedy.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
