Film

The Loved One

Name: The Loved One
Genre: Comedy
Released: 1965
Cast: Robert Morse, Jonathan Winters, Anjanette Comer, Rod Steiger, Dana Andrews

The Loved One is Tony Richardson's grotesque 1965 satire of Southern California's death industry, adapted from Evelyn Waugh's novella by Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood. It's gleefully tasteless, visually baroque, and stuffed with grotesque cameos—equal parts absurdist farce and genuine horror at American consumerism. Best for anyone who enjoys their comedy pitch-black and their satire aimed squarely at institutions that take themselves very seriously.

TMDb rating

6.2

If you liked this

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb1964

Terry Southern co-wrote both scripts, and the tonal DNA is identical—apocalyptic subject matter treated with the same gleeful, deadpan absurdity. If Loved One's satire clicked, this is the sharper, even more essential version.

But It's about nuclear annihilation rather than funeral parlours, so if you came for death-industry specifics, the target's completely different.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb poster

Harold and Maude1971

A funeral-obsessed romance with the same appetite for finding tenderness inside American death rituals, just gentler and more sincere than Waugh's acid satire.

But It trades savagery for whimsy—expect warmth, not bile, which might feel like a letdown if you wanted more teeth.

Being There1979

Peter Sellers at his most deadpan, skewering American institutions and media vanity with the same straight-faced absurdity that makes Loved One sing.

But It's slower and stranger, more meditative satire than farce—patience required for the deadpan pacing.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Trouble with Harry1955

Same engine a decade earlier—ordinary people treating death as logistical inconvenience rather than tragedy—but from the director everyone associates with dread, not laughs, doing the opposite of what you'd expect.

Hitchcock's only outright comedy, about a small New England town's cheerful indifference to a corpse nobody can figure out what to do with—black comedy about death played with total charm a decade before Waugh's satire hit screens.

But It's cozy and whimsical where Loved One is savage—no institutional target, just small-town shrug.

Six Feet Under2001

A whole series built on a family funeral-home business, mixing black comedy with real grief in a way that expands everything Loved One only gestures at.

But Five seasons is a big commitment, and it leans far more into drama and sincerity than satire.

Kind Hearts and Coronets1949

British class satire with a body count and a matching cold, elegant cruelty—proof this kind of comedy has deep roots outside Hollywood.

But The humour is drier and more genteel than Loved One's grotesque American excess.

Network1976

Same target—American institutions eating themselves alive—aimed at television instead of funerals, with prophetic fury that's only sharpened with age.

But It's angrier than funny, a satire that curdles into tragedy rather than staying gleeful.

The Death of Stalin2017

A farce about death, bureaucracy, and grotesque self-interest among the powerful, played at breakneck comic speed with an ensemble as game as Loved One's cast.

But Political rather than commercial satire—different institution, different stakes, though the absurdist engine runs the same.

Beetlejuice1988

Death treated as bureaucratic farce, just with ghosts and Tim Burton's manic visual imagination instead of embalming fluid.

But Much cartoonier and family-friendlier—less satire, more gothic slapstick for a broader audience.

Nashville1975

Robert Altman's sprawling portrait of American ambition and spectacle shares Loved One's appetite for skewering an entire industry through a huge, eccentric ensemble.

But Three hours long and diffuse by design—music-industry satire, not death, and structured very differently.

The Undertaking2007no page yet

It's the industry Loved One mocks, filmed as documentary rather than satire—same subject, opposite register, letting you see what the joke was actually about.

A real American funeral home, filmed with total sincerity—the actual embalming rooms, family grief, and business decisions the satire in Loved One exaggerates for laughs, shown here completely straight.

But There's no comedy at all; it sits with real death and real families, which is a very different evening than a farce.

Departures2008

Same premise—an outsider drawn into the death trade, ashamed of the work at first—reworked in another culture entirely, swapping American satire for Japanese grace.

A young man stumbles into work as a mortician in Japan and discovers dignity and beauty in a trade everyone around him is ashamed of—gorgeous, unhurried, deeply moving where Loved One is cruel.

But Subtitled and quietly paced, with sincerity instead of satire—if you want more teeth and less tenderness, this won't scratch that itch.