Penn & Teller Get Killed: Difference between revisions

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'''''Penn & Teller Get Killed''''' is a 1989 [[Black Comedy]] directed by Arthur Penn, featuring double act [[Penn & Teller]] (who also wrote the movie) playing themselves as their stage personas offstage. Confused yet?
 
At the beginning, they perform on a talk show where, as part of the act, Penn claims he [[Be Careful What You Wish For|wishes someone were trying to kill him, to make life more exciting]]. This is intended as setup for Teller pretending to slit his throat, but it turns out all sorts of people saw the talk show and [[Never Live It Down|now recognize him as the idiot who asked people to kill him on national TV]]. This leads to several attempts being made on their life until, well, [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|Penn and Teller get killed]]. [[Twist Ending|But not the way you think.]]
 
Meanwhile, the two magicians [[The Cast Showoff|do some magic tricks]], [[Edutainment Show|demonstrate that psychic surgeons are]] [[Penn and& Teller: Bullshit!|bullshit]], and [[Escalating War|play increasingly mean tricks on one another]].
 
{{tropelist}}
=== The movie features examples of: ===
* [[Author Tract]]: The duo really do love to expose fakery like psychic surgery. [[Hilarious in Hindsight|Which makes sense considering their television series]] ''[[Penn and& Teller: Bullshit!]]''.
 
* [[Be Careful What You Wish For]]: Everything starts with Penn wishing [[Death Seeker|someone were trying to kill him]]. {{spoiler|It turns out no ''real'' attempt was made on their lives, however, as they were all part of either Penn or Teller's trick.}}
* [[Author Tract]]: The duo really do love to expose fakery like psychic surgery. [[Hilarious in Hindsight|Which makes sense considering their television series]] ''[[Penn and Teller Bullshit]]''.
* [[Be Careful What You Wish For]]: Everything starts with Penn wishing [[Death Seeker|someone were trying to kill him]]. {{spoiler|It turns out no ''real'' attempt was made on their lives, however, as they were all part of either Penn or Teller's trick.}}
* [[Black Comedy]]: Oh yes.
* [[Bloodless Carnage]]: At the end, surprisingly given it's rated R and does feature plenty of fake blood during Penn and Teller's magic routines. Especially noticeable when {{spoiler|Teller has shot himself in the chest}} and we go on to see many clear shots of the body with no blood on his shirt whatsoever.
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* [[Deliberately Monochrome]]: The parodic sequence near the middle where Penn is narrating and writing the "memoirs of the hunted" is black-and-white. When the policewoman comes in and ends their noir fantasy, the color abruptly returns to the picture.
* [[Despair Event Horizon]]: At the end when Teller realizes {{spoiler|he just [[My God, What Have I Done?|killed Penn]]}}.
* {{spoiler|[[Downer Ending]]}}: {{spoiler|It ends with [[Kill'Em All|everyone dying]]. And then Penn's voiceovervoice over at the end takes care to assure the viewer that the pull-out shot of the city is not an implication that they went to heaven; they're [[Cessation of Existence|just dead]]. Every major Western religion disapproves of suicide, after all.}}
* [[Driven to Suicide]]: More than you can count, though most of them are [[Suicide Asas Comedy|very much]] [[Played for Laughs]]. {{spoiler|First Teller, upon realizing he has actually killed Penn; then Carlotta as she realizes they're both dead; then [[Rule of Three|the actor playing the Fan, as he realizes the whole apartment is set up to make him look like a psycho who wants to kill Penn and Teller, and he thinks he couldn't handle prison]]; then [[Up to Eleven|his friend as he realizes being associated with this would kill his potential career in politics]]; then [[Overly Long Gag|the office-work-loving policeman who never wanted to see something like that]]; then the [[Retirony|nearly-retired other police officer who came with him]]; and then [[Refuge in Audacity|still more unseen people who discover the scene as we pull out over the city]].}} It is implied this starts a worldwide wave of pointless suicides.
* [[Escalating War]]: A lot of the movie revolves around Penn and Teller playing increasingly mean and elaborate tricks on one another. {{spoiler|In fact, it turns out the ''whole'' movie revolves around that.}}
* [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin]]: ...yeah.
{{quote| '''Penn:''' Oh, yeah. We're dead and there's no way out. I mean, it couldn't be a gag, it couldn't be a joke. We're not gonna have one of the characters wake up from a bad dream; you'd hate us for that! I mean the movie is called ''Penn & Teller Get Killed.'' We '''''had''''' to get killed at the end, there's no way out of that. We were married to that ending from the moment we thought of the title, and now we've actually killed off ourselves, and there's no taking that back. And this whole pullback, this is not us going to heaven. We're just dead. I mean, those were suicides, frowned upon by every major Western religion, and Atlantic City is in the Western world, so... Penn and Teller are dead. That's it. Thanks. Hope you enjoyed it. You can imagine the sequel thing is kind of a bitch.<br />
'''Teller:''' Why didn't we just use different names? <br />
'''Penn:''' ...Damn! }}
* [[Foregone Conclusion]]: Yup.
* [[Gilligan Cut]]: Right after Penn says that even "the bad boys of magic" don't reveal how their tricks are done... [[Hypocritical Humor|the scene shows exactly how it's done.]]
* [[Gone Horribly Right]]: Penn's final prank is about scaring the hell out of Teller. And it [[Hoist Byby His Own Petard|really does]].
* [[Happily-Failed Suicide]]: Set up with {{spoiler|the Fan's friend}}, complete with dramatic slow motion as he pulls the trigger only for the gun to be out of bullets. Then it is thoroughly subverted as his actual reaction is to be annoyed, look around the room for more bullets (which takes a while) and then do it successfully.
* [[Heroic BSOD]]: Teller, after {{spoiler|he shoots Penn}}.
* [[Hoist Byby His Own Petard]]: Penn's final prank goes a wee bit wrong for him.
* [[Ironic Echo]]:
** In the opening segment on the talk show, Penn shouts "Are we live?!" regularly and has the audience respond, to assure TV viewers that the performance is in fact happening live and no editing trickery is involved. After capturing Teller, the Fan starts reenacting the segment, and the insane, growling voice in which he says "ARE WE LIVE?!" is possibly the most unsettling part of it.
** Additionally, after each trick the pair play on one another, the phrase "No hard feelings" is used. The last time it is used is [[Out-of-Genre Experience|a bit more serious]].
* {{spoiler|[[Kill'Em All]]}}: {{spoiler|Everyone involved dies at the end. [[Refuge in Audacity|And then a bunch of people who weren't involved at all die too, for good measure.]]}}
* [[Loony Fan]]: The Fan who is trying to kill them. {{spoiler|Except it turns out he was an actor hired by Penn.}}
* [[Metal Detector Checkpoint]]: The [[Escalating War]] starts with Teller ensuring repeatedly that the metal detector gate gets set off every time Penn walks through it.
* [[Mood Whiplash]]: At the end, there is one [[Out-of-Genre Experience|dead serious scene]], in stark contrast with most of the movie. It then evolves into [[Suicide Asas Comedy|a sequence of increasingly ridiculous suicides]], in what may be the funniest part of the entire film.
* [[Motor Mouth]]: Penn as he's trying to distract the psychic surgeon who is trying to kill them.
* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]: See [[Heroic BSOD]].
* [[Never Live It Down]]: [[In -Universe]] - after their talk show appearance at the beginning, everyone thinks of Penn as the guy who said he wanted people to kill him on national television.
* [[Noir Episode]]: The black-and-white sequence, where Penn suddenly [[Smoking Is Cool|smokes]] and attempts a (hilariously over-the-top) variation of a [[Private Eye Monologue]].
* [[Once For Yes, Twice For No]]: While blindfolded on an operating table, Penn asks Teller to do this to confirm he's there several times, to no avail.
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* [[Out-of-Genre Experience]]: Most of the movie is very silly, despite its [[Black Comedy|dark subject matter]] - but then at the end, there is a single scene which takes itself completely seriously, with not a shred of comedy to it, black or otherwise. {{spoiler|After Teller shoots Penn, he stares for a moment and then ''[[OOC Is Serious Business|speaks]]'', in a squeaky, frightened, disbelieving voice: "That's Penn! ''What is going on?''" When it dawns on him that Penn was playing a trick on him, he starts [[Laughing Mad|laughing hysterically]] as he latches on to the conviction that they switched his gun with a fake gun at some point... and then Carlotta denies it, [[Oh Crap|he shoots the gun and finds it is indeed real]], and it becomes clear that [[Please Wake Up|Penn is not waking up]]. Teller chuckles a little bit more, says "[[Ironic Echo|No hard feelings]]," and [[Driven to Suicide|shoots himself]]. Carlotta, in shock, starts sobbing, roaming aimlessly around the room while burying her head in her hands, and finally [[Driven to Suicide|jumps out the window]].}} ...And then [[Mood Whiplash|it turns into one of the funniest sequences in the entire film]].
* [[Phony Psychic]]: Psychic surgeons. {{spoiler|Except it turns out there weren't any psychic surgeons - well, there probably are, but none of them actually appeared and the guy we thought was going to see a psychic surgeon actually wasn't sick.}}
* [[Reality Ensues]]: After the whole movie has been a pretty silly comedy about Penn and Teller's stage personas thinking assassins are after them, the characters react completely realistically to {{spoiler|Penn's death, including Teller [[OOC Is Serious Business|dropping his stage persona altogether]]}}. Of course, then comes [[Suicide Asas Comedy|the end]].
* [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]]: {{spoiler|The policewoman}} delivers one against Teller at the end, ranting about how he's always there making funny faces in the background while Penn talks but really he thinks the morbid routines up with him and is "too sick to even express [himself] in words".
* [[Retirony]]: The older police officer who comes in at the end mentions being about to retire, minutes before [[Driven to Suicide|committing suicide]].
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* [[Smoking Is Cool]]: Penn randomly smokes in the [[Film Noir]]-parody [[Deliberately Monochrome]] sequence.
* [[Stupid Statement Dance Mix]]: The Fan made a montage video out of Penn and Teller's appearance on the talk show at the beginning.
* [[Suicide Asas Comedy]]: The end has this, to extreme levels: it is implied that it sets off a wave of increasingly ridiculous suicides around the entire world.
* [[Take Me Instead!]]: Parodied; when they're being kidnapped, Penn shouts "Do what you want to the girl, but leave me alone!" Penn also gets the psychic surgeon to go for him rather than Teller while they're strapped down on medical trolleys, since Teller is well on his way towards sawing through his restraints with a pocket knife, but that's just because at that point Penn's only hope is for Teller to break free and fight back against their captors; he isn't trying to be self-sacrificing.
* [[Twist Ending]]: {{spoiler|The ''entire film'' has just been Penn and Teller playing tricks on one another; there never was a real assassin after them at all. Which [[Foregone Conclusion|doesn't stop them from getting killed anyway]], of course.}}
 
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Films of the 1980s{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Penn and Teller Get Killed]]
[[Category:Film]]
[[Category:Films of the 1980s]]