Black comedy

Black comedy, also known as black humor, is a subgenre of comedy and satire where topics and events normally treated seriously – death, mass murder, sickness, madness, terror, drug abuse, rape, etc. – are treated in a humorous or satirical manner. Synonyms created to avoid possible racial overtones include dark comedy/humor, morbid comedy/humor and off-color humor (see also color metaphors for race.) A scene in Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot demonstrates black comedy well: a man takes off his belt to hang himself, and his trousers fall down.

Films

• About Schmidt
• After Hours
• American Psycho is about a self-obsessed yuppie serial killer, played by Christian Bale.
• Arsenic and Old Lace is about a pair of murdering old aunts discovered by their nephew, played by Cary Grant.
• Bad Santa is about a wretched, drunk, perverse thief who poses as Santa Claus to rip off department stores.
• The Big Lebowski, in which the shiftless "Dude" deals with bowling, nihilists, kidnapping, death, and having his favorite rug urinated on.
• Black Cat, White Cat
• Catch-22, a film about the madness of war, based on the novel by Joseph Heller.
• Children Of The Revolution, about the 'love child' of Josef Stalin.
• Citizen Ruth, a satire about the abortion rights battle.
• La Comunidad
• Dead Man On Campus, about the urban legend of a roommate's suicide and the resulting perfect grades in college
• Death Becomes Her, about the downsides of immortality.
• Death To Smoochy, a corrupt former children's TV icon plots revenge against his fuzzy purple replacement.
• Do The Right Thing, in which the black community fights against an Italian restaurant owner.
• The Doom Generation, three young drifters go on a killing spree.
• Eating Raoul, about a prudish couple who kill rich swingers by luring them to their apartment.
• Election, a high school teacher attempts to sabotage an overachieving student's election campaign.
• Falling Down, a victim of the late 1980s recession suddenly becomes a vigilante as he encounters social annoyances and injustices during a walk across LA.
• Fargo, a debt-ridden car salesman hires incompetent criminals to kidnap his wife in order to get a ransom from his rich father-in-law.
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, semi-autobiographical film of Hunter S. Thompson starring Johnny Depp directed by Terry Gilliam
• Four Rooms, four vignettes centered around a hapless bell boy, involving witchcraft, a rotting corpse, and a severed finger.
• Grace Quigley, a film about euthanasia
• Grosse Pointe Blank, about a hitman who returns to his hometown to attend his high school reunion.
• Happiness
• Harold and Maude, in which an alienated young man obsessed with staged suicides and the funerals of strangers falls in love with a vivacious octogenarian.
• The Hospital, the story of a chief of surgery who is trying to figure out why a number of hospital employees begin dying under strange circumstances.
• Heathers, about a disaffected, jaded couple who start killing members of popular cliques at their high school.
• Ichi the Killer, about a pair of savage killers, one a sadist and the other a masochist.
• Kind Hearts and Coronets, Ealing comedy in which the main character assassinates members of an aristocratic family to inherit a Dukedom.
• The Ladykillers
• The Last Supper
• Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, about three orphans who go through many tragic experiences.
• Little Murders, written by Jules Feiffer
• The Lindsay Anderson trilogy of If...., O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital.
• Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, a Guy Ritchie film about the seedy underside of London crime.
• Loot by Joe Orton, dramatist of several black comedies.
• Lord of War, Nicholas Cage in a film portrayal of the gun running underworld.
• M*A*S*H, in which the medical staff of a Korean War field hospital engage in silly mischief to alleviate the horror of war.
• Man Bites Dog, a disturbing mockumentary about a serial killer who takes a camera crew on a tour of his routine.
• Monsieur Verdoux, about a suave serial killer who commits his crimes to support his family.
• Monty Python's Life of Brian, a satire of the practices of modern organized religion, especially those of many sects of Christianity.
• Monty Python's the Meaning of Life, a series of sketches on subjects including birth, death, war, and sperm.
• The Player, a satirical look at a Hollywood studio executive who is blackmailed for murder by an unknown screenwriter.
• Prizzi's Honor, in which a Mafia hitman and hitwoman fall in love.
• Pulp Fiction, about the misadventures of thugs, whose stories weave into the same destiny.
• Roger & Me, in which director Michael Moore explores the decline of Flint, Michigan after General Motors CEO Roger Smith closed the city's auto plants and laid off thousands of employees.
• The Ruling Class, about an insane British nobleman who thinks he's Jesus.
• Shallow Grave
• Shaun of the Dead
• Snatch
• Throw Momma from the Train, a comedic retelling of Hitchcock's thriller Strangers on a Train.
• To Die For, about murder and pedophilia.
• Trainspotting, about the adventures of a group of heroin addicts.
• Very Bad Things
• Wag the Dog, a story about a fake war, designed to salvage the election for a president who had sex with a young woman.
• The War of the Roses, about a couple going through a nasty divorce while still trying to live in the same house.
• The Wrong Box, from the story by Robert Louis Stevenson about the members of a tontine.