Gross-out is a sub-genre of comedy movies in which the makers employ humour that is willfully "tasteless" or even downright disgusting, although the latter isn't truly requisite. Typical elements include fast pace, toilet humour, slapstick, sophomoric jokes about sex and bodily functions, vulgarity, food fights, gratuitous nudity, unrealistic aggressiveness towards property and Schadenfreude. The movies are generally aimed at a younger audience aged between 18 and 25. One boon of this genre is that it provides an inexpensive way to make a movie "edgy" and to generate media attention for it.

History

In the USA, since the abolition of the Production Code and its replacement with the MPAA film rating system in the late 1960s, some filmmakers began to experiment with vulgar humor.

In hindsight, the movie which pioneered the genre was 1972's Pink Flamingos with its infamous dog excrement eating scene, followed by 1974's sketch comedy sleeper The Groove Tube. The first movie to which the label "gross-out movie" was actually applied was 1978's National Lampoon's Animal House, which was a great box office success despite its limited production costs and thus started an industry trend. Characteristically for the genre, there are actually few gross (disgusting) scenes in it, but the humour is generally crass, fast and destructive.