Innapropriate laughter in low budget cinema

When I was a kid, my mother was taking a drawing class. The teacher was male and they had nude models who were female. My brother was talking to one of his friends who was amazed by this. The model comes in there in front of the whole class? Yes. And does the teacher laugh when she comes in?

My brother became annoyed. NO, he doesn't laugh! Why would he laugh? You think men laugh when they see naked women?

Children weren't terribly sophisticated in those days.

But I just watched some of a 1982 slasher movie, Slumber Party Massacre. Some old-looking high school girls have a slumber party. Some balding high school boys hear about it and go to their house and spy on them. And, when the girls start taking their clothes off, the boys laugh.

I've seen this sort of thing elsewhere. Idiot actors playing adolescents laughing when their characters spy on naked women. What are these actors thinking?

And there are other things. There was a low budget family film I saw. I was slightly acquainted with the star. I wish he had asked me what to do. He plays a kid who's intrigued by some small items that had belonged to his late father. I think they were related to sailing ships or pirates---I don't remember. But he gets these things out and looks at them from time to time, which is fine. Except, when he looks at them, he smiles maniacally. Do people do that?

There are other scenes in movies where people laugh at inappropriate times. In the Douglas Sirk melodrama, All That Heaven Allows, a wealthy widow (Jane Wyman) dates her yard man (Rock Hudson). They go out to Hudson's nursery. They meet some of his friends. He says something to one of them. He looks at Jane Wyman who is out of earshot and laughs. Wyman is troubled by this.

"What did you say to him?" she asked.

"I said you had the prettiest legs I've ever seen," Rock says.

And why did the guy think that was funny? I mean, it was funny. There was nothing remotely attractive about Jane Wyman's legs, and even if there was, it wouldn't have made up for that terrible hair do. Mercifully, her legs are never actually exposed in the film. She looked like an aging rich woman. Rock Hudson was too good for her even if he was a yard man.

According to her adopted son's memoir, Jane Wyman was a heartless bitch.