4 Classic Comedies With Crazy Subplots No One Talks About
With the exception of anyone who lost a family member in a deadly banana peel-related accident, most people love a good comedy. But while we’ve canonized some aspects of older, “classic” comedies, other, more bizarre narrative aspects have been largely ignored by our culture over time, such as how …
Trading Places Has An Inexplicable ‘Gorilla Sexual Assault’ Gag
What You Remember:
Trading Places is one of the most beloved movie comedies of all-time – at the very least it’s for sure the best one to feature a third act climax that’s dependent entirely on the ins and outs of the concentrated orange juice business. When most of us think about Trading Places we typically remember Eddie Murphy’s hijinks once he’s been suddenly made wealthy, or Dan Aykroyd’s waspy indigence at falling on hard times. And of course, there’s the stock market scheme that inspired the real-life “Eddie Murphy rule” which made it illegal to do … whatever it is they do in the movie, which no one really understands anyway, right?
The Subplot No One Talks About:
Towards the end of the movie, our heroes board a train on New Year’s Eve, pursued by the villains’ main henchman Beeks, played by Paul “Why in the Hell did I ever come to Endor” Gleason. After an unfortunate scene featuring blackface, Beeks captures Murphy and Aykroyd, and is about to do them in when … he gets bonked on the head by a captive gorilla?
Paramount Pictures
Evil machinations of wealthy senior citizens aside, up until this point Trading Places is a fairly grounded movie. But here things take a real left turn into … whatever this craziness is; Murphy and Aykroyd, instead of, say, tying-up Beeks, or taking him along with them, decide to tape his mouth shut, put him in a gorilla costume and stick him in the cage with the excitable creature. Perhaps predictably, the real gorilla is particularly “horny” that night – and the watchful employees decide to let them have their “fun” since it’s New Year’s Eve.
20th Century Studios
20th Century Studios
And in the end, Beeks and his new lover get shipped to Africa for some kind of “scientific experiment.”
20th Century Studios
Why didn’t the U.S. government come up with a law to prevent this from happening again?
Three Men and a Baby is About a Heroin Deal Gone Wrong
What You Remember:
Back in the ‘80s Hollywood thought nothing was funnier than the idea that an adult man would try to look after a child. Like, how is that even possible? Hence why Ted Danson, Tom Selleck and Steve Guttenberg (not to mention Mr. Spock) hit box office gold with Three Men and a Baby, which is best known for its heartwarming hijinks – and for the alleged cameo from an errant poltergeist.
The Subplot No One Talks About:
This beloved family favorite was slightly more adult than you might realize. For starters, the wacky misunderstanding that lands the baby in the arms of three bachelors involves … a heroin deal? Early in the movie, Ted Danson’s character, Jack, agrees to let his friend deliver a “package” to his apartment while he’s away, which basically feels like an after school anti-drug PSA for thirty-something dudes.
20th Century Studios
20th Century Studios
When the baby shows up on their doorstep, Gutenberg and Selleck assume that it’s the package. And after multiple scenes of them attempting to decipher how a diaper works, two drug dealers show up for the package. Naturally, they hand over the baby. And because everyone involved in the drug trade is an amoral psycho, they gladly accept this adorable infant in a crib instead of the box full of heroin they were going to sell as part of their business that in no way involves babies.
20th Century Studios
Selleck eventually realizes his mistake after finding the heroin between the couch cushions, (which is always where remote controls and boxes of heroin are) and dropping it all over his apartment building lobby.
20th Century Studios
He gets the baby back, but makes an enemy out of the drug dealers; ultimately they have to take these crooks down in an abandoned construction site, where any and all illicit events occurred in the 1980s it seems. Again, this is a weird way to end your baby-themed movie. Presumably the upcoming Disney reboot will replace heroin with, like, Disney Princess multivitamins.
Twins is About … Eugenics?
What You Remember:
The late Ivan Reitman’s Twins is almost entirely predicated on the idea that putting Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito side by side in matching suits would look hilarious on a movie poster – and dammit they were right.
The Subplot No One Talks About:
The reason why these two so dissimilar-looking human beings are twins involves some surprisingly questionable scientific ethics, which seemingly no one batted an eyelash at in 1988. Presumably because it’s not funny enough to have two dudes just look different, DeVito had to be a slob, and Schwarzenegger a genetically-enhanced superman. The movie opens in a top secret government lab where scientists are trying to produce the “perfect” human being, or master race, if you will.
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
Oh and the narrator is speaking in a thick Austrian accent, which explains Arnold’s dialect, but also really makes it seem like the Americans recruited a bunch of Nazi doctors to dabble in some crazy experiments on a mysterious island away from the prying eyes of the public. Was this really the best place to begin this light-hearted farce? We also learn that the experiment involves seven sperm donors and one Heather Graham, as captured in one of the world’s grossest photo ops.
Universal Pictures
If they ever make the much-talked-about sequel, Triplets, hopefully they dial back the eugenics stuff a bit …
License to Drive – An Unconscious Underage Girl is Abducted By Our “Heroes”
1988’s License to Drive was sold as a fun romp about teen boys going for a joy ride in a borrowed Cadillac, starring the two Coreys and Heather Graham, who apparently didn’t have an easy go of things in ‘88, because things somehow go even worse for her in this movie than in Twins – and she literally dies in childbirth 20 minutes into the latter.
The Subplot No One Talks About:
Early in the film, Graham’s love interest character, Mercedes – whose name predictably tees-up a car-based pun, like, 90 minutes later – gets super-hammered on her date with Les (Corey Haim) and blacks out. Rather than, you know, taking her home or to the friggin’ hospital, instead these gross teens just shove her in the back seat, at which point Corey Feldman starts taking photos of her unconscious body. Yeah, legally speaking, whether or not these kids are authorized to operate a vehicle seems like the least of their problems.
At least they try to solve her problem (alcohol poisoning) forcing her to sip soda fountain Pepsi from a pizza restaurant that amazingly didn’t call the cops.
20th Century Studios
Things amazingly get worse still when Les decides that the best course of action is to put her in the car’s trunk. Presumably “should you put actual human beings in your trunk?” was one of the questions he flunked on the driving test.
20th Century Studios
And of course, despite all of this madness, in the end, Les rides off with Mercedes –
– who amazingly is apparently a live teenager, and not an asphyxiated corpse.
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Top Image: 20th Century Studios
