10-There’s Something About Mary. Alex pegged it right away – I missed the more memorable bathroom scene in the movie, when Ben Stiller accidentally zips up his “frank and beans” when caught accidently spying on Mary. When I saw this in a theater people were literally pounding on their seats they were laughing so hard…it was a priceless moviegoing experience – a packed theater all laughing hysterically, the communal experience that makes moviegoing so unique. And of course the sequence ends with the priceless line from a firefighter, “we got a bleeder!”

9-Les Diaboliques / What Lies Beneath – first, this classic 50’s French thriller introduced the moment when the dead person in the bathtub isn’t quite so dead…a moment revisited by Robert Zemeckis when Michelle Pfeiffer may or not be drowned by Harrison Ford in “What Lies Beneath”, a fun little thriller as well.

8-The Naked Gun. Detective Frank Drebbin needs to relieve himself just as The Queen is making her speech in the next room. Leslie Nielsen sings a wonderful duet with his urine…of course, he forgot to turn off his microphone. Hilarious.

7-Pulp Fiction. Vincent Vega is enjoying a nice bathroom break, not realizing that Bruce Willis has returned to his apartment to get the watch his father gave him…the two actors share a very brief, very violent moment together, caused by Travolta’s flushing of the toilet, which lets Willis know that the hit man is there to kill him…

6-True Romance. Quentin Tarantino’s first script, brought to violent life by Director Tony Scott. While Christian Slater completes his drug deal elsewhere, Patricia Arquette hangs out in their seedy hotel room…then there’s a knock at the door. James Gandolfini has arrived. After he throws her through the shower door, Gandolfini prepares to kill Arquette, but she uses basic bathroom supplies to turn the tables…extremely violent tables.

5-Lethal Weapon 2. I was quickly reminded of this scene after I posted my list, and of course, this is a classic. Beleagered Danny Glover just wants a quiet moment alone, how was he to know his toilet was wired up with a bomb? leave it to Mel Gibson to help him out of a jam.

4-Bridesmaids. OK, I LOVE this movie, so how could I forget what happens when Kristen Wiig makes a disasterous restaurant choice for lunch, right before the bridesmaids go for a fitting? We will always have the memory of Melissa McCarthy making use of the bathroom sink as the group runs out of options when lunch comes back to haunt them…

3-The Godfather. Anthony Lombardi from “Jerseylicious” fame reminded me of this classic bathroom moment…Michael Corleone excuses himself from dinner with Solozzo and Capt. McClusky to go to the bathroom, and retrieves the gun stored behind the “old-fashioned toilet” By Abe Vigoda. The momentary panic on Al Pacino’s face as he searches frantically for the piece is classic, just as classic as how calm he is when he returns to the table to finish his meal…or his bloody business. Just another classic scene from the greatest film of all time.

2-Scarface. Michael Castner gets credit for this classic scene. Tony Montana is forced to watch while his buddy is chained up and chainsawed in the shower…a classic DePalma scene, with a beautiful crane shot that rises from the car outside, where Steven Bauer kills time ogling the women walking by…the camera glides up to the bathroom window, then hard cuts to the same move inside the shower, as we hear the chainsaw sputtering to life and see Tony’s anguished face trying to avoid what he is going to have to witness…

1-Sixteen Candles. a couple of people reminded me of this majestic moment…it begins with Molly Ringwald sighing, “I can’t believe I gave my panties to a geek!” Cut to a freshman paying a buck to get inside the school bathroom, joining a crowd that sighs in amazement when Anthony Michael Hall boldly steps out of the toilet stall and raises those panties high above his head for all to see…hilarious moment in a great great film.

here you have it, ten more bathroom moments…let me know what you think, and of course, what I have still missed!!!

Categories: 70's Cinema, Grindhouse, Movies, Obscure Movies