Funny, But Scary: Favorite Creepy Comedies

"What We Do in the Shadows" is made from a wonderful unused idea. What if you had a nest of vampires, but instead of a sinister house on the hill, it was just a bunch of dudes renting a home while a human documentary crew tried to make a movie? Essentially, make them grumpy vampire roommates. We can all relate to that. As a bonus, add werewolves. Directed, written, and starring Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, this film's influence hasn't stopped and has been transformed into an even more popular television show.

"Deadstream," an uproarious found footage, a live-streaming comedy directed, written, produced, and edited by Vanessa and Joseph Winter, is one horror comedy that more people need to see. Not only is this tale of a disgraced live streamer and influencer desperately trying to get his audience back hilarious, but it also has genuine scares that will make you scream out loud. One of the film's most valuable players is Melanie Stone, who plays Chrissy. She's a treasure, and this movie goes to places you wouldn't expect, including up the hero's nose.

"The Return of the Living Dead" delicately dips its toe into the zombie pool created by George Romero's oeuvre and then does a cannonball into the subgenre. Directed by Dan O'Bannon and written by John Russo, who co-wrote "Night of the Living Dead" and Russell Steiner, who played Johnny in "Night," the film takes a strikingly different tack to the basic idea. It's the movie that spawned the ever-popular sayings "More brains" and "Send more ambulance drivers" that horror fans love to quote. The film nails the comedy while still going to shocking levels of terror. Not only do you feel for the humans trying to escape, you feel for the zombies too. It's a film with a fantastic grasp of tone.

Josh Ruben's second horror comedy, after 2020s "Scare Me," is a delight. It is scary. It has a reveal moment when the whole cast screams at the camera, which is priceless and shocking. But the film is based on the idea of community and human cooperation. While the inhabitants of a small town discover that a werewolf, or werewolves, who knows, are in their midst, the question is: who should you trust? It stars a bevy of very funny and charming actors like Sam Richardson, Milana Vayntrub, George Basil, Sarah Burns, Michael Chernus, Catherine Curtin, Wayne Duvall, Harvey Guillén, and Cheyenne Jackson as the, shall we say, eccentric citizens of the town.

"Student Bodies" is a slasher parody from 1981 that features a killer named "The Breather" because he is always out of breath. Comedian Richard Belzer played the character. This comedy is influenced by the boom of slasher pictures that followed the smash success of "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th". To adhere to the slasher standards of the day, a surprise is tucked into the film about half an hour in, as the film breaks the fourth wall to do one thing. Written and directed by Mickey Rose, with an uncredited directorial assist from Michael Ritchie, this movie is for horror movie completists and to give you perspective on how the genre is viewed from the outside.

"One Cut of the Dead" is a horror comedy with a bit of a long setup, but it all makes sense when you see what is actually going on. It's worth hanging with the film until you get the payoff. Each section has a reason for being, and the unfortunate actions of the actors and filmmakers trying to make a film and fight zombies simultaneously are funny. If anything, it is a bit of a comment on the concept in found footage where the people keep filming no matter what and just how hard it is to make any film. Like many great horror comedies, it's about more than what's on the surface—directed by Shin'ichirō Ueda and starring Takayuki Hamatsu, Yuzuki Akiyama, Kazuaki Nagaya, and Harumi Syuhama.

If I were to tell you that there's a zombie splatter comedy directed by the man who made the warm and fuzzy Lord of the Rings films, would you believe me? Well, you should. Peter Jackson made quite a few films before LOTR; quite a few of them are horror films, and some feature gallons of blood like "Dead Alive" does. It stars Timothy Balme, Diana Peñalver, and Elizabeth Moody. It has an epic conclusion between the hero, armed only with a lawnmower, and a crowd of enhanced and ravenous zombies.

"Evil Dead II" still is mind-blowing. Anchored by the incredible and often solo performance of Bruce Campbell, who seems willing to go to any lengths to make us laugh, this horror comedy makes us laugh and scream, sometimes within the same scene. It has aspects of absurdist comedy, as the hero Ash Williams, fights himself and is laughed at by a room full of inanimate objects. Ash gives up and starts cackling with a deer head and a lamp, and so will you. As for the terror, the deadites are terrifying and cruel, and full-on gore fountains fly around this particular cabin in the woods.

You can't take part in a discussion of horror comedies, especially zombie horror ones, without mentioning "Shaun of the Dead." This tremendously popular film, directed by Edgar Wright and written by Wright and Simon Pegg, remains a gem. It takes many popular tropes of the zombie subgenre and gives them relatable spins and fresh outlooks. Aside from being very funny, it's also surprisingly brutal, and some of the gore sneaks up on you and will stick with you forever. It stars a brilliant cast of able comic talents like Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Nick Frost, Dylan Moran, and Bill Nighy.

"Black Sheep" is a film about mutant carnivorous sheep in New Zealand. As a horror comedy, it's a pretty great concept and was directed by Jonathan King. It stars Nathan Meister, Danielle Mason, and Peter Feeney. When the mutated sheep bite people, they become a human-sheep hybrid. Oh yes. Of course, at the center of the film is a young man named Henry with a paralyzing fear of sheep related to an earlier trauma. It gives some good reasons why you should be more respectful of sheep and provides laughs along the way.