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Of course, for modern audiences, the classic pool sequence will forever remain the riotous moment from 1980's Caddyshack in which an innocent candy bar, floating to the strains of John Williams' Jaws score, is mistaken by swimmers as something else ("Doody!"), leading to a mass exodus and the eventual draining of the pool. Groundskeeper Carl Spackler's (Bill Murray) reaction to the offending flotsam is the capper to this memorably tasteless interlude.
A tasteless interlude by the pool can also be found in 1995's Clueless, in which a partygoer who's clearly had too much to drink ruins it for everyone else by barfing in the pool (as staged by director Amy Heckerling, it's actually funnier than it sounds). And dubious taste in a darker vein can be found in the 1971 cult classic Harold and Maude, in which young Harold (Bud Cort) repeatedly stages fake suicides in front of his mother; one such episode involves him floating facedown, Joe Gillis-style, in the family pool.
More tasteful, though no less funny, is the climactic set piece in 1986's Back to School, in which Rodney Dangerfield's good-natured millionaire Thornton Melon agrees to help out his son's college swim team by suiting up and performing the death-defying Triple Lindy. And speaking of death-defying, who can forget the uproarious moment in 2000's Almost Famous during which rock star Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup) prepares to take a swan dive off the roof into the pool below, exclaiming, "I am a golden god!"
But for the ultimate in humor - at least in an unintentional manner - don't miss the all-time turkey Eegah!, a 1962 monstrosity that frequently played Worst Film Festivals when those gatherings were once in vogue (it was later resurrected for a ribbing on Mystery Science Theater 3000). A silly grade-Z effort about a caveman (Richard Kiel) who's been hanging around Palm Springs for millions of years, this includes a legendarily awful sequence in which our dorky hero (Arch Hall Jr., the director's son) serenades his girlfriend (Marilyn Manning) while she splashes around in a swimming pool. Never mind that her name is Roxy and the song he sings (or rather, mangles) is called "Vickie" - with lyrics like, "Vickie, Vickie, I'm so alone, Would you just talk to me or call me on the phone?," it's all the poor girl can do to refrain from drowning this clod.
But where there's laughter, there's also tears, and several movies have staged scenes of death, despair and degradation around swimming holes. Millionaire Jay Gatsby (Robert Redford) is blown away by working stiff George Wilson (Scott Wilson) while enjoying laps in his luxuriant pool in 1974's The Great Gatsby, and futureworld detective John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is devastated after his son is snatched (and later murdered) as they're enjoying quality time together at a public pool in 2002's Minority Report. And racism is in full bloom in both 1999's Crazy In Alabama and 2002's Far From Heaven, as both period pieces include scenes in which blacks aren't allowed to enjoy the cool waters of the swimming pools inhabited by white patrons.
The ugliness of the encounters at these pools are in contrast to the beauty and artistry on view in other flicks. For sheer opulence, you can't beat the lavish sets created for the series of hits that swimming star Esther Williams made for MGM (including 1944's Bathing Beauty and 1946's Ziegfeld Follies) or the choreographed watershows concocted by Busby Berkeley (as in 1933's Footlight Parade). Williams and Berkeley even worked together on a couple of pictures (including 1952's Million Dollar Mermaid), and, ever the prankster, Mel Brooks spoofed their output in 1981's History of the World Part I, where the "Spanish Inquisition" segment finds nuns shucking their habits to take part in a balletic, synchronized-swimming routine. Meanwhile, artistry of another sort can be found in Robert Altman's 1977 mood piece 3 Women, as the character played by Janice Rule has painted the bottom of a swimming pool with dazzling (if disturbing) creatures.
If action, not imagery, is your thing, then you can count on Bond to make a splash in this area. The 1971 entry Diamonds Are Forever finds Agent 007 (Sean Connery) tangling with two brawny beauties - named Bambi and Thumper, no less - in an oasis of H2O, while a couple of the Lethal Weapon flicks involve poolside skirmishes. And in Sam Peckinpah's 1983 thriller The Osterman Weekend, journalist John Tanner (Rutger Hauer) hides at the bottom of his swimming pool, holding his breath as flames lick the surface and waiting for the right moment when he can propel himself out of the water and shoot the villain with the crossbow he's wielding. Is this even possible? Hell if I know, but it made for an impressive shot in the "coming attractions" trailer.
