Madness Mantras… Madness Mantras… Madness Mantras… Madness Mantras… Madness Mantras… in live-action movies.
- Ray Finkle from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective choked at the Super Bowl but he asserts that "Laces out!"
- Alice in Murderland: When Dee is having her bad trip, she keeps repeating "Mad Hatter" over and over every time she hallucinates seeing the Hatter.
- Animal House: REMAIN CALM! ALL IS WELL!
- Apocalypse Now
- Chef has a Freak Out over running into a live tiger. "Never get out of the boat! Never get out of the boat!"
- Kurtz mutters "The Horror" over and over again as he dies. The Horror being the inner darkness that he thought American soldiers needed to embrace to win the Vietnam War. He finally saw it in Willard (symbolized by Willard also putting camouflage makeup on just like Kurtz did when he killed Chef).
- The Aviator features Howard Hughes with a number of OCD-inspired mantas. Though Hughes suffered from the disorder, the mantras themselves were an invention for the film.
- "They come in with the milk. Come in with the milk. Come in with the milk. In with the milk."
- Way of the future. Way of the future. Way of the future. Way of the future. Way of the future.
- Show me all the blueprints. Show me all the blueprints. Show me all the blueprints, show me all the blueprints.
- "Quarantine"... "Quarantine"... Q-U-A-R...A-N-T-I-N-E... "Quarantine".
- Barton Fink: I'll show you the life of the mind! I'll show you the life of the mind! I WILL SHOW YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND!!!
- In the aftermath of Batman Forever, Edward Nygma, a.k.a. The Riddler, is reduced to repeating "Too many questions...too many questions..." after his brain is overloaded by the malfunctioning Box. This was once a rant by Nygma, spawned by his boss and idol Bruce Wayne rejecting his project by saying that it raised "too many questions."
- Blackmail (Alfred Hitchcock's first talkie) has the heroine stabbing her rapist to death. The next day, she overhears a woman talk about the murder. Her guilt eats away at her and all she hears the woman say is "KNIFE. KNIFE. KNIFE. KNIFE..."
- Tie-in media for The Blair Witch Project reveal that Kyle Brody, sole surviving victim of Rustin Parr, was reduced to gibbering insanity later in life, only ever saying "Never given! Never given!" over and over again. Parr himself was also prone to muttering the phrase shortly before his execution.
- At the end of Blood Rage, Maddy kills herself while madly repeating the hero's declaration of "I'm Todd".
- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: "I MUST KNOW EVERYTHING! I MUST BECOME CALIGARI!"
- "I AM CALIGARI! I AM CALIGARI!"
- "HE IS CALIGARI!"
- John Sayles's brilliant City of Hope features a character named Asteroid, clearly a deinstitutionalized schizophrenic, who provides a nonstop clang-association Madness Mantra in every scene he appears in.Psychoses, neuroses, dementia, amnesia. Schizoid, paranoid, psychotropic seizure. Manic, manic depressive, genetically regressive. Paranoiac, melancholic, acrophobic, alcoholic …
- Last we see of Nancy in The Craft, she is in the nuthouse repeatedly saying "I can fly!"
- Crazy, Stupid, Love: Cal's incessant babbling about the man with whom his wife committed adultery, and the whole "cuckold" thing, come off a bit like this.
- The Crow (1994): "...there ain't no coming back...Ain't no coming back..."
- The Dark Knight Trilogy:
- Disturbing Behavior
- A Blue Ribbon girl Steve's about to have sex with malfunctions and starts muttering "This is wrong, bad, bad, wrong...". Then she smashes her head into a mirror.
- Dr. Caldicott's daughter is found in a mental institution, constantly repeating the phrase "Meet the musical little creatures that hide among the flowers." This one gets a callback in a later scene, and an audio clip of her saying it is even played again at the end of the closing credits.
- This is hinted at in the ads for Don't Say a Word, by the young woman in the asylum repeatedly muttering "I'll never tell!" in singsong. Her actual madness is a matter of conjecture, but the phrase proves important to the plot.
- Dr. Strangelove "Peace on earth/purity of essence/peace on earth/purity of essence" scribbled everywhere. Also an important clue.
- Empire of the Sun: "I can bring everyone back, everyone... I can bring everyone back, everyone..."
- Evil Dead 2: "WHO'S LAUGHING NOW?"
- In Falling Down, the main character spots a man protesting his recent lay off with a sign proclaiming that he has been deemed "not economically viable." The mantra proves contagious, as the main character has also just been laid off.
- Fanboys: "I'm a pedophile!", by Windows.
- The Field Guide to Evil: After being driven mad by what he saw in "The Palace of Horrors", Henry wakes up in a hospital in Calcutta, compulsively singing a hymn and laughing uncontrollably at those times when he cannot sing.
- As Private Pyle's Sanity Slippage reaches a head in Full Metal Jacket, he starts repeating the Marine Rifleman's Creed at the top of his lungs.
- In Godzilla (1998), a Japanese fisherman who survived the monster's attack is shown in a hospital bed chanting, "Gojira, Gojira, Gojira..."
- In The Happening, people affected with the neurotoxin will shout some arbitrary phrase while their brains are being reprogrammed.
- At the end of Happy Birthday to Me, when the lieutenant finds Ginny in the cottage surrounded by all of the bodies, she starts mindlessly singing "Happy Birthday to Me" to herself, over and over.
- Marie from High Tension repeats the phrase "I won't let anyone come between us anymore" in a whispering voice over and over when kneeling above her blood-drenched but still living best friend (and secret crush) Alex, whom she spent the movie trying to save from a sadistic rapist/serial killer. The real madness of it comes into play with the knowledge that The killer was an alternate personality of Marie herself, and she was repeating that phrase after Alex stabbed her through the torso with a crowbar.
- Parodied in the 1983 horror spoof Hysterical; when Kate finds the pages from Frederic/Casper's novel, they read "All work and no play makes Casper a friendly ghost. All work and no play makes Casper a friendly ghost."
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956): "You're next!"
- Julien Donkey-Boy: "THE WIND IS BLIND, THE WIND IS BLIND, THE WIND IS BLIND..."
- Killers on Wheels have this happening to May, a Hong Kong tourist who ends up getting gang-raped by a bunch of punks and witnessing her friend Carrie's death. It's Played for Drama.May: "I want to go back to Hong Kong... I want to go back to Hong Kong... I want to go back to Hong Kong..."
- In The Lord of the Rings movies, those driven mad by the One Ring start referring to it as "precious".
- Near the end of Mad Love Dr. Gogol tried to strangle the woman he was obsessed with while murmuring "Each man kills the thing he loves...each man kills the thing he loves..."
- The Magdalene Sisters: Crispina, a slightly mentally handicapped girl of the Magdalene Asylum, was routinely sexually abused by the Padre. Her friend Margaret sees this and confides to her, "He's not a man of God." Margaret then contaminates his robe with poison ivy. Inevitably Crispina contacted with this and caught it as well. While giving an open-air sermon at some saint's feast, the Padre begins to itch uncontrollably and at least runs off into the woods disrobing as he goes, revealing a horrific rash. Crispina pulls up her dress to reveal the same rash on her thighs. She then chants out "You're not a man of God, you're not a man of God, you're not a man of God......" over thirty times with increasing fervor expressing her humiliation and frustrations of physical and mental abuse in the convent.
- Magic in the Water has a support group of people who have been possessed by the lake monster Orky. One of them repeatedly mutters, "I don't believe in monsters, 'cause monsters don't exist. It didn't inhabit my body, I didn't become a fish."
- In Man of Steel, Zod repeating "I will find him!" over and over is used to illustrate him slowly losing his mind after first being defeated.
- At the end of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, after Lex Luthor snaps due to learning that the forces of Apokolips are coming to invade Earth in the wake of Superman's death, he tells Batman that what's coming cannot be stopped as "the bell's already been rung", and starts creepily chanting "Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding. Ding-ding-ding-ding." He's alluding to the noise a Mother Box makes.
- Josh Peck's character in Mean Creek repeats, "His daddy splattered his brains all over the wall" during the scene where he gets really mad.
- In The Naked Gun, the people that Ludwig has brainwashed always say "I must kill (name of target)".
- In A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Kristen threatens an orderly with a scalpel to stop the doctors from sedating her, while weepily reciting the "One, Two, Freddy's coming for you" Ironic Nursery Tune. She's too much of a basket case from sleep deprivation to recall the last line, but Nancy arrives and finishes it for her, soothing the girl enough that she hands over the blade.
- The Pianist "Why did I do it? Why did I do it? Why did I do it?"Halina: "She's getting on my nerves. What did she do, for God's sake?"
Father: "She smothered her baby. They'd prepared a hiding place and so, of course, they went there. But the baby cried just as the police came. She smothered the cries with her hands. The baby died. A policeman heard the death rattle. He found where they were hiding." - The Pink Panther
- The Return of the Pink Panther: "KILL CLOUSEAU!"
- The Pink Panther Strikes Again — "Every day in every way I'm getting better and better!"
- Admiral Beckett in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End suffers one of these when he realizes he's lost control of the Flying Dutchman and both it and the Black Pearl are bearing down on his ship. "It's just good business."
- "Part of the crew, part of the ship. PART OF THE CREW, PART OF THE SHIP!!"
- The virus in the film Pontypool causes the infected to go mad and repeat phrases. Something gets stuck... gets stuck... stuck... stuck...?
- Unusual in that it can actually be counteracted, with difficulty. Rendering the repeated word meaningless breaks its mental hold. Mazzy gets Sydney to replace her chanted mantra of "kill" with "kiss", and they get on the air and try to spout nonsense to all their listeners.
- Predator has a very brief one. Mac repeatedly says "I got you!" during the two times he thought he's caught the Predator (when he stabbed a boar in the dark and when he chased the Predator into the forest).
- Rain Man: "X minutes to Wapner", as well as reciting both sides of the "Who's On First?" sketch in absolute deadpan.
- Reform School Girls: After Edna snaps and starts climbing the tower while firing at the girls, she begins insanely cackling "Complete control!" over and over.
- Robot Monster: "I cannot. And yet I must."
- Played for Laughs in The Sandlot, when the provocations of Wendy Peffercorn finally overcome Squints Palladorous.Squints: Lotioning… oiling... lotioning… oiling...
- This trailer
for A Serious Man borders on this trope. You're gonna be fiiine... - The Shining:
- "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy..."
- Redrum... Redrum... Redrum... Redrum... Redrum! Redrum! Redrum! Redrum! REDRUM! REDRUM! REDRUM! REDRUM!
- Shortcut to Happiness: After learning that his friend Julius has been given a $190,000 advance for his next novel, and then being mugged and having his laptop (which the manuscript for his own novel) stolen, Stone breaks down, hauls his old electric typewriter out of the closet and starts typing 'ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY THOUSAND DOLLARS' over and over again on a sheet of paper. Then the typewriter breaks and he resorts to Appliance Defenestration.
- In The Silence of the Lambs, one anonymous psycho starts yelling "Hannibal the cannibal!" over and over again.
- In the novel, the disorganized schizophrenic Sammie (replacing Hannibal's former cell-neighbor, Multiple Miggs) has a very distinctive mantra that apparently started some time after he put his mother's severed head on the Church collection plate:I WAN TO GO TO JESA, I WAN TO GO WIV CRIEZ, I CAN GO WIV JESA, EF I AC REEL NIIIZE!
- In the novel, the disorganized schizophrenic Sammie (replacing Hannibal's former cell-neighbor, Multiple Miggs) has a very distinctive mantra that apparently started some time after he put his mother's severed head on the Church collection plate:
- Sisters of Death: When Penny snaps on learning they are trapped and probably all going to die, she starts chanting a meditation mantra while scrawling in the dirt. She then becomes the first one to be murdered.
- Split Second (1992) had "Big guns. We need big FUCKING guns!" as a character's Madness Mantra after an encounter with the Big Bad.
- In Spy Kids, Floop's Fooglies turn out to be OSS agents transformed into twisted humanoid characters for his children's show. The Fooglies sing a song endlessly during episodes; when played backwards, it's revealed to be one of these: "WE'RE TRAPPED! FLOOP IS A MADMAN, HELP US, SAVE US! FLOOP IS A MADMAN, HELP US, SAVE US! FLOOP IS A MADMAN, HELP US, SAVE US!..."
- Them!: "Make me a sergeant in charge of the booze! Make me a sergeant in charge of the booze!"
- There Will Be Blood "Get out of here, ghost. Get out of here, ghost. Get out. Get out of here, ghost."
- In Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, Sam starts babbling while under the influence of a shard of the AllSpark, sometimes repeating himself over and over and over, "KITTEN CALENDAR KITTEN CALENDAR KITTEN CALENDAR..."
- TRON: Legacy: A program that was caught before Sam by the Recognizer is a nervous wreck about becoming a Games conscript. He repeats "Not the games" over and over.
- Vampire's Kiss: "I'm a Vampire! I'm a Vampire! I'm a Vampire!"
- In War of the Worlds (2005), Ogilvy repeatedly screams "Not my blood!" after discovering that the aliens are harvesting humans. This leads to his death when Ray kills him for fear that his shouts will get his daughter killed.
- The Widow (2020): Ilya starts muttering "No escape, no escape" when he realizes they're in the pit the Lame Widow's body was supposedly buried in.
- Willow: "NOT A WOMAN!"
- Arguably, more likely Lug's Berserk button being pressed than proper madness mantra.
- The Wolfman (2010): Where is my father? Where is my father? WHERE IS MY FATHER?
