'Get Out': From Eddie Murphy Bit to Macabre Comedy of Manners

The title of the new horror film Get Out alludes to a brilliant Eddie Murphy stand-up bit that is never mentioned in the movie—but a routine the African-American comedian Jordan Peele, who wrote and directed the movie, surely knows by heart. “I was watching movies like Poltergeist and Amityville Horror,” Murphy said on Saturday Night Live in 1982. “Why don’t the people just get the hell out of the house? You can’t make a horror movie with black people in it cause the movie’d stop.”

Then Murphy enacted a scene. A man has just moved into his new house and says to his wife, “Wow, baby, this is beautiful. We got a chandelier hanging up here, kids outside playing, it’s a beautiful neighborhood, I really love—this is beaut—”