The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Horror Comedies are works that balance horror elements with Comedy. The first works to do so were the Old Dark House thrillers of the 1930s/40s, which reworked the more serious thrillers of the previous decade with comedy stars.
Abbott and Costello met the Famous Monsters in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) and assorted other monsters thereafter. The monster comedy/monster bash has remained a comedic staple thereafter. A good many horror comedies have also been in the realm of genre Parody.
The true growth of the horror comedy came in the 1980s, particularly after works like The Evil Dead (1981) and Re-Animator (1985) patented a form of outrageous splatter-heavy horror mixed with Black Humour or outright comedy slapstick sequences.
The Zombie comedy emerged not long after and, along with the Gonzo Shark Film, has become a major genre niche since the 2000s, putting their respective creatures up with the most ridiculous conceptual mash-ups or title puns.
A multi-director anthology of zombie-themed short films. As always in an anthology, the episodes vary but these are generally good with the standout being the side-splitting episode where Jesus faces a zombie horde
A Bela Lugosi comedy in which two inept press agents are ordered to obtain a zombie for the opening of a club
The social metaphors of George Romero’s original zombie films has been missing from the modern equivalents. This takes them up again with great enthusiasm, making a critique of USA attitudes post 9/11, hammering its message home with all the subtlety of a 26-point headline
Zombieland has been elevated to the status of a classic of the zombie genre; I found it enjoyable but probably overrated by people who haven’t seen enough other works in the genre. The question going into this sequel is whether it can strikes the same notes.
One of the more entertaining entries among the gonzo zombie film, this offers precisely what its title promises in an appealingly trashy, sarcastic and suitably gore-drenched blend
A rather charming South Korean comedy about a family who try to exploit the commercial aspects of having a tame zombie
Gonzo killer animal and zombie films have been hugely popular in recent years – it was probably inevitable they meet. This comes with the deliriously ridiculous image of zombified human-beaver hybrids on the attack
There have been some clever and witty deconstructions and parodies of the slasher film in recent years. This starts in with an immediately captivating hook where the title phrase is turned around on the protagonist
Deliberately made to look like a lost 1980s/early 90s film, this has a winning concept and sets in with an appealingly sarcastic amusement. On the other hand, the film is never quite as amusing as it gives the impression it is going to be and starts to lose it in the third act
Unexpectedly rather funny comedy that combines Mafia on a witness protection program and zombies
A zombie comedy from the Quebecois trio who were responsible for Turbo Kid, this takes place in a world where zombies are less a horde than an annoyance who have been relegated to the fringes of society
Horror comedy told from the perspective of four friends who are unaware they have been transformed into zombies. The contrast of their reactions with everybody else as they flee in terror is mildly amusing for awhile but this is essentially a one-gag film
The idea of a Twilight copy where the lead male is a zombie seems an utterly lame idea before one sat down to watch this. That said, the film manages to make its peculiarly incongruous mix of teen romantic film, zombie film and comedy work for it
M. Night Shyamalan makes one of his best films in ages. He kicks back his heels and goes nuts – at the same time as he is spooking us he also has us laughing; he ventures into making a Found Footage film but at the same time is also deconstructing the process with hilarious results
Horror comedy set around the wonderfully appealing idea of a support group for serial killers
Freddie Francis was one of the finest stylists of the Anglo-horror cycle. Here he makes a comedy spoofing the vampire film that comes out feeling like Benny Hill routines running around a big castle
Completely insane Japanese film that wades in gore while playing everything up at a level of demented cartoonish absurdity. Possibly the most delirious movie-watching fun it is possible to have
Directorial outing from makeup effects artist Chris Walas who created the Gremlins and Cronenberg’s The Fly. This Bill Paxton as a Yuppie who buys a home and is driven paranoid as it keeps being invaded by a vagrant
Appealingly quirky homemade zombie film that launched the career of Australia’s Spierig Brothers. The two demonstrate a considerable inventivity when it comes to the visual and makeup effects, which they created all themselves
Sequel to the outrageously gory 2001 Maniacs, although here the horror comedy balance spills over into absurd farce and cheap gore effects. Crucially, the film seems cheaper and less polished, more messy and random in terms of its arrangements
Eli Roth-produced remake of the Herschell Gordon Lewis splatter film Two Thousand Maniacs, this plants tongue in cheek, is fairly and squarely aimed at a frat boy audience and unapologetic about piling on copious amounts of gore and naked breasts
Lavalantula with Steve Guttenberg facing giant fire-breathing spiders was a modestly enjoyable creature feature. This sequel feels like a Sharknado wannabe with shittier effects and an unfunny sense of humour
An amusing parody of the Backwoods Brutality film where the hillbillies are likeable innocents and the college kids end up killing themselves in a series of bizarre accidents. Amusing, although in the end is only a one-joke film
The fourth of the Tremors films.; It is a surprise that the series has managed to remain consistently enjoyable despite a limited premise. The main spin here is an origin story that takes the series back to the West
Third of the films in the Tremors series, which have held up surprisingly well in their balance of creature effects and a considerable sense of humour. This adds a series of twists to the premise that are positively hilarious
The first of several sequels to the modest hit of Tremors with Fred Ward and Michael Gross repeating their roles, hunting Graboids in Mexico this time. As with the first film, this ably balances suspense, creature effects and a considerable sense of humour
A Roger Corman produced horror parody that conducts send ups of most of the horror icons of the 1980s – Freddy Krueger, Pinhead, Michael Meyers etc – without being particularly funny
Painfully unfunny comedy from Mel Brooks writer Rudy De Luca with journalists Jeff Goldblum and Ed Begley Jr encountering monsters while on assignment in Transylvania
A excruciatingly unfunny film that feels like one of Abbott and Costello’s monster bashes played as a crass frat comedy
Written by and starring 80s Scream Queen Brinke Stevens, this offers an occasionally amusing comedy take on the possession and exorcism film
The fourth of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films. This mixes it up slightly and adapts four Poe stories into three episodes, each of which stars Vincent Price
A horror comedy starring the Foo Fighters where the band’s antics sit alongside some entertainingly outrageous gore
Probably the next logical move after Zombie Strippers! Alas, where we should have had a fast, funny and sarcastic genre entry, the humour in this British entry becomes painfully belaboured in its constant unfunny efforts to get laughs
Really quite funny film in which a teenage girl becomes pregnant with a body-snatching parasite. Think Mean Girls meets The Hidden
A sloth is adopted as the mascot of a sorority house and proceeds to go on a killing spree. This emerges as entertainingly tongue-in-cheek
A trio of alt girls do urban exploring and walk into a war between a grumpy, retired Santa and Krampus
Simon Pegg produces/stars in a comedy spoofing the British boarding school tradition – but with the addition of monsters running around
Jason Mewes of Jay and Silent Bob fame is cast as a rarely speaking, goat-loving hick psycho. The film comes with a number of other offfbeat characterisations that you feel should have made for an amusing horror comedy but instead everything slips into a shrill one-note pitch
Positively the most insane, offensive and over-the-top film I have seen in some time. A bride finds she has a vagina possessed by Satan and uses it to go all I Spit on Your Grave on the gang who ate her husband on her wedding night, resulting in an outrageous splatter bloodbath
A warm parody/tribute to the George Romero zombie films that saw the emergence of Simon Pegg as a star. It also saw the zombie film move towards a more comedic emphasis, although few subsequent entries come with such good-natured humour
The bad movie hit of Sharknado was a surprise to everyone and spawned sequels. By this point, creativity appears to have dried up – essentially, the Sharknado series has jumped the shark
By this point, the Sharknado series has gone from an amusingly tongue-in-cheek original to a series that is widely signalling that it is not taking anything that happens remotely seriously
Sharknado was an instant bad movie phenomenon; the first sequel felt a forced attempt to copy that. The good news is that with the third entry, the series gets the balance of tongue in cheek absurdity just right
Sequel to the bad movie phenomenon Sharknado Accompanied by a host of celebrity cameos, there is less the cheerful absurdity of the original than a film that is trying to recapture a spontaneously generated fad
This arrived as the same instant full-born bad movie cult sensation. Although you cannot help but feel that the people who ridiculed the film are missing out on the joke – in not seeing that it has been made as something intentionally absurd
Rather funny British-made parody on Backwoods Brutality cliches where a work group of a team-building exercise ending up hunted by East European locals
The fifth and most enjoyable of the Chucky films, this amplifies the black humour to an outrageously funny level, while conducting an hilarious meta-fiction with Jennifer Tilly playing herself
Friday the 13th so changed the horror genre that within two years it produced two four parodies of its title. From Roger Corman, this is more of an occasionally amusing parody of classic monster movies than the slasher film
Rather funny comedy about Satanists and a virginal pizza girl who is chased as their intended victim. This comes with a bizarrely akilter sense of humour that reminds of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours
A multi-director horror anthology where all the directors are Latin American
Christmas horror film with wrestler Bill Goldberg playing a demonic version of Santa Claus
Painfully unfunny vampire comedy from Cannon Films about a vampire teenager who becomes a rock star. This has one of the least credible premises I’ve ever seen in a film. Mostly it seems to have been conceived around placing various musicians of the day in acting roles with bizarre results
This feels like someone has simply copied the idea of a secretive law enforcement agency from
A British entry in the 1980s splatter comedy. An aimless comedy about idiotic hayseed yokels with occasional moments of bloodletting and a half-human, half-goat creature running about
Not to be confused with the high-profile Leonardo DiCaprio film, this is a rather amusing film about a soldier who returns home as undead. Rather than the usual zombie/vampire film one would expect, this develops a wonderfully sustained sarcastic tone to expand out as a kind of undead Boondock Saints
Dan O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Dead came with a cheerfully black cynicism that was a wonderfully fresh alternative to George Romero amid the 1980s zombie fad – this sequel has a painfully unfunny lameness that could not sit at more removed extreme to that
Spinoff of Night of the Living Dead that emerged from a complicated copyright split with George Romero. Director Dan O’Bannon substitutes black humour to deliver an hilariously different take
Twilight fairly much killed the vampire film. This is the first of two big-budget offerings of 2023 that aims to turn that around
Classic title from Troma Films, quite possibly the first ever gonzo zombie film, this also counts as one of the worst zombie films ever made
The sort of film that might make Troma radioactive green with envy they didn’t make it concerning a giant rampaging ass. Mind-boggling and willing to be stupid and in frequent bad taste
Horror comedy about an attack by the zombies of resurrected former US Presidents
This was one of the classic 1980s splatter films. Stuart Gordon throws most of H.P. Lovecraft’s tone out the window and goes for hilariously black comedy served up with outrageously over-the-top effects
The fifth of the Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe films. By this point, there was a clear desire for some novelty so this one is played as a comedy between duelling magicians
Slasher film with a diabolically funny sense of humour as a psychopathic park ranger stalks a group of partying punks
This is a crowdourced film made by military veterans who set out with the idea of creating better military characterisations in films. Bizarrely enough, they turn to the zombie comedy to do so and the result is the crassest, most willfully offensive zombie film ever made
The third of the Prom Night films, a direct follow-on from the second in which Mary Lou becomes a campy Freddy Krueger-like villain firing off bad puns amid her dispatches
Troma film that has maybe the silliest movie title ever. This sets out to be so persistently moronic and wilfully offensive that it eventually attains a delirious absurdity
Possibly the most entertaining no-budget movie ever made. Essentially shot around the director’s own home for a bunch of traded favours, this is a slasher film where the cast have been encouraged to plant tongue-in-cheek and go over the top with frequently sidesplitting results
Another in the fad for 70s/80s remakes where Alexandre Aja for once captures the spirit of Joe Dante’s 1978 original by planting tongue in cheek and wading in with mind-bogglingly gory enthusiasm
The second film from Joe Dante. Mounted as a quickie copy of Jaws by producer Roger Corman, Dante succeeds in peppering it with a lot of sly jokes and genre in-references
The slasher film only really came into existence in 1980 but was so prolifically milked that by even two years later it had spawned its own sub-cycle of parodies. This hits in with a wacky anything goes absurdity but, aside from an amusing Carrie spoof, little of it is funny
One of the most head-scratchingly bizarre efforts among the great Ozploitation fad – a comedy about vampires in an Australian Outback town
Film about a big overweight psycho who abducts girls and makes them enact a fantasy of being a cheerleader. Produced by one of the directors of The Blair Witch Project
One Cut of the Dead was one of the freshest and most hilariously original takes on the zombie film of recent. This is a sequel
The idea of a zombie film all shot in a single take. This proves a novelty amusement but then the film spins this on its head and becomes positively ingenious.
An Australian Backwoods Brutality comedy, which amusingly inverts the genre’s clichés, not dissimilar to Tucker and Dale vs Evil
The oddest collaborations of its era – between Hammer Films and William Castle renowned for his sensationalist gimmicks, who conduct a remake of James Whale’s droll horror comedy. Alas, Castle only turns out a broad farce
This holds the distinction of being the world’s first gonzo zombie film – oh and the first zombie musical too. Not many zombies (or nude bodies), the song lyrics are occasionally amusing but the film’s humour is schoolboyish, and the effort amateurish on the whole
Horror comedy set in an office building as a group of inept security guards fight off a vampire outbreak among the staff. Very similar to the earlier Bloodsucking Bastards, this balances comedy and horror but director Mitchell Altieri demonstrates comedy is not his strong point
This rather appealingly plays out as a sex-reversed version of Shaun of the Dead with Maria Thayer as a slightly clueless woman who ends up in the midst of the zombie apocalypse with the guy she spent the night with. Thayer gives a winning performance and the humour is smart and witty
Sequel to a film that few people remember, this is all campy one-liners and gory set-pieces conducted with a silliness that boggles the mind
Alien body snatchers comedy that feels less like a film than an extended fanboy in-joke
The gonzo Japanese splatter film is one of the insanely demented corners of genre cinema today. This is a prime example, filled with mind-bogglingly perverse anatomical rearrangements and attachments, the screen is awash with blood and everything directed with a mad cartoonish energy
Fourth in the popular hopping vampire saga that spawned six films and an uncredited copycat series, all blending a manic mix of comedy, fantastique moves and Eastern beliefs
A parody of the Backwoods Brutality film. One of the very first films produced by Lloyd Kaufman of Troma fame
Monster movie parody that spoofs a number of classic films, including King Kong where it takes the title literally and the monster makes off with the hero giving the film a certain LGBT community relevance in its day. Contains quite an impressive cast list, including featuring both Paul Walker and singer Fergie as kids
Following the collapse of Amicus Films, producer Milton Subotsky went on on his own to make this horror anthology, the bread and butter of Amicus in their heyday. Though he brings in some major horror names – Vincent Price, John Carradine – the jokey tone failed to find any success
An Australian zombie comedy. The basic premise sets a bunch of lads and their cheerfully Neanderthal, sexist, beer-drinking, sports loving ways up against the zombie apocalypse
This calls itself a horror comedy and is set in a hardware store on Christmas Eve as the staff fall to murderous squabbling after the discovery of a dead body and large sum of money
An hilarious parody of the slasher film in which an undead lumberjack invades a Bible camp, slaughtering the teens in a series of over-the-top deaths to use their blood as syrup on his pancakes
The premise doesn’t much to enthuse – a hapless loser has to take care of a bunch of kids during a zombie outbreak. Sit past that and this is the funniest zombie comedy since Shaun of the Dead
Amiable Canadian entry in the oversaturated market of the zombie comedy that emerges sort of as a Judd Apatow film with zombies and produces the occasional smile if few laughs
Billed as a ‘zom-rom-com’, Dane DeHaan deals with girlfriend Aubrey Plaza who has returned from the dead. The film has a quirky appeal even if it is never quite as funny as it promises to be
A film about giant fire-breathing spiders. This is lifted from formula by a sense of humour and even peculiarly brings many of the cast of the Police Academy series out of retirement
The sixth of the Sharknado films, this has the usual crew fighting sharknados throughout history. With this comes the recognition there is nowhere more ridiculous and over-the-top for the series to go
A fitfully amusing H.P. Lovecraft fanboy comedy. Lovecraft, a noted conservative, would likely have deplored the idea of the nerd comedy but this gets the flavour of Lovecraft’s works down better than most
A low-budget indie comedy about a house that is plagued by demons and vampires. This comes with moments of appealing silliness
Ken Russell adapts a Bram Stoker novel about a snake cult. In Russell’s hand, Stoker’s serious work is turned into a campy over-the-top comedy overloaded with worm and phallic symbols
This has a winning concept – live-action roleplayers are forced to face a demon they accidentally conjure. Only it becomes a one-joke film with characters delivering mock mediaeval dialogue in falsettos
A New Zealand-made horror comedy. Oddly this is not, as the title might suggest, about a possessed sofa but a possessed recliner chair