Most of the best action movies come with some genuine laughs. From the earliest days of motion-picture comedy, foundational geniuses like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton made their strongest mark with highly choreographed action sequences. Action and comedy work hand in hand, but when you want to push things further into the realm of the zany, that’s where action parody comes in.
What’s the difference? The first time a guy slipped on a banana peel, it was action comedy. The second time, it was action parody. Jackie Chan using a ladder in First Strike might be funny, but it’s still martial-arts action. (And completely awesome.) Michael Winslow making wacky kung fu sound effects during an alleyway fight in Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment is parody. (And also awesome — or at least we thought so when we were 9.)
The Action Edition
The Action Edition
We’ve selected 25 of the best action-parody movies ever produced, which range from a 1948 monster-flick send-up to a 2000s-era comedy inspired by a Saturday Night Live character. Before we race headfirst into this meta-textual cul-de-sac, there are two quick caveats: We didn’t repeat directors, so prepare yourself for just one pick from Mel Brooks and the law firm of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker. And we didn’t include Friedberg and Seltzer at all, because their films such as Meet the Spartans and Epic Movie and The Starving Games are the worst, despite their enormous box-office receipts.
25. Rustlers’ Rhapsody (1985)
You have not lived until you’ve seen Tom Berenger threaten to shoot a man’s wife in the shoulder. Rustlers’ Rhapsody is a jokes-first-plot-second spree of lunacy set in the Old West, in which the white-hat hero has an awareness of the genre’s tropes and, therefore, knows how everything ought to play out. That leaves plenty of room for sight gags (like literalizing the phrase “standing in the saddleâ€) and for sidekick G.W. Bailey (the guy from Police Academy and Mannequin!) to get his gonads squashed in action-packed ways. Things get particularly meta during one showdown in a saloon, in which our hero is pitted against … another good guy. As with so many classics set on the American frontier, the movie was shot in Spain; indeed, the production reused some of Sergio Leone’s sets. Streaming on VOD.
24. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
Long before Alex Kurtzman’s aborted “Dark Universe†franchise flopped with The Mummy, Universal was doing its intellectual properties dirty. A little over a decade after James Whale’s mesmerizing Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s Creature was meeting up with the Wolf Man and Dracula in some pretty suspect B-pictures, but things really went off the rails when Rain Man’s favorite comedy duo, Abbott and Costello, ran afoul of these frightening antagonists. Though it could be interpreted as just part of the series (Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney appear as Dracula and the Wolf Man, but not Boris Karloff), the kid-friendly high jinks and self-aware scenario — with Abbott and Costello as delivery guys at a wax museum — push it into the realm of parody. Some of the images are directly inspired from iconic shots from the earlier films, but the movie’s veil of self-reference, like a set piece at a masquerade ball, ensures that the film is never not “zany.†Several sequels followed, including one called Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff, in which Karloff plays a hypnotist swami from the Orient. Streaming on VOD.
23. The Wrecking Crew (1968)
One could make the case that some of the Roger Moore James Bond pictures were so silly that they were parodies of the few Sean Connery ones that played it relatively straight, but the 007 phenomenon brought with it a slew of genuine tongue-in-cheek imitators. James Coburn as Derek Flint, Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise, Rowan Atkinson as Johnny English, and Jean Dujardin as Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath just scratch the surface. (That’s before we even get to the first Casino Royale starring David Niven, Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, and Woody Allen — one of the strangest cases of IP manipulation in cinema history.) Matt Helm, America’s answer to James Bond, was played by Dean Martin at the peak of his crooning and “showing up on talk shows completely hammered†powers. The fourth and final Helm picture, The Wrecking Crew, has extra action resonance, as it featured Chuck Norris in his first credited role and employed Bruce Lee as a “karate adviser.†The series was renowned for its celebration of mod fashion and girls! girls! girls! energy, and, as such, The Wrecking Crew boasted a prominent appearance by Sharon Tate. Indeed, this is the movie Margot Robbie watches with her feet up in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. Streaming on VOD.
22. Mystery Men (1999)
The Marvel Cinematic Universe did not invent the superhero movie, and there have been humorous tweaks on the genre for a while, including Robert Townsend in The Meteor Man and ABC’s hit-single-inspiring The Greatest American Hero. Mystery Men was based on a preexisting comic book, but by the time it hit theaters, it felt like a spinoff of the Ben Stiller Show sketch-comedy series. Stiller’s jealousy-powered Mr. Furious leads a pack of Z-level superheroes including Janeane Garafolo’s The Bowler (who harnesses the might of a bowling ball), William H. Macy’s The Shoveler (he wields a shovel), Paul Reubens’s Spleen (he farts), and others. Mystery Men is all Dutch angles, ’90s fashion, exaggerated faces, and camerawork that never sits still. It is the sole feature from commercial director Kinka Usher, whose legendary television spots include “Do the Dew,†“Got Milk?†and “Yo Quiero Taco Bell.†Streaming on VOD.
21. Son of Paleface (1952)
As soon as movies saddled up and went west, there were comedies, but Bob Hope leering his way through America’s frontier pushed them into parody, especially in this Frank Tashlin–directed sequel to the first successful Paleface picture. Hope plays a Harvard lad out of his element and bumbling his way through saloons in search of gold, but things get meta when Roy Rogers (riding Trigger) shows up as the singing cowboy “Roy Barton.†The film’s depiction of Indigenous peoples definitely doesn’t hold up, but Jane Russell stopping the show with her dance routine essentially passed the baton of parody to Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles. Things end, naturally, with a galloping shoot-out on horseback. Streaming on YouTube.
20. Dhamaal (2007)
Hindi for “ruckus,†Dhamaal dares you to ask if you can handle four Indian Jerry Lewises running around like nutcases for two hours and 15 minutes. It’s definitely not for everyone, but this “homage†to It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (such an homage that it rips off the “kick the bucket†gag) shifts gears midway through to become a parody of a crooked cop drama. (The treasure that’s buried beneath a big W belonged to a mob kingpin, you see.) There are references to other movies all over the place, including The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, as well as an explosion gag ripped directly from Johnny English. What do you call a parody that parodies a parody? A success, I suppose, as Dhamaal led to two sequels, with a third one coming later this year. Streaming for free on Tubi.
19. Love and Death (1975)
Later in life, Woody Allen came to represent many different things (understatement), but early on, most of his movies had an element of parody. Take the Money and Run spoofed crime films and documentaries, Sleeper aped science fiction, and What’s Up, Tiger Lily? took a preexisting kung fu movie and dubbed it with absurdist dialogue. Love and Death, the best of his “early, funny ones,†tweaks big fat Russian novels but also war films in several sequences set during Napoleonic battles. This film has some of the more hilarious gags you’ll ever see involving runaway cannons, bayonets, and pistol-packing duelists. (There’s even an anachronistic drill sergeant who anticipates R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket.) Love and Death has the most onscreen blood of any Allen picture, but it’s always played nonchalantly and absurdly, prioritizing gags and laughs ahead of the story. Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
18. Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (2002)
You see, “kung pow†is also the name of a chicken dish. Har-har-har. Steve Oedekerk (whose first showbiz milestone was beating Jackie “The Jokeman†Martling on Star Search) wrote, directed, and starred in this martial-arts send-up that incorporated footage of a previously existing film and added wacky elements like a butt-kicking baby, magical tongue (Toungey!), vicious battles with a cow, and a ludicrous amount of fourth-wall breaks. (There’s also a whole bit that parodies The Lion King for some reason.) This is definitely a favorite for those who feel that a comedy should be judged by the sheer amount of jokes there are, not so much on how well they land. Streaming on VOD.
17. Help! (1965)
Okay, work with me here. Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night may have been conceived as an excuse to showcase Beatles songs, but it ended up being an actual movie (and a great one). The following year’s Help! pushed their luck a bit, weighing down the romp with far too much plot. What emerged was a parody of vaguely xenophobic adventure films. (Leo McKern as “Klang,†head of a sinister cult from the East, is after one of Ringo’s rings!) Zany action sequences ensue, like Paul getting shrunk and the lads facing down a tiger, but the action-oriented musical numbers on the Alpine slopes and Caribbean beaches were deliberate evocations of the early 007 films. Streaming on VOD.
16. Dark Star (1974)
This first feature from director John Carpenter and writer Dan O’Bannon began its life as a student film and relied quite a bit on parody to sell its “shaggy, working-class schnooks busting their humps in space†premise. The vastness and mundanity of interplanetary travel ribs 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the final showdown, where our heroes battle an AI and get it to self-destruct by perplexing it with logic, is a move straight out of the Star Trek playbook. A terrific sequence in the picture, in which a cheapo-looking space alien causes havoc in the ship’s corridors, was later reworked by O’Bannon into one of the all-time sci-fi greats, Alien. Streaming for free on Plex.
15. Undercover Brother (2002)
This isn’t the only blaxploitation parody (keep scrolling for the OG, in more ways than one), but it’s probably the slickest, coming, as it does decades after the genre’s heyday from director Malcolm D. Lee, writer John Ridley, and a production team including Brian Glazer. Eddie Griffin stars as the titular brother, a 1970s-style espionage expert who must code-switch his way to infiltrating The Man. A tidal wave of goofs, gags, and jests awaits, some of them mocking spy movies, some gently ribbing Black culture, and others just gratuitous boob jokes. (Denise Richards plays “Black Man’s Kryptonite†— a sultry white lady named Penelope Snow.) Extra comedy points for appearances by Dave Chappelle (as Conspiracy Brother), Billy Dee Williams, and James Brown, plus Neil Patrick Harris as the white “intern†at the underground Black nationalist intelligence agency B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D. — an affirmative-action hire. Streaming on VOD.
14. Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993)
The first Hot Shots! was primarily a Top Gun send-up (with gags thrown in that referenced Gone With the Wind, Rocky, and the timeless classic The Fabulous Baker Boys), but Part Deux turned the Charlie Sheen–led series into a mockery of Rambo and other war pictures. A climactic sequence maintained an onscreen death counter (complete with video-game sound effects) that boasts when it beats out competitors like RoboCop to become the “bloodiest movie ever.†Other highlights include Sheen spoofing Apocalypse Now, only to bump into his father, Martin Sheen; père et fils congratulate each other on their recent turns in Wall Street. (Note: We mean it when we say no repeat directors, but don’t get huffy if Hot Shots! auteur Jim Abrahams shows up again; just know that if he does, he’ll be flanked by the Brothers Zucker, forming a troika of parody deities that works as a singular unit.) Streaming on Hulu.
13. Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
Stephen Chow’s antic masterpiece Kung Fu Hustle has such energy that it isn’t a parody of just one thing. It’s got classic Sergio Leone western tropes, it’s got a Hollywood-gangster pic framing, and it’s also got a sequence of ax-wielding baddies shot like a Busby Berkeley dance number. Most striking, though, is how its physics-defying attitude in its chases and fights send up the wuxia genre — which is hard to do considering how, just a few years after Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, international audiences were getting accustomed to characters who could do battle across a canopy of treetops. (It will not surprise you to learn the film was named as an influence by the directors of Everything Everywhere All at Once.) Streaming on VOD.
12. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
The movie most likely to be quoted by drunk frat guys until the arrival of Borat, Mike Myers’s send-up of 007 and London mod style was so popular it led to its own parodies — see this car-dealership commercial for evidence. From the opening plot dump by Michael York’s Basil Exposition to the final fired projectiles of the dishy Fembots, one soon realizes it’s easier to admit that Myers’s unsubtle line deliveries and goofy mugging are, indeed, kinda funny. Two sequels followed, offering Myers more chances to gallop around on set as the Blofeld-esque villain Dr. Evil and Fat Bastard, an opportunity for the actor to be loud and make catchphrases. Streaming on VOD.
11. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978)
A favorite from the early days of “well, we’ve already rented every other VHS at the store,†Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is one of the finest campy send-ups of cheap B-movies. The film details an evil mastermind’s plot to deploy bloodthirsty killer tomatoes in increasingly goofy set pieces, one riffing on Jaws, naturally. (An opening crawl tries to add a classy spin, suggesting a connection between this film about a produce uprising and the dread of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.) After a decade on home video came a sequel (featuring a young George Clooney!), two follow-ups, and a cartoon adaptation. But here’s the cherry tomato on top: The song “Puberty Love,†so awful that it defeats the vicious nightshades, was sung by a teenage Matt Cameron, who became the drummer for Pearl Jam. Streaming for free on Tubi.
10. Johnny Dangerously (1984)
“Crime doesn’t pay … well, it paid a little!†Amy Heckerling’s gag-a-minute spoof of classic gangster pictures is filled with tommy guns, car chases, and explosions — one of which leads to Peter Boyle holding a porcelain handle thinking it is his severed “dork.†Michael Keaton is the slick wise guy up against a conniving Joe Piscopo, with Marilu Henner as his moll, Griffin Dunne as his wide-eyed kid brother, and Maureen Stapleton as his potty-mouthed Irish immigrant “ma.†The film’s ludicrous script — which swapped in curse words with precensored nonsense like “fargin icehole†— was co-written by Harry Colomby, a show-business legend who was Thelonius Monk’s manager while also teaching high school in New York City. Streaming on Max.
9. MacGruber (2010)
Will Forte did not shove a celery stalk up his rectum to not make it into the top ten. MacGruber, based on a series of Saturday Night Live shorts, parodied Richard Dean Anderson’s crafty secret-agent man MacGyver, which ran for seven (seven!) seasons of television beginning in 1985. He was best known for, like, taking a hair clip and a pack of Dentyne and turning into a Geiger counter or something, and somehow this meant Forte stuck celery up his bum. Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolf, Ryan Phillippe, and half of the WWE co-starred in this movie, which was a bit of a dud at the box office but quickly became a fan favorite. Streaming on VOD.
8. Tropic Thunder (2008)
A controversial cavalcade of parody, Tropic Thunder zings gross-out studio comedies by imagining Jack Black in something called The Fatties: Fart Two, Robert Downey Jr. lampooning Method actors with an Australian thesp who transforms into a blaxploitation character (probably something he’d prefer we all forget), and Ben Stiller flashing back to his Oscar-bait performance as a man with a developmental disability (we’re not repeating the quote). But overall, the movie satirizes the Cannon Films–style Vietnam action pictures of the 1980s, ending with a massive amount of explosions and stunts. Streaming for free on Pluto.
7. The Other Guys (2010)
We considered letting Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby represent Adam McKay’s entry on the list, but, frankly, The Other Guys gets the edge. This buddy-cop movie, starring Mark Wahlberg as a lunatic hothead and Will Ferrell as a milquetoast forensics expert (and ex-pimp, oddly), leaps from comedy into parody early on. Its most celebrated sequence sends Dwayne “The Rock†Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson after their perps, and when they “aim for the bushes,†they end up splattering on the Manhattan cement as the Foo Fighters sing “My Hero.†Other absurd moments include a grudge fight at a funeral (so everyone has to keep their voices down) and the suggestion that Eva Mendes would marry Will Ferrell. Streaming on Netflix.
6. Team America: World Police (2004)
Though the term South Park Republican dates back to 2001, this Iraq War–era farce is where Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s dedication to being obnoxious really got rolling (empowering, some believe, the alt-right). While Team America’s ribbing of celebs who dare to care about world events isn’t the film’s finest point, the picture still works well as a parody of jingoistic action movies and the overall vibe of post-9/11 America. Also in the mix is a send-up of the musical Rent with the tune “Everyone Has AIDS,†and, most noticeably, the cheapo British marionette series Thunderbirds. With puppets you can get away with anything, which is why this one also has the best sex scene on this list and perhaps the best barfing scene in all of cinema. Lastly, it is unfortunate but true that the lines “America, fuck yeah! / So lick my butt and suck on my balls!†make for catchy lyrics. There’s a reason The Book of Mormon has played to full Broadway houses for 13 years and counting. Streaming for free on Pluto.
5. Spaceballs (1987)
Reasonable observers might raise an eyebrow about Blazing Saddles not making the list as our Mel Brooks entry, but bear in mind that we’re talking about action parodies. There is a big fight scene at the end of Brooks’s classic western spoof, but that’s where the movie kinda dies. By contrast, the Spaceballs scene when Dark Helmet tells Lone Star “I see your schwartz is as big as mine†is when the movie reaches its apogee. This idiotic masterpiece mostly zings Star Wars but is sure to throw in some Star Trek (“Snotty beamed me twice last night — it was wonderfulâ€), Planet of the Apes, Alien, The Wizard of Oz, and The Bridge on the River Kwai, while of course leaving room for the fourth-wall-shattering sequence in which the characters watch themselves on VHS as the movie is actually happening. Not even Christopher Nolan would dare such a thing. Streaming on Hulu.
4. Mars Attacks! (1996)
Unlike the close releases of Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe, Dante’s Peak and Volcano, and Deep Impact and Armageddon, it feels like cinephiles forget that soon after Independence Day came out, space aliens again laid waste to Earth’s landmarks in Mars Attacks!, the marvelously loud-and-annoying spin on B-movies and cheesy sci-fi. Adapted, inasmuch as one can do so, from the collectible trading-card series dating back to the early 1960s, director Tim Burton and screenwriter Jonathan Gems also tweaked star-studded disaster pictures like The Towering Inferno — that’s how you end up with Jim Brown dressed like King Tut walloping “Ack! Ack! Ack!ing†martians while Tom Jones watches. (Movies!) There are also direct references in here to The Wizard of Oz, Bride of Frankenstein, and a perhaps insensitive fourth-wall break with Jack Nicholson quoting Rodney King. Mars Attacks! was not an initial sensation with critics or mass audiences, but those who were there remember the mayhem in the theater — and for impressionable audiences it was an on-ramp to an MST3K-style infatuation with schlock. Streaming on VOD.
3. I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988)
Keenan Ivory Wayans’s directorial debut was a lodestar for Black comedy, the first to lampoon blaxploitation films in a way that always went for the laughs but still ensured that everyone looked cool. (When Bernie Casey, Isaac Hayes, and Jim Brown are in your film, that’s not hard to do.) Wayans leaned into his low budget, with the flimsy sets of “Any Ghetto, U.S.A.†reminiscent of the films he was parodying. The absurd plot, in which Wayans teams up with community elders to stop the epidemic of OG-ing — dying from too many gold chains — lends itself to sight gags (like strutting around with a funk band behind you playing your theme song) and non sequitur classic bits, like a young Chris Rock trying to buy one rib. Streaming for free on Tubi.
2. Airplane! (1980)
Surely we can’t be serious. The spoof-movie-di-tutti-spoof-movie, Airplane! is pretty much the first thing you think of when you think about movie parodies. The gag-a-minute send-up of disaster movies (and war movies too, thanks to George Zip, plus a bit of Saturday Night Fever) emerged from the sketch-comedy world of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker, filmmakers who went back to the parody well several times throughout their careers, both as a unit and individually. (David Zucker broke free with Ghost in 1990 before reverting to his naturally zany state.) Are disaster movies action movies? Well, if you’ve ever had to assume a crash position, you certainly felt your heart rate going up, so we’re saying “yes.†Moreover, the film’s “anything for a laugh†attitude means there really are no rules here, from Robert Hayes literalizing his drinking problem, to Barbara Billingsley “speaking jive,†to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar moonlighting as an airline pilot for some reason, to Peter Graves asking a little boy if he likes movies about gladiators — possibly the greatest line reading of all time. Streaming on VOD.
1. Hot Fuzz (2007)
Director Edgar Wright might contest us calling his “Cornetto Trilogy†parodies, but to that we say (with admiration and respect) that the first entry, Shaun of the Dead, is literally a pun. Take the W and celebrate being top of the list with the middle film — the buddy-cop movie parody Hot Fuzz. This Simon Pegg–led adventure, in which nearly every edit has the frantic kineticism of a Michael Bay smash cut (even when it’s just, like, putting a Japanese peace lily on a table), dips its toe in Wicker Man territory with a nefarious council of elders out in the country and even has a moment resembling Godzilla, with Pegg and Timothy Dalton duking it out amid a miniature model of the town. But the heart of the picture lies with Nick Frost, a lovable oaf who adores Bad Boys II and Point Break and wants nothing more than to jump sideways firing two guns at once. (He eventually gets to do it and more.) It’s our pick for No. 1 because it most nimbly balances laugh-out-loud parody and genuine action thrills. Steaming on Amazon Prime Video.
More From The Action Edition
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- The Thoroughly Goofy, Undeniably Seductive, All-in-One Charm of Shah Rukh Khan
- Watch Out for the Killer Gams