Plenty of crime movies are fairly serious affairs, and that’s understandable, since there is an inherent drama to stories about crime, especially when it comes to that often-repeated notion that it doesn’t pay and all. One way to show that is by having things end on somber or even tragic notes, and a film can do this realistically (Goodfellas), more dramatically (The Godfather trilogy), or in a heightened/over-the-top/operatic fashion (Scarface).

That being said, Goodfellas and Scarface are two fairly serious classic crime movies that have their comedic moments, but it would be a stretch to call either of them wholly/100% goofy. Instead, it feels correct to highlight the following movies as some of the goofiest that can be categorized as crime films, with some intentionally blending comedy and crime, and others missing the mark as crime-dramas, instead becoming funny and goofy in perhaps unintended ways.

10

‘Deadfall’ (1993)

Image via Trimark Pictures

Nicolas Cage is someone who’s going to show up a few times throughout this ranking, and the films of his included here vary quite a bit in terms of quality. They can all be called crime movies, though, but the least successful at being a crime movie of the bunch is Deadfall, which is a confused mess of a movie that’s probably trying to be funny, to some extent, but it’s occasionally difficult to say.

Most actors in this one deliver flat performances, but Cage absolutely chews the scenery at every chance he gets, and Deadfall honestly gets much more interesting every time he shows up. It’s worth watching the Nicolas Cage scenes, because they’re about as goofy and ridiculous as any you’ll see in a movie about crime, but the rest of Deadfall is, unfortunately, a bit of a snooze.

9

‘Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man’ (1976)

Image via T.D.L. Cinematografica

The film that Ruggero Deodato is best known for directing is – and will always remain – the infamous Cannibal Holocaust, but Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man, which came out a few years earlier, is almost just as in-your-face. Granted, it’s not a horror movie, and is sort of darkly comedic (maybe on purpose, maybe unintentionally), but there is a massive amount of violence and nihilism here.

Essentially, Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man focuses on two young police officers who rampage around Italy, seemingly doing more damage – and killing more people – than the criminals they’re supposed to take down. If the whole thing is a satire of bad policing, then it might be some kind of subversive masterpiece, but if it’s meant to be a “cool” crime/action movie, it’s ghastly. Maybe the truth is, somehow, somewhere in between those two extremes.

8

‘The Ladykillers’ (1955)

Image via The Rank Organisation

The Ladykillers is about some very unlucky and rather unintelligent criminals trying to plan a bank robbery, but their inability to cooperate gets in the way. Also getting in the way is their elderly landlady, who they try to take out, but that proves somehow even more difficult than executing a bank robbery, and so the whole thing gets very farcical and silly quite quickly.

It’s an old-fashioned kind of crime/comedy film, but much of The Ladykillers still works and proves funny, with it being a great showcase for the (usually more serious) Alec Guinness, and the film also features one of Peter Sellers’s earlier roles, too. The movie more or less just has one or two central jokes it keeps returning to, but those one or two jokes remain funny for most of the runtime; funny enough to ultimately be enough.

7

‘Raising Arizona’ (1987)

Image via 20th Century Studios

Unlike Deadfall, Raising Arizona is an actually good Nicolas Cage crime movie, and also one of the most hyperactive and cartoonish. Raising Arizona scratches the same itch, stylistically, as films like Kung Fu Hustle and Speed Racer, though it’s not really focused on delivering over-the-top action in quite the same way as those movies (it has its moments, though).

Basically, the plot involves a couple – played by Cage and Holly Hunter – kidnapping a baby because they desperately want a child, but they’re not able to conceive one, and they take a quintuplet, because they believe a quintuplet won’t be missed as much. From there, things spiral out of control and then just continue spiraling, with Raising Arizona feeling sometimes exhausting, owing to it being like a live-action cartoon, but it is, nonetheless, a ton of fun.

6

‘Serial Mom’ (1994)

Images via Savoy Pictures

For the most part, John Waters has made movies intended for, to put it bluntly, sickos. He is a sicko film director, but also one of cinema’s most legendary sickos. That makes Serial Mom feel like a bit of an outlier, because even if it is quite dark and offbeat, it’s a whole lot more approachable than most John Waters-directed movies, almost to the same extent as his biggest crowd-pleaser, Hairspray.

Serial Mom is about a seemingly typical homemaker who snaps one day, and becomes a serial killer, but it’s all done in a funny and satirical way. If you like the better seasons of Dexter, or American Psycho, particularly for the dark humor found in both, then Serial Mom is pretty easy to recommend, and it’s also a movie that boasts what might well be Kathleen Turner’s best-ever performance, as the titular mom.

5

‘Q’ (1982)

Image via United Film Distribution Company

You don’t often get movies that mash up giant monsters and crime all that often, which does make Q special, even if, execution-wise, it’s far from perfect. The plot involves a criminal getting involved in an investigation that, at least initially, seems to be about finding a serial killer who’s been terrorizing New York City, but then it turns out the killer isn’t human, and is instead a giant winged serpent.

Yep, Q goes for it, does its own weird thing without caring what anyone thinks, and it’s all offbeat and distinctive enough that it’s hard not to admire how brazen the whole movie is. It’s a blend of all sorts of genres that are sometimes considered pulpy, or even outright kind of trashy, and so as a cinematic cocktail of B-movie and exploitation-adjacent elements, it’s sort of a blast, warts and all.

4

‘Clue’ (1985)

Image via Paramount Pictures

Based on, or inspired by, the board game of the same name, Clue puts a bunch of eccentric characters in a mansion, has the host of the party they’re gathered for die mysteriously, and then chaos ensues when they all have to figure out who might be responsible. It’s a bit like a spoof of an Agatha Christie-type story, and works really well in that regard, honestly being more surprising than you might expect, too.

That’s because Clue is a little more than just a comedy, as it boldly has three different endings, and you purportedly only got one of them if you saw Clue back in 1985 (not a ton of people did, as it’s become more of a cult film in the years since). Watching Clue now, it’s easy to see each ending, one after the other, but it’s still fun that a movie so heavily about solving a mystery put in the effort to have more than one outcome.

3

‘Crimewave’ (1985)

Image via Columbia Pictures

As luck would have it, Clue was not the only wacky crime movie of 1985, as there was also Crimewave that year. Oh, wait, it gets weirder. There were two movies with pretty much the same name that came out in 1985, and both were crime/comedy mash-ups. The other was called Crime Wave, and is a very strange Canadian comedy, while Crimewave – the one being highlighted here – was an early Sam Raimi film.

This came well before any of his Spider-Man movies, and in between the first two Evil Dead movies, and also isn’t as good as any of them, so that’s probably why it’s not particularly well-remembered. But Crimewave is certainly goofy, messy, chaotic, and unapologetically weird, so it should be included here, even if it’s a bit hard to work out whether it’s good, bad, or something else. Also, co-written by the Coen Brothers, who later did the aforementioned Raising Arizona and so many other movies, so that’s kind of neat (also not a highlight of their filmography either, by any means).

2

‘Face/Off’ (1997)

Sure, it’s probably more definable as a goofy action movie over anything else, but there is a crime element to Face/Off, as well as some sci-fi elements thrown in for good measure. It’s a chaotic mix of things, and proves to be such wonderful chaos, with John Travolta and Nicolas Cage playing characters on opposite sides of the law who end up switching faces and trading places in life, all the while their violent rivalry continues.

It shouldn’t work, but somehow, Face/Off does, and maybe that’s a testament to how good of a director John Woo was throughout much of the 1990s (after a very good ‘80s, too). High-concept premises don’t get much higher than the one in Face/Off, but that’s part of the reason why it’s wonderful. It is bonkers and doesn’t care about it, having fun with the outlandish premise in a way that proves rather infectious.

1

‘Samurai Cop’ (1991)

Image via Hollywood Royal Pictures

So, Samurai Cop is not a good movie, and if you wanted to, you could label it one of the worst action/crime movies ever, but it’s the good kind of bad. Just about everything here is done poorly, with some very wooden performances contrasting with a bunch of over-the-top ones, and then when people aren’t talking/rattling off some ridiculous dialogue, they’re taking part in some sloppily staged fight sequences.

It is also a samurai movie, technically, but not a great one. But also, not many samurai movies can claim to be set in contemporary times, so that is an interesting angle, even if the execution (assuming you want a genuinely good movie) leaves not just a lot to be desired, but maybe everything to be desired. Samurai Cop is pretty awful, but it’s also a must-watch. That’s just how it is, sometimes, with famously bad movies.

Samurai Cop

Release Date

November 30, 1991

Runtime

96 minutes

Writers

Amir Shervan

Producers

Orlando Corradi

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  Mathew Karedas

  Joe Marshall

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  Mark Frazer

  Frank Washington