More movie clichés

I was cleaning out some old e-mails on the computer this weekend, and came across a couple things I'd sent out a long time ago featuring stuff I'd found on the 'net about the movies, which fits right in with my current Overused TV/Movie clichés feature.  I didn't write any of this, but it's quite humorous...

15 Things We Wouldn't Know If It Weren't For The Movies
1) The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place.  No one will ever think of looking for you in there, and you can travel to any other part of the building you want without difficulty.
2) You're very likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.
3) Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it is not necessary to speak the language.  A German accent will do.
4) A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.
5) If staying in a haunted house, women must investigate any strange noises in their sexiest underwear, which is just what they happened to be carrying with them at the time the car broke down.
6) If a large pane of glass is visible, someone will be thrown through it before long
7) If someone says, "I'll be right back", they won't.
8) Computer monitors never display a cursor on screen but always say:  Enter Password Now.
9) It is not necessary to say hello or goodbye when beginning or ending phone conversations.  And none of your friends have to knock when they come for a visit.
10) Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments.
11) All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they're going to go off.
12) A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.
13) If you decide to start dancing in the street everyone around you will automatically be able to mirror all the steps you come up with and hear the music in your head.
14) Police departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.
15) When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to each other!

And it seems there's plenty more where those first 15 came from...

• When a car runs into another and there's a front end collision, they both explode!  How many cars have you seen explode from this?  Or when a car goes over a cliff, it will ALWAYS explode...
• When a baby is born, it's soooooooo obvious that it's not a newborn, but at least a two-year-old.
• Characters will always find a parking space right in front of the building they're going to even in a large metropolitan city where parking is basically impossible.
• Characters at a bar or at a restaurant table will always get the attention of a server at the exact moment they need to order.
• When a gift/present is given, the top is wrapped separately from the rest of the box and it lifts straight off so that there is never any ripping or fumbling with wrapping paper.
• A chase scene on foot in a city always has a shot of one of the characters running into the street, nearly being hit by a car screeching to a halt at which point the driver flails his arm out the window and yells an expletive.
• Anytime a character in an awful rush confronts another character curious about his predicament, the first one says, "There's no time to explain," and then explains anyway.
• If you're watching TV and "flip" onto any movie made pre-1940, you don't have more than a five minute wait before hearing the line, "Say, what's the big idea?!?"  [Or "Let's get outta here!"]
• The bad guy will always throw his gun at you to indicate he has run out of bullets.
• A candle or table lamp can light a whole room.
• At nighttime, it is blue.
• If you are in a film, it is easy for you to master the skill of controlling any vehicle you need, like landing a plane, for example.
• Everybody when needing a computer can type super-fast and never need to hit the space bar!
• Computers never freeze or crash, unlike in the real world.
• They have super-duper graphics programs which can zoom into blurs in fotos to make them super-clear!
• The world is full of startlingly good-looking people.
• In space, it turns out people can hear you scream, ships explode, planets combust, etc...
• The best way to get laid is to put on some slow jazz music.
• The moonlight will light up any room as though it were a 70-watt light bulb, and no one seems to own curtains/blinds or at least don't close them when they go to bed.
• Text appearing on a computer monitor appears letter by letter and making a sound as if it was produced by a typewriter.
• Computer mice don't seem to exist.  People just type and all the windows they need appear and disappear and they manage to find plans of buildings and top secret things in a heartbeat.
• When someone uses a TV remote it makes a clicking sound that is impossible to replicate by existing remotes.
• Scientists always wear 70s clothes, and when called upon in meetings, stand up and say some stupid complicated explanation that no one understands, followed by the chief who paraphrases them by a pithy cliché, "So what you're saying is we're screwed?"  "Um, yes..."
• Cats always make a noise.  If someone is creeping into a house and is momentarily scared by a cat, it ALWAYS has to meow before running off.
• At a beach, nightclub or party scene, the record or band that's playing is rarely anything you've ever heard in the charts. In the sixties, people apparently only ever listened to twangy instrumentals from tiny transistor radios (which were still powerful enough for a dozen people to dance around to).
• Every gang of young people has to contain (a) a fat kid and (b) a geeky, bespectacled kid.  The fat kid would grow up to play the "Fat Friend" usually portrayed by Jack Black or Chris Farley.  These provide comic relief only, never having a girlfriend themselves.  They exist only to make the hero look good.
• Americans always bring their "groceries" (shopping) back from the "market" (supermarket) in a brown paper bag with a baguette and stalk of celery sticking out of the top.
• Every necklace in the movies is a breakaway, so you can just yank once it comes off the person's neck.
• A woman being chased by a murderer will ALWAYS fall over—either because she's running in stilettos or is ridiculously clumsy.
• Serial killers never just die...they will remain still for ages so that the hero is fooled and walks right past them...at which point the killer grabs their ankle and then keeps fighting.
• It is possible to drive safely for long periods with your head turned completely away from the road ahead, whilst either in conversation or looking at a map.
• People brush their teeth BEFORE eating breakfast but not afterwards, at which point they run out the door with a piece of toast in their mouth.
• Aussie accents in American films always sound like a mix of Cockney, South African and New Zealander.  And they say things like "Streuth!" and "Blimey!"
• The bad guy's sexy girl will try to seduce the good guy, then when that fails will beat him up using martial arts, whilst wearing skintight leather, lycra and stilettos.
• Women can never find their car keys whilst being pursued by a killer.  Once they do find them, it takes them ages to fumble the keys into the ignition, giving the killer enough time to reach the car and pound on the window.
• Every bad guy knows how to tie really complicated knots...which somehow the good guy manages to untie.
• A person investigating strange noises in their house always finds that the lights don't work, then stumble around in the dark rather than getting a torch.  At least one of the noises they hear will turn out to be made by a cat.
• Dogs always bark at ghosts.
• Vicious guard dogs can be easily distracted with a piece of steak.
• Mice can somehow fashion a perfectly semi-circular entrance to their dwelling.
• If a baddie is trapped in a cage with a gorilla towards the end of a light-hearted romp, the gorilla will take a sexual interest in the baddie.
• A small goat is capable of propelling a fully grown man through the air by butting him in the ass with its horns.
• Many animals, when they consume alcohol, will take on human drunken characteristics—usually to the sound of a trombone being played.
• When a cat eats a fish, it leaves the skeleton perfectly preserved and intact.
• If there is a telephone in the background or close by, it is GOING to be ringing.  The person calling will usually be a bad guy, and now THEY KNOW YOU'RE THERE...or something else bad will happen because of that phone call.
• Any time a person is expecting a bad guy to jump out at them, often they'll sigh in relief when it's just the cat, or the wind, or a tree branch against the window.  But as soon as they let their guard down and laugh at their "silliness," they're going to be attacked by the bad guy that really WAS there after all.
• In movies, when someone puts a baby down to bed, that baby coos and smiles, and then just goes right off to sleep.  It's amazing…
• All high school students look like people in their mid-twenties, and can dance professionally.
• In the movies everyone seems to have L-shaped sheets on their beds able to cover a woman up to her neck and her partner up to his waist.
• Why if they have just spent the night together do they need to take a complete quilt and rap it round themselves before getting out of bed?
• Does anyone eat a meal?  Food is set in front of someone, a conversation is had with others at the table and the food is cleared away or left without a bite being taken…
• I need the manufacturer of the make-up and hair products that can get me up in a morning looking like I did when I went to bed…
• Guns don't need to be cocked.  But you do have to cock them after someone says a witty one-liner or when it sounds completely badass.
• Cars explode instantly from handgun fire.
• Being around a bomb causes time to slow down.
• Bad guys die instantly, good guys die slowly.
• All police investigations will require at least one visit to a strip club.
• You can jump from a tall building and land on mattresses, a pile of boxes, or a dumpster full of garbage and, though you might groan and be a little slow getting up, you will not sustain any serious injury.
• It's very easy to fool the security guards at highly top secret government institutions.
• It's very easy for a computer hacker to break a security code and find just the information he's looking for in less than a minute.
• If you're a criminal mastermind, you cannot just shoot the hero in the back, you have to tie him up and wait for some diabolical machine to finish the hero off and you can't wait around to make sure it works, which allows the hero a chance to escape, which he always does because apparently no bad guy ever got his knot-tying badge in the boy scouts.