7. The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)
While this title is certainly easy to remember and not hard to say, it doesn’t let the audience know what genre the movie is or what is likely to happen. Based on the book by the same name, The Men who Stare at Goats is a comedy and war parody film about the US military attempting to use psychic powers as a weapon.
The movie follows a character that claims he was part of a training unit of psychic spies. He says that the New Earth Army was formed and they all had unparalleled psychic powers. They could read the thoughts of their enemies and even walk through walls. He also claims that they could kill a goat just by staring at it.
There is one scene in the film where the main character, played by George Clooney, confesses to stopping a goat’s heart because of his psychic powers and now he believes he is cursed because of this. While the title doesn’t give much away about the movie, it certainly has a comedic element to it, once it is explained in the film.
8. The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombies (1964)
This title is very wordy, and hard to remember the exact order of the words. The original title of the movie was meant to be The Incredibly Strange Creature: Or Why I Stopped Living and Became a Mixed-up Zombie.
However, Columbia Pictures decided that this title was too similar to the Stanley Kubrick film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), which was being released later in the year.
Writer and Director Ray Dennis Steckler, was threatened with a court case and the title was changed. Both titles are equally as weird and are fitting for the very strange movie.
The title does let the audience know that it is a zombie horror. The movie tells the story of Jerry, a man who falls in love with a stripper that he meets at a carnival. The stripper turns out to be the sister of a fortune-teller whose predictions he had laughed at earlier. The fortune-teller then turns him into a zombie and he goes on a killing spree.
9. Surf Nazis Must Die (1987)
This title is certainly attention grabbing but doesn’t hint at a genre and the movie doesn’t really live up to the title. Set in the post-apocalyptic future, it’s about a woman who breaks out of her retirement home and goes on a killing spree to avenge the death of her son at the hands of neo-Nazi surf punks.
As a Troma movie, it’s obviously not short on violence, nudity or shock tactics. Any movie that has the word Nazi in the title is usually going for some sort of shock value and the movie’s main bad guy is called Adolf.
Considered to be one of Troma’s least popular movies, it has been criticised for being unimaginative with little plot and not much action. The film does have a lot of surfing scenes though, which seem to be what the plot was replaced with.
10. Dick (1999)
This one is in the list for obvious reasons but especially because of the conversations surrounding going to see this movie at the cinema. The exchange would probably go along the lines of “What shall we watch at the movies tonight?” “Would you like to see Dick?” “I’d rather just watch a movie”.
Making people ask to buy tickets for Dick at the cinema isn’t the kindest thing filmmakers could do, unless the person buying the tickets is highly confident.
It’s a cheap shot but this movie title is always going to raise a few laughs but doesn’t do much for the credibility of a film. Which doesn’t really matter considering it’s hardly Citizen Kane.
Set in the early 1970s, the movie is about two teenage girls, played by Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams who get lost on a Whitehouse tour and end up meeting president Richard Nixon and playing with his dog.
11. To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)
This title is too long and clunky for anyone to be comfortable saying it and doesn’t make any sense until you watch the movie. There is no way you’d know this movie was about three drag queens going on a road trip from the title.
Even if you know who Julie Newmar is, you probably wouldn’t have guessed it either. Unlike the fabulously titled The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert (1994), also about three drag queens on a road trip, which came out the year before, To Wong Foo’s title just doesn’t have the same impact.
The title of the movie comes from what is written on an autographed picture of Julie Newmar, that one of the characters steals from a restaurant and takes with them on their trip. The film features Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze and John Leguizamo playing the drag queens and a cameo appearance from Julie Newmar.
12. Attack of the Killer Refrigerator (1990)
While this title says exactly what’s going to happen in the movie and is rather catchy it gets weirdness points for subject matter. In 1978 there were killer tomatoes, in 1988 Killer Klowns and in 1990, a killer fridge. While it’s not the most inventive title due to the ‘attack of the killer’ part, a killer refrigerator is definitely an imaginative bad guy.
The title also gets the audience thinking of the different ways a fridge could attack a person, which makes it memorable. The movie follows a group of teenagers who get drunk and decide to abuse a hapless refrigerator. The fridge gets a case of hurt feelings and goes on a killing rampage, eating the ones who beat it up.
13. Killer Condom (1996)
Killer Condom is a weird but very self-explanatory title. The tagline is even weirder ‘The rubber that rubs you out’. This German comedy horror is about a living condom that likes to bite off penises.
Set in New York at the Hotel Quickie, it follows a detective who is sent to investigate a spate of attacks where male guest have all had their penises removed.
After getting his testicle bitten off by the killer condom, the detective begins a quest to get revenge and stop the condom from making any further attacks. The title does give the audience an exact idea of what to expect but gets weirdness points for the killer being a condom.