Great Movie Titles

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff”.

Doesn’t have to be a good movie. Looking for titles that grab you and make you movie curious.

[italic] “Picnic at Hanging Rock” [/italic]

I Dismember Mama

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

[italic] “Dial M for Murder” [/italic]

Hitchcock had a flair for movie titles.

R6 Hitchcock didn't write the play.

Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad

Hitchcock had a flair for choosing plays to turn into movies.

Of course, IMDB beat me to the topic.

Butterfield 8

Requiem for a Dream

The Way We Were

Dumb and Dumberer

[italic] The Andromina Strain [/italic]

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask

Panic in Needle Park

The Gods Must Be Crazy.

Satan Met a Lady

I, the Worst of All, is a movie about Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, a 17th century Mexican nun who signed her confession with these words when she was forced to renounce all her worldly beliefs and creations she made as the foremost musician, poet and writer in the Americas.

[quote] [italic] “Witness for the Prosecution“ [/italic]

[quote] ‘Strangers on a train.”

The Eyes of Laura Mars

Apocalypto. Not historically accurate, but simulates one.

Throw Mama from the Train

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The City of Your Final Destination

Easy Rider

Shoot the Piano Player

American Graffiti

The Day the Clown Cried

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad world.

The Year of Living Dangerously.

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

The Silence of The Lambs

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

A Clockwork Orange

Polyester

Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears

Plan 9 from Outer Space

Greed

Whenever we get these threads, we always get nominations mostly for long titles--as if those were somehow automatically great titles.

But there are long titles that are genuinely terrible (although they are often wrongly nominated as great titles simply because they're long):

"Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?"

"Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?"

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands

Eyes Wide Shut

[quote] 2001: A Space Oddicie”.

Picture Mommy Dead

Tigers Are Not Afraid

He Who Gets Slapped

[italic]Valiant is the Word for Carrie,[/italic] but only because it inspired the same year the funniest title ever for a Three Stooges short, [italic]Violent is the Word for Curly.[/italic]

Children of a Lesser Gid

Legends of the Fall

A River Runs Through It

Some Like It Hot

A great short title: Sunset Boulevard

Snakes on a Plane

She Done Him Wrong

All About Eve

Down to the Sea in Ships

Rat Pfink a Boo Boo

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

Apocalypse Now

Raise the Red Lantern

Silence of the Lambs

Octopussy

Natural Born Killers

Some good ones, above.

[quote] “The Longest Day” had a lot in it for a single day shoot.

You Only Live Twice

The Best Years of Our Lives

Z

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Lust In the Dust

Eating Raoul

The Man Who Knew Too Much

The Man With One Red Shoe

Black Narcissus

Whatever happened to Baby Jane

The Snake Pit

A Woman's Face

To Wong Foo

Hairspray

Kill pretty Peggy

The killing of Sister George

Bunny O'Hare

Possessed

On a Clear day you can see forever

Soylent Green

The Man who came to Dinner

The Breakfast Club and Bend It Like Beckham

East of Eden

A Passage to India

Slums of Beverly Hills

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Short title: Chocolat

Throw Momma From The Train

The Human Stain

Die! Die! My Darling!

Cabaret

“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”

How about, “What’s the matter with Helen?” With Debbie Reynolds and Shelly Winters, 1971

And “The Manchurian Candidate”.

Earth Girls are Easy

Thomas Crown Affair

Snakes On A Plane,

[quote] To Wong Foo

The correct title is: "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar".

^did not make me want to see it, and I haven’t.

The Chinese title of "Hilary and Jackie" is "She is Lonelier than the Fireworks."

Originally plays, again, but I also like:

[italic] Death of a Salesman [/italic]

[italic] The Postman Always Rings Twice [/italic]

And

[italic] A Lion in Winter [/italic]

OP, I’ve always preferred “The Man Who Hung Levolor Valance.”

Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

"Dawson's 50-Load Weekend"

"The Young and the Hung"

"Powertool"

"Big Guns"

"Pizza Boy - He Delivers"

R5, I think that’s a particularly good one.

[italic] “My Beautiful Launderette” [/italic]

Has a Gay theme, too.

Linda Lovelace For President

Satan Came to Eden

Passion in the Desert

Murder, My Sweet

This Gun for Hire

The Long Goodbye

Sorry, Wrong Number

Far From the Madding Crowd

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Rosemary’s Baby

American Psycho

A Nightmare On Elm Street

Inside Llewyn Davis

Ad Astra

Moonlight

Scream The Hills Have Eyes A Nightmare On Elm Street

Wes Craven owns this thread.

Shit, it didn’t format right

Scream

A Nightmare On Elm Street

The Hills Have Eyes

Wes Craven owns this thread.

Anatomy of a Murder

And Now the Screaming Starts

R76, I like that one. Already gives me chills!

Scream and Scream Again

Nothing But the Night

Hobo With a Shotgun

Hobo With a Shotgun

Hallelujah, I'm a Bum

Lady Madonna

Terrible movie, great title

8 Heads in a Duffle Bag

The Last Picture Show

Nocturnal Animals

The Last Picture Show.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Citizen Kane

Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo

Dawson's Fifty Load Weekend

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek

Shaft

My Life As A Dog

Bad Little Angel

Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears

Killer Clowns from Outer Space

Cannibal Holocaust

A Nightmare on Elm Street

They all tell you everything you need to know.

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot

Daddy's Dyin', Who's Got the Will?

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

From Hell It Came

Hell is For Heroes

Sounder

Technically, it's "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" with the question mark.

Stalag 17

BUtterfield 8

By Love Possessed

I Spit on Your Grave

Pan's Labyrinth

American Graffiti

The 400 Blows

Cinema Paradiso

Day for Night

Tootsie

Rebel Without a Cause

Eraserhead

Santa Sangre

Dog Day Afternoon

Full Metal Jacket

Last Tango in Paris

Romper Stomper

Some LIke It Hot

Love Bug

The Brain That Wouldn't Die

Goodbye, Dragon Inn

Une si jolie petite plage

This World, Then the Fireworks

Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

Once Upon a Time in America

Garden of the Finzi-Continis

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

R12, I disagree about [italic] Tootsie. [/italic] Does the name, alone, really make you curious about the movie? Would you pay to rent it just by the name? Well, to each his own.

Here’s a bad movie name, IMHO: [italic] “Reds”. [/italic] The name does nothing for me.

^I meant R102.

[italic] “A Christmas Moose” [/italic]

Best title ever!

Summary: A moose named Moose wants nothing more than to be a part of Santa's sleigh team, and will do anything to achieve his dream.

Available at a dollar store near you.

I like “Pacific Heights”, even though it’s vague. Still sounds cool.

Each Dawn I Die

Ladies They Talk About

Born to Kill

Ok mostly great titles, now which ones actually lived up to it? I would put my money on They Shoot Horses, Don’t They as mentioned a few times. An unforgettable film.

A Walk in the Sun

Where the Sidewalk Ends

To Each His Own

From Here to Eternity

[italic] Too Big to Fail [/italic] is a mediocre title, but properly descriptive. The movie itself is an excellent portrayal of what was happening at the time of the crash, as far as what was observable to the public, meaning “me”, and most of you.

We see the Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, having a nervous breakdown in full view of the public, which happened. The actor should have sweat more, though, but was otherwise great. The Euro (French) finance minister calls him “Honk”, which was great.

They didn’t show Bush at all., which was curious. They might have, at least, mentioned him as calling Honk, and doing so many times.

They also skipped mentioning when the government guaranteed money market funds, which literally saved the economy and world from a complete breakdown, so it deserved mention.

I think I’ll watch it again tonight.

Elevator to the Gallows.

The Towering Inferno.

The Wages of Fear.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Farting for Freedom

From Russia with Love.

Walk on the Wild Side

Untamed Youth

The Girl Can't Help It

Silents and 1930s films have great titles: ' Powder My Back (1928, lost film) She Learned About Sailors (1934) Merrily We Go To Hell (1932) Sh! The Octopus (1937)

Wristcutters: A Love Story

A lot of the titles mentioned are NOT "movie" titles. They're book or play titles and the book or play just happened to be made into a movie. Among them: "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?", "From Here To Eternity", "Requiem For A Dream", "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", "Picnic At Hanging Rock", "The Silence of the Lambs", "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", "A Clockwork Orange", "Sounder", "The Last Picture Show", "Children of a Lesser God", "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean." I myself was going to list "Deliverance" as a great title, until I remembered it was the title of a novel by James Dickey.

[quote] She Learned About Sailors (1934)

Is shame name already taken because it make good name for my autobiography storybook.

My favorite long title:

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, or How I Flew From London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes

7 Men From Now

R116, aka "Lift to the Scaffold" (UK)

Picture Mommy Dead, The Discrete Charm of the Bourgerious, Savages Messiah, Crimes of Passion, Call Me By Your Name, Female Trouble, Desperate Living

Sharknado

Dr. Strangelove

Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?

Cinderella Liberty

Rollerball

The Wild Bunch

In The Heat of The Night

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?

Heathers

My Own Private Idaho

R133: there’s no ? for Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner - it’s a demand, not a question.

R134, I’m conflicted but it seems like the punctuation is missing, to me. Where’s the period? Or exclamation point?

[quote]Technically, it's "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" with the question mark.

No. Technically, it's "WHAT EVER Happened to Baby Jane?" Two words. (Since you're being "technical.")

Ma Nuit Chez Maud

Skidoo!

Little Big Man

Heller in Pink Tights

God's Little Acre

“Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx”

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

High Anxiety

Hard

I prefer “Bad Day at Black Cock,” OP.

Body Double

r142 I prefer "Black Cock Down."

Whatever Happened to Susan Jane?

Big Bad Mama

[italic] A Bridge Too Far

The Bridge on the River Kwai [/italic]

Flubber

Four Flies on Grey Velvet

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

Hatchet for the Honeymoon

Blood and Black Lace

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin

Don't Torture a Duckling

The Preacher's Wife

The Painted Veil

Lord Love a Duck

The 10,000 Fingers of Dr. T

Blood and Black Lace

The Bride Wore Black

I like all of the above.

Eyes of Laura Mars.

The Hand That Rocks The Cradle

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Psycho

Pet Sematary

In the Bedroom

Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

I saw it at a video store in the 90s and only picked it up because of the title. Great film, It turned me into an Almodovar fan.

Séance on a Wet Afternoon

Radio Days

The Human Centipede

Wild Tigers I Have Known

What Have I Done To Deserve This?

Promises in the Dark

Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills

Eating Raoul

Pretty Poison

The Straight Story

Under the Yum Yum Tree

Evil Angels (the Australian title for A Cry in the Dark)

Prick Up Your Ears (which really means Prick Up Your Arse - very Joe Orton)

Trip with the Teacher

A History of Violence

Strangers on a Train

Gods and Monsters

Never Look Away

Judgment at Nuremberg

The Sweet Hereafter

A Brief Vacation

Boy A

Germany Year Zero

Ride the High Country

The Bad and the Beautiful

Now, Voyager

Medium Cool

The Long Voyage Home

I Know Where I'm Going!

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

“Love Is Colder Than Death” by Fassbinder.

I know what you did summer

Last Tango In Paris

Lady in a Cage

Who Slew Auntie Roo?

Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?

I Saw What You Did

Mr. Sardonicus

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

I read op as great movie titties.

Great titties? Ivanka

For great movie titties no one beats Jane Russell

Once Is Not Enough

Book titties shouldn't count. But here's another. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Never Love a Stranger. Ok that's two.

If It’s Tuesday, This Must be Belgium

Sssssss

Forever Amber. Never seen it though.

Boeing, Boeing

I Was a Communist For the FBI

R183, Too Much is Not Enough

Eating Raoul

Surf Nazis Must Die

Beach Blanket Bingo

Videodrome

Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round

What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?

The Lizzie McGuire Movie

POWERTOOL

The President is Nutty

The President is a Fruitcake

The President is Cuckoo

The President is Deranged

All still under development.

Girls Demand Excitement (1931 college comedy with John Wayne

Nice Girls Don't Explode

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead

Kiss Me Deadly

The Naked Kiss

Mysterious Skin

White Dog

Twin Peaks, of course.

Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill

The Slums of Beverly Hills

There Will Be Blood

First Blood

Ragtime

Last Year At Marienbad

The 3:10 to Yuma

Little Big Man

The Greatest Story Ever Told

Little Fauss and Big Halsy

[quote] The 3:10 to Yuma

It's better than that, it's just:

3:10 to Yuma

I love numbers in titles for films that are not sequels:

Stalag 17

BUtterfield 8

10 Rillington Place

Bocaccio '70

Messalina - Kaiserin und Hure

JE BRÛLE DE PARTOUT JE BRÛLE DE PARTOUT JE BRÛLE DE PARTOUT JE BRÛLE DE PARTOUT JE BRÛLE DE PARTOUT

Waiting to exhale

Breezy

Silent Night, Deadly Night

R202 Regarding numbers in titles the film The Madness of King George, should have been called the Madness of King George III, as that was the George he was, but they were afraid that Americans would think it was the third film in a series and not come because they didn't see the first two. Not so worrisome when it's Stalag 17 or even Butterfield 8.

54

Doesn’t George III look like Prince William?

The Sterile Cuckoo

Chunnel

C.H.U.D.

The Towering Inferno.

Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quin

Oh what a Lovely War

The Wrong Box

Little Murders

The Lady Vanishes

Rochelle, Rochelle

Liquid Sky

[italic] “The Unbearable Lightness of Being. [/italic]

Donne Darko rocked as a name.

Aged in Wood

Footsteps on the Ceiling

La Fabuleux DestIn d'Amélie Poulain

Scorchy

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Dead Poet's Society

Jaws

The Bone Collector

Devil in a Blue Dress

Jaws 3D

The Usual Suspects

The Taking of Pelham 123

12 Angry Men

Long Day's Journey into Night

Grumpy Old Men

The Case of the Smiling Stiffs

2069: A Sex Odyssey

Pretty in Pink

Less Than Zero

[Italic] The Great Escape! [/Italic]

Sounds great.

Day of the Locust

Benji

R231 reminds me. How about [italic] Willard? [/Italic]

Oh, I remind myself. How about [italic] “The Omega Man?”

How about Nanny McPhee Returns?

The InterWebs say the title of the play and the film is "The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade."

Waiting For Guffman

Emoh Ruo

Adventures in Babysitting

Jaws

North by Northwest

Curse of the Golden Flower

Big Trouble in Little China

Dead Again

Body Heat

The Last Seduction

Westworld

Children of Men

Flight of the Navigator

THX 1138

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Touch of Evil

All That Jazz

To Catch A Thief

Anne of The Thousand Days

The Neon Demon

Let The Right One In

It's Pat

Weird Science

Ode to Billy Joe

Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway

Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night

Bad Ronald

Madame Sin

Harper Valley PTA

Lunchroom Manners

Take This Job and Show It

Oops that should be Take This Job and Shove It!

"Harper Valley P.T.A.' and "Take This Job and Shove It" were song titles first.

Born In Wedlock

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

[quote] THX 1138

That's a terrible title.

Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis

A Passage to India

Tea With Mussolini

Throw Momma from the Train

[italic] Murder Most Foul [/italic]