Adding humor to a war movie is a tricky line to walk because war is such a difficult subject that doesn’t exactly open itself up to jokes and sight gags. But, with that said, dark comedy can feel right at home in a war movie. Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket is a prime example of a war movie masterpiece with a darkly comedic sensibility.
From allowing real-life drill sergeant R. Lee Ermey to improvise a lot of his dialogue as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman to juxtaposing “Surfin’ Bird” against a montage of gruesome conflict, Kubrick filled Full Metal Jacket with his signature dark humor.
10 Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket is really two movies. The first half follows some recruits at boot camp as they’re trained to kill and have every shred of individuality removed from them. Then, the second half sends them to fight in Vietnam, where they lose their humanity as well as their individuality. The movie has some truly harrowing dramatic moments, but it also has plenty of pitch-black humor.
9 Kelly’s Heroes (1970)
When a drunken German officer gives insider info to a bunch of American troops about a hidden stash of Nazi gold, the platoon plots to sneak across enemy lines and steal it. The ensemble cast of Kelly’s Heroes features such iconic performers as Clint Eastwood, who plays the titular Pvt. Kelly, Don Rickles, and Donald Sutherland.
8 Three Kings (1999)
George Clooney, Ice Cube, and Mark Wahlberg star in David O. Russell’s war comedy Three Kings as a trio of American troops who hear about a stash of gold that’s fabled to be near their base toward the end of the Gulf War.
According to the director’s commentary, then-incumbent U.S. President Bill Clinton enjoyed Three Kings so much that he arranged a screening of it for his staff at the White House.
7 Catch-22 (1970)
Joseph Heller’s classic novel Catch-22 is one of the most scathing anti-war satires ever written. It’s been adapted a bunch of times, most recently by George Clooney into a hysterical Hulu miniseries.
Mike Nichols spent two years deliberating over his screenplay adaptation of Catch-22 in order to condense Heller’s text without losing any of its complex themes. The movie’s star-studded cast contains Alan Arkin, Bob Newhart, Anthony Perkins, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight, and Orson Welles.
6 To Be Or Not To Be (1942)
Ernst Lubitsch’s pitch-black comedy To Be or Not to Be revolves around a troupe of actors in Nazi-occupied Warsaw who use their acting abilities to dupe the oppressive invaders. It was a bold move to make a dark screwball comedy about Nazi occupation before the Nazis were defeated and driven out of the rest of Europe.
5 Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Quentin Tarantino established his signature brand of revisionist history with Inglourious Basterds, his World War II epic revolving around two simultaneous attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Brad Pitt leads the titular squad of Jewish-American soldiers into the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe to kill as many German soldiers as possible.
Pitt balances out Christoph Waltz’ sinister portrayal of S.S. Col. Hans Landa, one of the greatest villains in movie history, with a healthy dose of humor, and the film works as both a comedy and a gripping war drama.
4 The Inglorious Bastards (1978)
The Enzo G. Castellari macaroni combat movie that Tarantino took the title of his own World War II movie from is an action-packed darkly comic gem in itself. It’s about some American military prisoners who decide to steal a Nazi warhead on their way to Switzerland.
It has all the breathtaking slow-motion spectacle of Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron, but it also has plenty of gags like the Americans posing as Germans and skinny-dipping with some German women, who discover the ruse when they see the Americans’ Black comrade.
3 Stalag 17 (1953)
William Holden won an Oscar for his lead role in Stalag 17, in which a bunch of American soldiers in a German P.O.W. camp begin to suspect that a member of their group is a secret informant. Billy Wilder, best known for helming Some Like It Hot, Sunset Boulevard, and The Apartment, directed the movie. The script, which Wilder co-wrote with Edwin Blum, is rife with dark humor.
2 Dr. Strangelove (1964)
Kubrick was originally hired to adapt Peter George’s novel Red Alert as a straight drama, but he realized during pre-production that the story was so absurd that it would work better as a comedy.
Peter Sellers stars as three separate characters in the story of the U.S. government’s attempts to beat the Soviet Union to the punch with a nuclear attack. Dr. Strangelove is widely recognized as one of the greatest political satires ever made.
1 Apocalypse Now (1979)
Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now was initially conceived as a full-on dark comedy when George Lucas was supposed to direct. The final piece, helmed by Coppola across a notoriously trying, delay-ridden production, is more of a gonzo, surreal odyssey through a war-torn jungle, but it still has plenty of dark humor.
For example, there’s a darkly comic edge to the helicopter sequence in which the U.S. troops blast “Ride of the Valkyries”—by Hitler’s favorite composer Wagner, no less—as they callously destroy a Vietnamese village.
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