Cross-media picks for John Landis fans — films, series, games and books in the same vein.
These picks share a taste for comedy that earns its laughs through texture rather than gags — working-class camaraderie, criminals who are also losers, and worlds that feel a little grubby and alive. You'll find it in Cemetery Junction's restless 1970s England, in the anarchic buddy-cop absurdism of Sam & Max Hit the Road, and in the warm chaos of Friday Night Dinner. The sensibility runs through crime, farce and period nostalgia alike: things go wonderfully, irreversibly wrong, and the characters lurch forward anyway.
Film
Cemetery Junction
Working-class friends, big dreams and comic friction in a vividly realised 1970s England.
Film
Sunset Strip
A snapshot of early-1970s Hollywood where young hopefuls chase the one night that changes everything.
Film
Quick Change
A flawless bank heist unravels into pure New York farce as the getaway proves far harder than the crime.
Film
Knockin' on Heaven's Door
Two terminally ill strangers steal a car and chase the sea — dark premise, irresistible comic energy.
Film
Shoot the Living and Pray for the Dead
A stranger walks into a gangster's hideout and negotiates half the gold — deadpan Western menace.
Film
The Long Good Friday
A Cockney crime boss tries to go legit; sharp, darkly funny, with crime that bites back hard.
Film
Dumb and Dumber
Gleeful stupidity drives two lovable idiots across America on a hopelessly misguided errand.
Film
Harry and the Hendersons
A suburban family accidentally adopts Bigfoot — warm, absurd comedy with genuine creature-feature heart.
Series
What's Happening!!
Three friends in 1970s LA stumble from scheme to scheme, with mischief and warmth in equal measure.
Series
Danger 5
A crack Allied spy team repeatedly tries to kill Hitler in a gleefully absurdist 1960s-pastiche world.
Series
Mission Hill
An over-qualified slacker shares a loft with his younger brother in this sharp, affectionate animated comedy.
Series
Watching
A Merseyside couple's on-again/off-again relationship told with dry northern comic timing.
Series
Friday Night Dinner
Family dinner as controlled chaos — warmly observed, reliably farcical, and deeply recognisable.
Series
The Franchise
A sharp industry satire exposing the frantic, unglamorous reality behind superhero blockbuster filmmaking.
Series
In Sickness and in Health
Alf Garnett's final chapter — bigotry and vulnerability collide with uncomfortable, fearless comedy.
Series
Till Death Us Do Part
An East End blowhard's reactionary worldview is skewered nightly by the family he can't control.
Game
Sam & Max Hit the Road
A dog detective and his hyperkinetic rabbit partner crack a carnival case with anarchic comic brilliance.
Game
Jack Orlando: Director's Cut
Prohibition ends, a politician is murdered — a classic noir puzzle with period atmosphere and dry wit.
Game
Blues and Bullets
Eliot Ness comes out of retirement when a child goes missing and old corruption resurfaces around him.
Game
Quarantine (1994)
A hovercar driver in a decayed megalopolis fights for survival in a grimy, anarchic future city.
Game
Redneck Rampage
Rednecks vs. alien invaders in a chaotic shooter that revels in lowbrow, irreverent comedy mayhem.
Game
Scarface: The World Is Yours
Tony Montana's bloody comeback blends crime-movie swagger with over-the-top action spectacle.
Game
Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon
A wisecracking 2042 detective mixes screwball humour with genuine thriller intrigue in a noir future.
Game
Leisure Suit Larry
Larry's hapless pursuit of romance is relentlessly self-defeating — comedy through spectacular failure.
Book
Iron cast
Two best friends use illegal supernatural gifts to con the elite in 1919 Boston's underworld.
Book
Ace in the Hole
Political intrigue and superhero mythology collide at a 1988 convention teetering on the edge of chaos.
Book
I'll Take You There
A film scholar revisits his past guided by a Hollywood ghost — wry, cinephile-friendly and quietly moving.
Book
O dingos, ô châteaux!
A powerful philanthropist's fortune hides a deadly secret in this darkly comic crime thriller.
Book
What? Dead again?
A big-city doctor stranded in small-town America — fish-out-of-water comedy with genuine warmth.
Book
Gable and Lombard
A behind-the-scenes portrait of Hollywood's golden age through one of its most glamorous real romances.
Book
The death of sweet mister
A boy trapped between a cruel father and a manipulative mother in a Southern Gothic tinderbox.
Book
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Depression-era marathon dancers gamble everything on endurance in this grimly compelling human portrait.
Start with the comedy-crime vein: Quick Change nails the heist-gone-wrong farce, Knockin' on Heaven's Door mixes dark humour with road-movie heart, and The Long Good Friday delivers sharp British crime comedy with real menace.
Danger 5 captures his love of gleeful absurdism, The Franchise skewers the film industry with insider wit, and Friday Night Dinner delivers the kind of warmly chaotic ensemble comedy his best films are built on.
Yes — Sam & Max Hit the Road channels his anarchic buddy-comedy energy perfectly, while Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon blends noir pastiche with genuine laughs; on the book side, Iron Cast brings 1919 Boston underworld atmosphere with a darkly comic edge.