Ruthless People (1986)

"Yes, your attack dogs: Do they just attack people, or can you get them to attack other dogs? Oh. Well, what if you starved 'em for a while? Oh."

"I've been kidnapped by Kmart! "

Why isn't it on Blu-ray?

"Did I ever tell you why I married her, Carol? Her father was very rich, and very sick. The doctors assured me he'd be dead any minute. There wasn't a second to lose! I rushed right out and married the boss' daughter. They pulled the plug on him. He wheezed and shook for about an hour. And then...he stabilized. The son of a bitch just got older and sicker. And older. And sicker. I went out and made my own fortune. The old fart hung in there for fifteen years. I want the rest of that money. His money - her money - it's MY money! I had to live with that squealing, corpulent little toad all these years. God, I hate that woman! I hate the way she licks stamps. I hate her furniture. And I hate that little sound she makes when she sleeps. And that filthy little shitbag dog of hers, Muffy!"

I do remember all the Memphis furniture in her house. Did that ever come back in style?

R5 No, but Judge Reinhold is still working.

And The Rolling Stones song was great too. Very fun, underrated movie. And I don't think Judge was ever cuter.

This song was great too

I think of this movie every time I pick up a spider and carry it outdoors.

For years I thought Helen Slater was Christian Slater's older sister. In fact, I think it was often stated as a fact in the press.

"Sam, as as sexually provocative as I may be"

"I'm not asking you to screw the dog, Carol"

I've adored DeVito since "Cuckoo's Nest". And Bette was at her comedic peak during this period. I love this movie, and so did my parents. For a while, we rented it probably every other time out.

not Haiti, Tahiti!

You can rent this movie on Amazon prime for just $3.99!

"They made me say that!"

I love this movie. I saw it three times at the theater. I’m from the Bay Area & still remember finding the scenes near the end (Bill Pullman in downtown LA) looked so upscale & glamorous, I wanted to move there.

[quote] not Haiti, Tahiti!

I think about this line CONSTANTLY.

It’s not on Blu ray because it’s owned by Disney (Touchstone) and they are loath to release anything that isn’t a recently Disney family hit or one of the big classic Disney titles. They’re sitting on a stack of classics like clueless assholes. Fortunately you can buy or rent the high definition stream of it online (Amazon, et al.). Which I may just do, because it’s one of my all time favorites from when I was a kid in the 80s and I haven’t seen it in 30 years.

Anthony (Red Hot Chili Peppers) Kleidis' dad played the psycho killer in the movie. You can see the resemblance.

I still love watching this movie. Anita Gillette was terrific as the duplicitous girlfriend. It's a shame that her career was cut short by cancer.

^Anita Morris!!

R18 That was James Freeman, noted character actor, gay man, and HIV-positive activist.

This movie looked like it was going to save Slater's career after Supergirl but for some reason she didn't seem to get much traction from it.

She had bad luck. I think she's fine in Supergirl and The Legend of Billie Jean is a guilty pleasure since I was an angry teen at the time too. That was odd that Christian Slater played her brother and probably where the mix up that they are actually siblings stems from.

I actually own this movie on VHS because my mom loved it and let me watch it despite the adult content. So many great lines, but what always got to me was the antics and sight humor. The part where the kidnapper's wife is running around in the background, freaking out yelling "I've got to get out of here!" while Judge Reinhold casually talks with the cops always hit me. Also the part when he's bringing Midler dinner and she harpoons the tray with a broom.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Pullman mishear Anita Morris as saying "Hades," not Haiti? I always thought the joke was he thought she was talking about going to hell.

R22 "My wife. She's late for work!"

And Bill misheard Anita's Tahiti (tropical paradise) as Haiti (dirty, dangerous hellhole). They're also on opposite sides of the planet, so he was just extra confused. But he got her off using a Dustbuster in bed.

FUCKING LOVE THIS MOVIE!!!!!! An underappreciated gem! ❤

I think this is my favorite comedy of all time. It is just so intricate as each piece is connected directly to each other. Each part is needed and makes every other scene funnier.

I especially like the part where the killer is dead and Barbara says something like “He said I look like his mother and you look like his father, so this is what our kid would look like.”

And when Judge is trying to escape from the cops through the bathroom window making all sorts of noises making the cops think he is having issues going to the bathroom. Juvenile, but hilarious.

He buys a Doberman to eat his wife's yappy little dog, but they end up as friends, and then he has two shitbag dogs messing up his house.

Going on my "to see" list

Haiti, not Hades.

FOUR FLAWLESS 1-CARAT DIAMONDS!

"I like a woman who makes a lotta noise. My wife just lies there like a gunny sack."

"Whatever you want, baby. It's your money!"

Bette is a wonderful comic actress. I wish there were more films like this, or Outrageous Fortune, which is my all-time favourite.

R31 The show that taught that uppity bitch Shelley Long to quit Cheers?

She thought she was the next Lucille Ball, but we all know she was better off at the bar.

[quote]For years I thought Helen Slater was Christian Slater's older sister. In fact, I think it was often stated as a fact in the press.

That was The Legend of Billie Jean

[quote]It’s not on Blu ray because it’s owned by Disney (Touchstone) and they are loath to release anything that isn’t a recently Disney family hit or one of the big classic Disney titles. They’re sitting on a stack of classics like clueless assholes. Fortunately you can buy or rent the high definition stream of it online (Amazon, et al.). Which I may just do, because it’s one of my all time favorites from when I was a kid in the 80s and I haven’t seen it in 30 years.

[italic]Big Business[/italic] got a Blu-ray. In fact, it got two.

Bette's "I'm being marked down!" line, the Memphis furniture, Helen Slater's truly hideous fashions...very funny

I hate the way she licks stamps!

The avant-garde mansion has to be one of the funniest extended sight gags in the history of film. Made all the more so for involving actual works in the style.

It was the most '80s movie of the 1980s

Sally Cruikshank's opening credits were pretty fantastic. Huge fan of her animation work.

Helen was also great in the Secret to my Success, another funny 80's movie

Love it

Were we supposed to like Bette's choice in weirdo fashion, hair, and furniture? Even in the 80s, there was such a thing as bad taste.

Oh my god, R41, I had forgotten all about the shapes of those letters in the credits.

R42, I think not -- all of those were sight gags, even then. Happily Barbara turned out to have better taste in the long run.

test

R42 - No. All of that was a joke back then too.

In 1985 Rolling Stone magazine reported that Madonna was to star in this film opposite Danny Devito, something happened and she backed out to do the flop Shanghai Surprise with her then husband Sean Penn

After Desperarely Seeking Susan came out and was a hit, Madonna got a lot of big film offers

R47, in Bette's role or in one of the other female leads?

As Muffy, one assumes.

Bette's last line in this clip always sends me. It's not even a joke, she just makes it funny.

Sorry, her line after the guy falls down the stairs.

Rewatching it right now….such a classic!

I’m confused about which role Madonna was offered for this film. Can’t imagine her in it. I love her in DSS, but in this?

Bill Pullman and Anita Morris together in this bring it to a whole new level.

Madonna was likely being considered for Anita Morris' role and thankfully she passed as she would have ruined this pitch perfect movie

R55 by the RS article it implied it was Bette Midler’s role and she wasn’t being considered, she was literally OFFERED it

Midler was second choice to Madonna? Bwaaaaahaaaahaaaa.

R57 it’s in the 1985vRS issue with Springsteen on the cover, I have it

I don’t think Midler was second choice, I think the wife was supposed more attractive and younger, hence Madonna being offered the role and her signing on, after Madonna managed to get out of her contract , they probably decided to change things and make the wife Middle Aged and average

I'm with R55. The only role I can see 1985-1987 Madonna in is the Anita Morris/Other Woman part. She was too young & pretty to be Devito's bitter, long-suffering wife. And too bitchy to play the sweet pushover Sandy.

While I'm certain that Rolling Stone would never get anything wrong - the main premise of the movie is that the husband wants to get rid of his wife. That wouldn't make any sense if she was much younger and attractive than him

Watch it here. Yes its a Russian site, but they have tons, and tons of any movie you can think of. Just make sure you have an ad-blocker.

The filmed script really seems like it was written specifically for Bette in that role.

Even though Madonna was featured in the promotion of Desperately Seeking Susan, she was really the third or fourth main character. Hardly a sure thing at that point to headline a film

Used to watch it on cable all the time when I was a kid, very funny movie, definitely reminded me of people we knew.

My parents had acquaintances who had furniture like that (they did not have kids so I was never at their house) but they would laugh about it when the movie was on, how there was no graceful way to exit the couches and chairs.

R60 again the script was most likely rewritten

Or Madonna and her publicity team told an exaggeration. It would hardly be the first and only one

R65 she had a lot of offers back then, in fact the films she turned down won actresses Oscars

Salma Hayek even thanked Madonna publicly for walking away from Frieda, Hayek took over and was Oscar nominated

And then of course Chicago too

Madonna had horrible taste in picking film roles

R66 Why the FUCK would Madonna (a white broad from Detroit) be cast as Frida Kahlo, a Mexican artist? Salma Hayek actually is from Mexico!

I watched it again last night, this time with the Madonna info in my head. I could see Madonna doing the "mean captive torturing her captors" really well, just not in the way Bette did it. It would have more low-key but more vicious and not nearly as funny. Everything else the character does in the movie doesn't really suit her.

What I really cannot picture is Madonna in a fat suit for the first half of the film. Maybe that was the creative differences she had.

Bette Midler and Danny DeVito are perfect casting as a married couple who hate each other. They're close in age and temperament, and you could believe they married a long time ago and have feuded ever since. Midler can also play a woman who is both fiery and vulnerable, torturous and funny. Madonna doesn't have that range.

Plus, picturing Danny and Madonna as a couple? No.

This movie is one of the funniest comedies ever. Every scene is a gem, and nobody can play a total asshole like Danny DeVito.

R70

The opening scene, where he quietly explains all the reasons he hates his wife and can't wait to kill her with his own two hands, is one of the easiest and best character reveals of the 1980s. You learn all you need to know about him in that one little monologue.

And Bette's first scene (where she screams profanities at her kidnappers and attacks them even while blindfolded and restrained, and all while wearing hideous 80s high fashion), tells us all we need to know about her.

"YOU'VE FUCKED WITH THE WRONG PERSON! MY HUSBAND DOES BUSINESS WITH THE MAFIA! WHEN THEY TRACK YOU DOWN, YOU, YOUR WHOLE FAMILY, AND EVERYONE YOU EVER KNEW WILL ALL GET CHAINSAW ENEMAS! AND THAT'S NOT ALL!"

r71 His delivery is perfect in that scene. He was hilarious.

"Bette Midler and Danny DeVito are perfect casting as a married couple who hate each other. "

It is perfect! They did another film together, "Drowning Mona", which seems to have vanished without a trace.

But you can totally believe that Bette and Danny would marry each other with or without ulterior motives, they have so much in common that you can totally believe that whatever else was motivating them, these are two people who understand each other on a very deep level. And the fact that they come to loathe each other over time is just as believable.

R73 totally agree with that, great onscreen couple!

R50 I never noticed her delivery of that line before but just watched it and can't stop laughing! Thank you!

R67 uh you do realize that Madonna owned the film rights to Frieda at that time? She sold them and they cast Salma Hayek

Madonna has played Hispanic before in Evita and she’s half Italian, for years Italians weren’t considered “white “

[quote] Or Madonna and her publicity team told an exaggeration. It would hardly be the first and only one

Madonna turned it down when realized RUTHLESS PEOPLE wouldn't be a documentary about her.

I saw this movie in high school at a sneak preview a week or two before it opened in a huge theater that was packed. People were falling all over themselves laughing, myself included. I was giddy from this movie and I couldn't wait for it to open so I could go see it again. Opening night, I got a group of friends together and we all went to see it. I had been talking it up all week. I remember my friends being not as delighted by it as I was and I was so disappointed.

I think I went to see it one more time at the end of the summer when it was coming off its run. I still love it to this day. Dale Launer is a great comedy writer and I don't understand why his career basically ended after My Cousin Vinny, another comedy gem.

Bump for the morning crew

Glad to see this movie getting the high praise it deserves here. It really is a perfect comedy.

The only thing I don't like is how the mistress and her himbo can't tell it's not Devito in their blackmail tape.

Great 80s movie! The pervy cop being blackmailed by the two morons is memorable.

Why did Bette never get her tits out in any of her movies? Feels like it would have added a little something extra for her male fans.

Meh! it's brash and funny at times but doesn't build like the best farces do and the most of the characters aren't as funny as they're supposed to be and the script is a patchwork plot. It grows tiresome.

R77, he also wrote Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels, which is also hysterical. You’re right, it’s strange—he should have been much bigger. He just disappeared in the early 90s. He’s kind of obscure, but does anyone know what happened to him?

This is my favorite scene--this is Bette Midler at her funniest.

This (along with her yodeling song in 'Big Business") is her highest point in comedy movies.

[quote] the script is a patchwork plot

??

The script is hardly a patchwork plot. It's actually very intricately plotted and it absolutely builds. You're kind of stupid.

One of my favorite moments in this movie is near the end, after Judge Reinhold drives off the Santa Monica Pier and onlookers jump into the water to collect the bills that have floated to the surface. Danny DeVito yells frantically, “My money! They’re taking MY money!” And then he turns to a cop and shouts “STOP ‘EM!” before throwing the cop into the ocean.

I remember asking my mom while watching it at the drive-in what "A poke in the whiskers" meant, Since my mom thought herself a Bette Midler wanna be I am glad she never told me. And I am glad I never had to found out.

Oh god, that phrase made me certain I was gay because it made me nauseated just to think about it.

The way it was so crudely ADR'ed in also made it stand out.

R80 I always accepted that they stopped watching the tape before they could see who it really was. They didn’t want to watch Sam murder someone, especially with all the screaming.

And I love that it’s the mayor who is boinking the girl and has to come up with a reason to make sure Sam is arrested. The phone conversation between the Mayor and Anita Morris is so funny because they are both taking about different things but neither realizes it.

I was always so fascinated by how pliable the hooker's tits were who fucked the police chief. They looked like little water beds.

Definitely one of the best sets of tits in any R-rated movie ever.

They way the mayor (or was he the chief of police? He also played the principal on Head of the Class) sticks his head out of the car window and says "more!" is hilarious.

[quote] The phone conversation between the Mayor and Anita Morris is so funny because they are both taking about different things but neither realizes it.

(paraphrased)

ANITA: Did you watch the tape? CHIEF: Yes ANITA: Well? What did you think? CHIEF: He must be a very lonely man? ANITA: What? He's depraved! I shudder to think of that poor girl in that monster's hands! CHIEF: Well, he's... he's not that bad. ANITA: Not that bad?! He's disgusting. He's killing her! Her screaming makes my blood run cold. CHIEF: I wouldn't go that far. She knew what it was.

The whole conversation is hilarious, and a perfect example of how to make an old routine (misunderstanding) fresh and funny.

Definitely the Chief of Police. I can hear Anita Morris saying it in my head lol

My favorite part was how Bette gradually got into shape while chained to her bed. She's watching TV, tapping her toe to the rhythm. Next think you know, she's using her ball and chain as resistance weights. Voila, she has lost the weight she's always wanted to lose.

And she only lost 20 lbs yet she looks like she's dropped five sizes.

Has there ever been a single motion picture comedy that was better than Ruthless People? I think not.

Along with Less Than Zero, this is the most 80s movie ever set in LA.

What's Up Doc and Tootsie are funnier and better, but Ruthless People is very very very up there. It's easily one of the five funniest films I've ever seen.

Great movie. Anita Morris is fab too and she herself is a DL thread between Nine/A Call to the Vatican, her gay Broadway husband Grover Dale, and their actor son James Badge Dale.

What’s Up Doc and Tootsie are not funnier than Ruthless People. No way. This thread has already proved THAT.

Anita Morris was wonderful, tragically died so young.

I hate WUD and can't watch Tootsie again. Ruthless People is memorably funny. Judge Rheinold trying to sell a huge stereo to a stoner with a pregnant girlfriend? Bitchin'!

Drowning Mona was just as good, if not better!

^^ A HUGELY pregnant girlfriend, no less.

Bette and Danny's house full of nightmare Memphis Group furniture was just the most 80s thing ever.

My favorite funniest movies are What's Up Doc, Ruthless People, Lost in America and Some Like it Hot. I like Victor/Victoria a lot, (especially any scene with Lesley Ann Warren) and prefer it to Tootsie.

Airplane and Naked Gun are also very funny. The same guys made Ruthless People.

"Why did Bette never get her tits out in any of her movies? Feels like it would have added a little something extra for her male fans."

Oh, like Bette has ever had a straight male fan in her life!

I wish I could find the video of her when she was on a telethon and offered to "Drop her dress for Israel". Someone took her up on the offer, too. It was hysterical!

Here you go R113

And the drop…

R86 R87 Patch job comprised of 'done before plot' and situations stitched together from other films.

F&F the odious liar @ R116.

It's not patchwork, you fucking clod, it's a modern take on the O. Henry story The Ransom of Red Chief. And a very clever one.

This is the kind of comedy where every single scene has laughs in it. Offhand, I can't think of a movie that has provided that in YEARS.

R118 The O'Henry story served as the basis for 1958s Too Many Crooks and 1967s The Happening which like the abrasive, unfunny, belabored Ruthless People bear a conceptual likeness to O'Henry's story about a kidnap victim who isn't wanted but nothing else. Inept criminals/kidnappers, crude humor, idiotic people are common comedy fodder and those in RP are second-hand, uninteresting and unfunny.

Oh STFU r120 and get a sense of humor

I have blocked r116 and r120, probably for incredibly odious things, like racism or homophobia.

They're the same person.

R121 Why so angry? It's only an insignificant movie. Get a life and maybe then you'll get a sense of humor. You type seriously UNFUCKED and that's no laughing matter.

I figured they might be r123. I didn’t bother to check my ignored threads since I wanted, well, keep them ignored.

R118 aka R123 lacks a sense of irony which is why he finds the lowbrow RP funny.

I watch Ruthless People every so often and it's still FUCKING HILARIOUS. It's such a well-written film, and every character is brilliantly cast and written. Even the tiny parts.

Bette really should have been nominated for this. She is so funny in this. She has the difficult task of playing the shrew wife who is likable, not to mention, make us believe that she would become friends with the people who kidnapped her.

And Bill Pullman was also brilliant. So sexy and stupid but hilarious.

I love this film and with the exception of Looking for Mr. Goodbar, this is my most in-demand film to be issued on Blu-Ray.

It still holds up.

r124 you sound very angry and unloved. Pity.

^Oh, poor me! Let's psychoanalyze and put down someone who doesn't agree with me. Your probably in your 50s or 60s and your spending time trying to justify a worthless film!

I think it's quite interesting how Bette and Danny initially thought that the movie would ruin their careers, and it turned out to be such a beloved gem of the 80s. I know that Bette has a very difficult to work with reputation, but I think she's one of the greatest comedy actresses out there.

I watched this movie again on Vudu, because I hadn't seen it in years. I'm in love, all over again!!!

Gawd, Better was fantastic in this, it's by far the performance of her career and she should have been Oscar nominated, but the AMPAS just doesn't appreciate comic performances. DeVito is also amazing, the whole cast gives career-best performances, because they had one of the best farces ever written to work with. It really is a perfect farce, with each situation building on the other to cumulate in a finale that seems hopeless... but which turns out to be quite perfect. I love this movie, always will, and yeah - it's THE most 80's thing ever made in the 80s.

[quote] it's THE most 80's thing ever made in the 80s.

I love the movie, but THE most 80s thing? IMO Whoopi's Jumping Jack Flash is right up there, too.

Pleasantly surprised at the near-universal love for this movie here.

It's difficult to think of another movie where there's been such agreement here. But it certainly isn't Jumping Jack Flash

I think “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” is up there, too. It always makes me laugh.

Recently I revisited “Drowning Mona”, and it held up. And thinking about DeVito, I’d add “Throw Momma From The Train”, which I might try to rewatch later.

Thanks so much, R114 R115 ! This was a sensation to a young kid watching and is still great fun to see.

I agree re: Bette deserving an Oscar nomination that year, especially when you look at some of the utter dreck that they threw into lead actress because of the dearth of viable nominees. Jane Fonda for The Morning After? Sissy Spacek for Crimes of the Heart? Fuck, even Marlee Matlin wasn't deserving of a nomination, and she won. And I would have nominated Bette over Sigourney, though I don't mind Sigourney's nom. The only one of the five that truly deserved to be there was Kathleen Turner.

[quote] It's difficult to think of another movie where there's been such agreement here. But it certainly isn't Jumping Jack Flash Ju That wasn't the point though. It was about Ruthless People being THE 80s thing ever done in the 80s. Jumping Jack Flash and the whole work set up of the lead was very 80s.

Sorry, let me try again.

[quote] It's difficult to think of another movie where there's been such agreement here. But it certainly isn't Jumping Jack Flash.

That wasn't the point though. It was about Ruthless People being THE 80s thing ever done in the 80s. Jumping Jack Flash and the whole work set up of the lead was very 80s.

R137 Bette belongs to the totem pole school of acting; one hideous face on top of another She mugs outrageously which some elder gays love and her performances in RP, Outrageous Fortune, Jinxed, Beaches, The Stepford Wives, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, That Old Feeling . . .are pretty much the same old shtick!

R140 You forgot the Gayest Movie of the 1990s: "The First Wives Club."

Hmmm, I thought the gayest non-gay movie of the 90s was actually DEATH BECOMES HER

r142, one word: Versayce.

First Wives annoys me, Death Becomes has me laughing out loud every time.

One of you queens needs to turn this into a new thread, so we can all dig through that Goodwill shoe bin we call our long-term memory.

R141 Bette was actually somewhat restrained, for her, in The First Wives Club which is why I didn't list it, but I didn't forget it.

Let’s please not get off-track and start discussing shit like SHOWGIRLS, for fuck’s sake. That garbage has nothing in common with Ruthless People. Get the fuck outta here.

[quote] Get the fuck outta here.

Listen to your own advice, hall monitor.

Nobody likes a hall monitor, r147.

R148 It is a good idea for a thread, though. Homo movies of the 1990s that go beyond the predictable choices.

What about John Waters' 90s films, like Serial Mom or Pecker? What about GI Jane?

Danny DeVito was part of some of the -- no, THE best black comedies of the '80s: Ruthless People, Throw Momma from the Train and War of the Roses. Talk about the holy trinity. I haven't seen Throw Momma in some time but Ruthless People and War of the Roses still hold up. And all three films feature outstanding, iconic and Oscar-worthy (one was even nominated) female performances - Bette (RP), Anne Ramsey (TMFTT) and Kathleen Turner (WOTR).

Loved WAR OF THE ROSES. So dark.

Indeed, r151! And DeVito directed both Throw Momma and War of the Roses.

I think all these films were perhaps a bit ahead of their time. War of the Roses was definitely not Romancing the Stone. I love that Douglas and Turner did something completely different.

"She mugs outrageously which some elder gays love"

This is the one film where her outrageous mugging worked! No other actress would commit so fully to the scenes where she played a shrieking harpy, most actresses would have wanted to make the character more sympathetic and well-rounded, and taken the edge off the comedy. And Bette did make the character sympathetic and well-rounded by the end of the movie, which was actually a nice bit of acting skill, pulling that off after being so completely vicious in her early scenes.

And I say that as someone who's not a fan of Bette Midler, I actively dislike most of her movies that I've seen, and her performances in most of them. But this is a tightly written farce, her mugging worked for once.

Exactly, R153. Also, I (like many others here) saw this movie when I was a KID—I must have been all of 10. I was not then and am not now a fan of Bette Midler’s. Being an “elder gay” doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with liking this movie.

Also, the person you were quoting is the anti-Ruthless People asshole troll, and I have him blocked.

I was also around 10 when this movie came out, I first saw it on video and loved it even though at the time I was too young to understand all the adult humor. It's been one of my favorite comedies all these years.

Why, all of a sudden, do I want 80s-era Judge Reinhold inside me so deeply?!

I am the first to admit I need to get out more.

He was definitely hot R156. I also get big dick vibes from. Not necessarily from his face, but more his deep voice. If he doesn’t have a long dong, then he *definitely* has huge balls.

I get more big dick vibes from Bette Midler than Judge Reinhold!

the Memphis furniture is priceless now.

I always found Judge Reinhold kinda sexy until he butchered his face with plastic surgery.

R160 - OMG, you're right! I hadn't seen him in years. WTF did he do? He's not Joan Van Ark bad, more like Anne Archer bad. What a shame.

Are there any underwear/bulge pics of Reinhold anywhere? I’m curious if the big dick vibe is for real.

Why are there no ruthFUL people?

Due to this thread, I watched the movie last night for the first time in decades. It's truly hilarious, great performances and writing all around. Danny DeVito can wear thin, but he was perfect in this. And Bette's "transformation" from her dumpy fat suit to rocking Spandex is wonderful.

Bette/Barbra can't have been held prisoner for long enough to lose that weight, maybe she was retaining a few pints of water?

r165 must have been passed out during the hilarious montage of Bette/Barbara exercising like a fiend all day while not eating

I have to say I am just so happy to see this thread getting the attention it is. I just love this movie so much and it makes me so happy that others enjoy it too.

I read that the original screenplay ended with Devito's character kidnapping Bette's character at Helen Slater's Paris fashion show, setting up a sequel. The ending is perfect though, so I'm glad they didn't include that.

For those who haven't seen it, they should check out the previous Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker movie, Top Secret! It's currently free on YouTube Movies.

They wrote this script themselves and the movie suffers for it, as it's all over the place. Still it's in the same joke a minute style as Airplane and their Naked Gun movies.

R168 Sequels are almost always bullshit

Gotcha! with Anthony Edwards is also another good 80's movie

R167 the look on Bette's face when she learns her asshole husband is haggling her ransom down. It's too much!

poke in da whiskazzz

r172 agreed! Another reason she should have been nominated for an Oscar. That scene is hilarious.

When do you think was the last time Sam poked Barbara in the whiskers?

R175 Well, they slept in separate twin beds, so probably years and years.

Wonder why they still shared a bedroom

R177 The script never said, but I've often seen couples who will compromise on separate beds, but think separate bedrooms is too much. Plus, Sam already had a mistress that Barbara surely knew about, so maybe she figured him having his own bedroom would lead to the mistress coming over to fuck in her house. Carol would never fuck Sam Stone in that weirdo bedroom with twin beds.

Big Business> Ruthless People

R179 You're not entirely wrong, but them's fightin' words

Still, the time is right for a fresh thread. Start one with that assertion (or just ask gays what they think of Big Business), and see what happens. I never thought this many would comment about Ruthless People.

No way. Big Business is trash and does not hold up.

Other than being farces starring Bette, the films don't have much in common.

Big Business is already streaming on family-friendly Disney +. For a lot of reasons, RP won't be on that platform, but hopefully will find another streaming home soon.

182 "You scumbag! You lowlife motherfucker!"

I love Big Business and watched it a few months back and it's still a lot of fun. But it's nowhere near as good or as funny as Ruthless People.

Bette looked so ridiculous in her bogus Bill Blass couture.

Big Business is a cute, funny movie, but Ruthless People is hilarious and pretty twisted.

Crazy 1980s fashion, hair and decor. Feeling nostalgic for that time. OTT.

I miss adult comedies like this, I wish they were still made.

R188 Gilbert Gottfried's podcast (plugged on DL before) often discusses the great dark comedies of the past, and laments the fact that no one can make one anymore. Movies like Ruthless People, Where's Poppa?, Harold and Maude, etc. They argue the last great dark comedy was Alexander Payne's Election, or maybe Fargo.

No mention of Sam’s phone call. Sam: Hello. Debbie? Who is this? Oh Debbie’s boyfriend. Well Debbie can’t come to the phone right now because she has my dick in her mouth! To the cop: I love wrong numbers

Drop Dead Gorgeous is also a dark comedy and one of my personal favorites. There is no way in hell that movie could ever get made today.

R191 Starting a thread for it now!

Barbara: YOU'VE F***ED WITH THE WRONG PERSON! My husband does business with the Mafia! When they track you down, you, your entire family, everyone you ever KNEW will all get chainsaw enemas!

Another fuuunny Milder film is "Outrageous Fortune" with Shelley Long.

R193 Classic, but for Shelly Long's insufferable whoring after she made her first hit movie.

R189, that is very true. Everything is so… sensitive now.

R195 And fewer writers are exploring those comedy muscles that dance on the line between humor and darkness. Also, audiences don't reward thoughtful humor anymore. They want cheap laughs, remakes, and flashy superhero movies they can sell to the ChiComs. The little Red Devils LOVE a CGI comic book movie that doesn't need subtitles.

R195 On Gilbert's podcast, Phil Rosenthal (creator of Everybody Loves Raymond) talked about how lazy comedy has gotten. He mentioned a classic "I Love Lucy" episode where Lucy lost her wedding ring while baking. At the end of the episode, she eats a piece of cake and you see her gulp, knowing she just found/swallowed the wedding ring.

"You know what today's sitcom would do with that joke? They'd call the episode 'Shitting the Ring,' and there'd be several gruesome scenes in the bathroom joking about poop."

I don’t quite understand why the movie business has gotten that way. But I guess that’s a topic for another thread.

I soooo wish this movie would come out on Blu ray. I intend to buy the Amazon stream of it. I still haven’t re-watched it since this thread was started—it’s been like 30 years since I saw it!

I'm glad to see all the love for Ruthless People on DL. It's always been one of my favorite comedies - it's a hilarious film!