What if you encourage the laughter and underplay the scares?
Bruce Campbell said that horror and comedy are the only genres where crowd reaction is encouraged. This would suggest that horror combined with comedy is instant cinematic gold. The trick is the balancing the two. Not all horror comedies can nail that. Horror legends like Wes Craven abandon their skills to favor the comedy. Some of these features are too black with their comedy to allow you to laugh. Suspense may just be abandoned. This genre is a challenge, and if you are an aspiring auteur, you should at least appreciate the effort to take on this task.
Off the Wall Features
-
Arnold (1973)
Lord Arnold could not get his wife to divorce him to allow him to marry his mistress. Marriage being “till death do us part”, the moment he dies, he marries a flight attendant. The new missus will live a life of luxury, as long as she takes constant care of his corpse.
-
Bad Taste (1987)
Peter Jackson’s directorial debut is a no-budget horror-comedy that took him three years to make. The film is about four kiwis trying to stop an intergalactic plan to turn humans into the latest fast food sensation.
-
Companion (2025) & Cherry 2000 (1988)
CatBusRuss and Gregory Carl investigate the morality of being in love with robots designed to be so. Why are we dicks when it comes to AI? Have we learned nothing from Dick and Crichton?
-
House (1985) with Gregory Carl
Gregory Carl and CatBusRuss discuss a horror comedy about a house where a writer settles into write his Vietnam-memoir. Surely the out-of-character suicide by his aunt that left him the home did not awaken anything.
-
It's My Party and I'll Die If I Want To (2007)
A low-budget movie that inspired CatBusRuss to write and attempt to sell his no-budget feature “Main Event of the Dead”. Demons vs. Elvira Cosplay.
-
Vampire in Brooklyn (1995)
Wes Craven directs Eddie Murphy, the last vampire who comes to Brooklyn to find the only woman suitable enough to continue the race, Angela Bassett.