In Film
- Joe's Apartment — The bugs are cheerful, swinging party-goers who help the titular human hero.
- Twilight of the Cockroaches — A hybrid anime/live-action Japanese film featuring a society of cockroaches living in a bachelor's apartment that faces extermination when a cockroach-phobic woman moves in
- Creepshow — Swarms of them terrorize a cantankerous and verminophobic old man in the segment, "They're Creeping Up On You."
- Damnation Alley — A post-apocalyptic Salt Lake City, Utah is infected with a four-inch long, flesh-eating mutant variety (played by the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach).
- Mimic — Diseased cockroaches are the target of the genetically-altered titular species.
- Bug also starred Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches, this time able to produce fire from their abdomens, wreaking havoc.
- Men in Black Edgar the Bug actions threaten to lead to the destruction of the Earth.
- An American Tail, the chief villain, Warren T. Rat, carries with him a cockroach named Digit who he forces to count his money and frequently abuses, even threatening to eat him at one point.
- Naked Lunch, the main character, William Lee's "case worker" appears to him in the form of large cockroach that speaks through a hole in its abdomen. Later, this cockroach appears again as a hybrid of a cockroach/typewriter that has a keypad on its face. The case worker reveals his name as "Clark Nova", which also happens to be the name of Lee's typewriter model.
- Godzilla vs Gigan, both King Ghidorah and Gigan are controlled remotely by Nebulans, an alien race of giant cockroaches that inherited a waste planet after the dominant species on it polluted it into oblivion.
- The 1983 film Scarface, Tony refers to Gaspar Gomez and the Diaz Brothers, rival gang leaders to Frank Lopez, as cockroaches in one of the film's most famous lines: "I'll bury those cock-a-roaches."
- Pacific Heights — The Michael Keaton character breeds and releases cockroaches in the apartment building as part of his plan against the landlords.
- A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master — Freddy Krueger kills Debbie by transforming her into a cockroach and trapping her inside a roach motel before crushing the trap.
- WALL-E — WALL-E keeps a Cockroach as his pet
- West Side Story — in both the Broadway musical (1957) and film (1961), the Jets, the Anglo-American gang, refers to the Sharks, the Puerto Rican gang, as cockroaches.
- Enchanted — Cockroaches (and other pests) assist a princess with housecleaning duties such as scrubbing the bathtub.
Read more about this topic: Cultural References To Cockroaches
Famous quotes containing the word film:
“All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie. They’re obliged to overstate their own importance.”
—François Truffaut (1932–1984)
“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”
—Ingmar Bergman (b. 1918)