Awful Scenes in Otherwise Great Movies -The Toast

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Hey you! Do you like movies? Have a couple you love? Great, have a seat. I’ve got some news. Movies are trapped here on Earth and made by us awful humans, and they’re all bad. Yeah. Even the good ones.

1. GHOSTBUSTERS (1984): DAN AKROYD HAS A SEXUAL ENCOUNTER WITH A GHOST FOR SOME REASON

INT. Ghostbusters Writer’s Room

RICK MORANIS: Okay, so what do we have here?

HAROLD RAMIS: Well, my idea here is a montage, where we show the Ghostbusters’ business picking up after they capture the ghost in the hotel.

RICK: Alright, standard stuff. Casey Kasem mentions them on the countdown or whatever, you see their commercial on the tv-

DAN AKROYD: alright what if i’m asleep and a ghost sucks my dick

HAROLD: Wait, wh-

DAN: no no, stay with me here. Like, i’m snoozing, yeah? Fast asleep. And then WHAMMO, a ghost just undoes my belt, whoopsie-daisy, and goes to town and I make a “WAZOOO!!!” face or whatever, right at the camera

*

2. THE DEPARTED (2006): EVERYONE IS A RAT

Yeah, yeah. So the point of the movie is everyone is a big rat, right? Rats everywhere. They say the word “rat” 40 times a minute in this movie. So what if, after the final scene, a RAT just walked right in front of the camera! To stand in front of the Massachusetts state house? GET IT?! Great. I was going to put a photoshopped image of Marty Scorcese with hams for fists here, but I think that might be too subtle.

Oh, is that not your favorite Scorcese? Fine, it’s a little late in the game and it’s not his strongest. How about:


3. GOODFELLAS (1990): JOE PESCI SHOOTS YOU WITH METAPHORS

Henry Hill made it out alive right, but he’s really dead, you know? BLAMMO! Does Marty know how to end a movie? I’m worried.

And screw Sid Vicious and all, but that cover of “My Way” rules.


4. LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS (2002): LEGOLAS INVENTS SKATEBOARDING

This is fine when Marty McFly does it because he is FROM SKATEBOARD TIMES. I’m not comfortable with the idea of such radical elves.


5. PULP FICTION (1994): QUENTIN TARANTINO GETS AN ENTIRE 120 SECONDS OF SCREEN-TIME

This actually might have been a merely outdated scene with a better actor? It’s got that soft ‘n comfortable dialogue cadence that makes Tarantino movies special. But it’s beautiful QT, begging for us to love him.

Every morning, Quentin cradles in his arms and kisses a little trophy he made himself that says “I SCREAMED THE N-WORD AT SAM JACKSON”


6. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980): VADER’S DINNER PARTY

how was he eating


7. THEY LIVE (1988): THE WHOLE DARN THING

They Live is a really extraordinary movie, in which it’s the greatest movie of all time and yet is composed of the worst scenes ever put on film. I love it .

Let’s go on a journey together, sheeple.

Either put on these glasses, or start eating that trash can.


Matt Lubchansky makes comics and occasionally leaves his apartment in New York. You can find his weekly comics here, or on twitter here.

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YES. YES. I adore LotR, I am an unabashed fangirl with tattoos and posters and I nearly bought YET another edition of the book because it was a DIFFERENT leather-like cover. I watched that scene with Legolas riding some sweet, sweet waves on the backs of oliphants (not to be confused with Timothy) and seriously went, "Oh for fuck's sake. FINE WHATEVER JACKSON. YOU GET ONE."

And then he did it again, as osutein pointed out.
13 replies · active 575 weeks ago
How does Darth Vader eat, ever? Only in his pod thing with his mask off? *mind blown*
5 replies · active 575 weeks ago
As Ralph Wiggum so wisely pointed out, in that scene in The Departed, "the rat stands for obviousness."

I'd forgive the Legolas skateboarding thing if it hadn't then gotten a callback in The Return of the King with Legolas SURFING THE TRUNK OF A GIANT ELEPHANT HE JUST MURDERED.
Actually, can you share the Scorsese-ham-fists picture with us? I want to use it to troll my significant other when he starts going on about what a genius ol' Marty is.
6 replies · active 575 weeks ago
Okay plus that Legolas skateboarding scene is like the scene in Holy Grail where the guy is running and they cut away and he's back down the hill again. Those stairs did not take that long to slide down.


this is how Michael Fassbender feels about the Ghostbusters sex scene.
1 reply · active 575 weeks ago
I kind of love how Quentin Tarantino has to know by now that he is always, without fail, the absolute worst part of his own movies, and yet he still keeps right on with putting himself in them and giving himself speaking lines. Lots of them.
4 replies · active 492 weeks ago
That Legolas skateboarding scene was amazing, and my fifteen-year-old self and I will hear no arguments to the contrary.
I see that you didn't include any scenes from My Cousin Vinny, why not?

Oh, that's right, because My Cousin Vinny is IMMACULATE
Standard Tuber's avatar

Standard Tuber · 575 weeks ago

All of Eyes Wide Shut.
2 replies · active 575 weeks ago
EVERY SCENE IN THE ROOM <3
1 reply · active 575 weeks ago
The scene in "The Departed" is execrable, no doubt, but I love that "goodfellas" scene. I don't think it has one obvious meaning, and it's an homage to "The Great Train Robbery."
REGARDING The Goodfellas scene being an homage to "the great train robbery":

I was talking to a movie buff pal about this while I was writing it and he TOLD ME about the great train robbery homage. And then I asked "okay, why is it in the movie then" and he said "oh, no reason!" SO

Anyways I love goodfellas and Scorsese IN GENERAL so leave me alone with your precious facts
3 replies · active 575 weeks ago
Ghosts are sluts, obviously.
3 replies · active 575 weeks ago
I love me some skateboarding Legolas. In fact, I really wish The Hobbit movies had continued the trend of scenes of Legolas surfing/skateboarding increasingly elaborate and dangerous things. He could've surfed Smaug in the last one, and it would have been glorious. GLORIOUS, I tell you.
24 replies · active 575 weeks ago
My contribution to this is the awkward massacre-intercut-with-Eric-Bana's-climax scene in Munich.
5 replies · active 575 weeks ago
I know it's first on your list and everything but FOR REAL, I think that Ghostbusters scene might be the most insane gap of bad scene to good movie ever created.
2 replies · active 575 weeks ago
rustyspatula's avatar

rustyspatula · 575 weeks ago

The thing about the Vader Dinner Scene is that, as the "I am your father" thing has kind of passed into general cultural knowledge, it still catches people by surprise. I've had the privilege of watching Empire Strikes Back with a couple people seeing it for the first time, and nobody was that into the father reveal, but both gasped when the door shot upward to reveal Darth Vader.
Can we talk about the incredibly unnecessary tree molestation scene from The Evil Dead? I love that rest of that film to death, but nothing will ever adequately explain to me how the heck that got made in the first place, let alone how it somehow made it into the final product. What the heck, Sam Raimi.
I'm pretty sure that fight scene in They Live took more time than it took me to file my taxes this year. Yes, I probably filed my taxes wrong, but still.

HOWEVER it is so delightful that despite having seen They Live a number of times I watched it back to back just now.

"Either put on these glasses, or start eating that trash can."
"Not this year."

I MEAN. <3<3<3<3
The version of Ghostbusters that I grew up with and watched a million times was taped off the tv, so it lacked the ghost fellatio. The first time I saw an uncut version of Ghostbusters, that scene was JARRING. It felt SO incredibly out of place. Especially as earlier in the movie Venkman says a bunch of sexist stuff to the librarian and both she and the men call him on it.
1 reply · active 575 weeks ago
I'm gonna be honest and say that I watched the departed but couldn't really tell the difference between mark wahlberg and ben affleck and whatever other brown haired white guys were in the movie so I was really confused the whole time. "Wait, why is he shooting him? What is he doing? Oh, he's the other brown haired guy ok."
1 reply · active 575 weeks ago
any scene with Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's obviously.
1 reply · active 575 weeks ago
I'd defend They Live, but you're approximately right.
The skateboarding bit in "The Two Towers" presages the continuous parade of cartoonishly stupid action scenes Peter Jackson used to pad "The Hobbit" out to the length of three movies when the book could easily have been adapted as a single feature film. (Hell, it HAS been adapted as a single feature film -- and a live-action version using the animated film's screenplay would have been a lot better than what we got.)

Also, I would say that "They Live" has the greatest action one-liner of all time, rather than that it's a good movie. It does have a nifty theme, one which is only more topical today than when it was made, but the actual film kind of sucks, do to the persistent awfulness of the scenes of which it's composed.
The Ghostbusters scene threw me too, until I watched it a few times a figured out that it was Ray Stantz dreaming (hence the next shot him falling out of the bed).
The sex scene in watchmen is awful. Also Rowdy Roddy Piper was awesome. R.I.P

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