Why not try these troubled double bills?

 

I was going to give up the comedy double bill thing, honest I was, BEFORE grinding it into the ground, but then I happened to read Donald Westlake’s Nobody’s Perfect. In this middling entry in the Dortmunder comic crime series (great first half, declines slightly towards the end, even though it’s set in SCOTLAND), Westlake postulates a cinema marquee which is in the midst of a changeover — in this unlikely scenario, the letters from one title are being removed as the new title is going up, so we get THE CHARGE OF THE SEVEN DWARFS.

Westlake being a careful writer, I’m sure he considered and rejected many inferior possibilities for this gag. My only advantage is that I can draw upon more obscure titles to create my film title telepod mash-ups.

DIRTY MARY, CROUCHING TIGER

SEX, LIES AND THE UGLY

THE UMBRELLAS OF TELEMARK

THE NUTTY LIEUTENANT

THE ABSENT-MINDED LIEUTENANT

THE UNSINKABLE SNOWMAN

THE BAD LIETENANT’S WOMAN

BUFFALO 22

A BRIDGE TOO MUCH

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO FAR

OKLAHOMA, MON AMOUR

GONE WITH THE WAVES

BREAKING THE WIND

A HARD DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

THE WIND CANNOT CARRY ON CAMPING

THE BITTER TEA OF COLONEL BLIMP

HOW TASTY WAS MY LITTLE PONY

2001 DALMATIONS

THE THOUSAND EYES OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

(Since we know that it’s “Into the valley of death rode the six hundred,” then to make an even thousand eyes we must assume that two hundred of the celebrated horsemen wore eye-patches or glass eyes. Or else some of them had NO eyes.)