4 laugh out loud moments in movies

Originally I was going to write about 5 funniest movie moments that made me literally laugh out loud, however I forgot to write them down and can only remember four, so here they are.

To start, have you ever been watching a movie when something completely unexpected happens? Something that surprises you to the point that you roar with laughter? Something that hasn't been spoiled by the social media or has so many clones of the original so that the impact has been lost? These are four moments in movies that caught me off guard and really caused a full on, almost choking on it, laugh. 

Note: This list is by the year the film was released not by degree of laugh.

1) In 1931 the top stars of Hollywood got together to make a short film, the Stolen Jools, to raise funds for the National Vaudeville Artists Tuberculosis Sanitarium. Laurel and Hardy make a cameo as a couple of guys giving a police detective a lift. When they pull up to the building Stan reaches over and pushes a button on the dash board, and the car collapses into a heap of junk, leaving them sitting on the street. A local TV channel use to show old shorts on Saturday afternoon and we loved the classic comedies, it was the first time I had seen this bit and it was totally unexpected. There are other versions from an earlier one starring Buster Keaton to the later The Blues Brothers Bluesmobile falling apart but this was the first time for me and oh how I laughed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujxwDKeKSyo

2) In 1984 Ghostbusters was the biggest comedy of the summer. The theater was packed and nobody knew exactly where the movie was going. They reached the scene where Gozer tells them to choose the form of the destructor and suddenly something started to come. I'm pretty sure everyone in the audience was just like me, something horrible popped into their mind from Godzilla on a rampage, perhaps a giant spider or a psychotic clown. So, when the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man came walking down the street the entire theater erupted in laughter of relief. These days the Stay Puft is so well known in pop culture the joke is lost, but to experience it unspoiled made it one of the funniest moments I had ever seen in the movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zhDfUAQSbs

3) In 1992 my work schedule was Tuesday through Saturday, meaning I had Monday off and I would go the the half price matinee, which I liked to refer to as the Bachelor's Matinee since it seemed to be mostly single guys in the audience. That year Wayne's World  was released and I was looking forward to seeing it, however I was sharing a house with a group of guys and one really wanted to see the movie but didn't have the guts to go by himself, so I found myself in a packed theater and paying full price for the ticket on a Sunday afternoon. About 3/4ers of the way through the film it hit kind of a drag, Wayne and Garth were fighting, they had lost the show and Cassandra was being seduced by Benjamin. Just then Wayne got pulled over by a cop and I imagined that it was going to result in Wayne being tossed into jail and I was worried that a formerly funny movie was going to get overly dramatic. However, the cop turned out to be the evil android from Terminator II, holding out a photo and saying the classic line "have you seen this boy?" As Wayne lets out a scream and quickly drives off the whole theater erupted into laugher, except for my roommate. Like I said, I went to the movies on Monday afternoon all the time and he didn't like going alone, so he missed a lot of films. He hadn't seen Terminator II and had no idea who the cop was or why everyone but him got the joke. I told him I would explain it after the movie, but the confused look on his face made it even funnier. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN_VgVEZD0k

4) I'll just say it, the 1994 Dumb And Dumber poop scene. Bodily fluid humor had been in movies for decades, but mostly off screen, in this movie they showed Jeff Daniels going full on with his diarrhea and boy did he play it up. The more he got in to it the harder I laughed. Since then there have been dozens of movies that imitate the scene but this one is the original. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7l6jg4Hlog

So those are my top four unexpectedly funny moments in movies. I know the night I publish this I'll wake up at 3 AM and remember the fifth, and laugh. And I have to say I feel sorry for people who didn't experience these moments unspoiled or overdone. And I'm looking forward to the next extremely hilarious and unexpected moment in a movie. Get on that Hollywood.