My Favorite Horror Comedies

As promised on social media, I will bring the countdown of my 100 favorite horror movies back from the dead starting tomorrow night. In the meantime, I thought I would whet your appetite with my five favorite horror comedies. This sub genre has produced a few of the most beloved films of all time and each of the movies I am about to present have a special place where my heart used to be. The funny thing is, some horror comedies were never intended to be funny, they just turned out that way. It’s a hard genre to pin down. Quick web searches for the term “horror comedies” produces head-scratching results. I better stop that and get to the list. They say nothing bleeds like a scalp wound.

5. Tremors

I love creature features. Monster movies are some of my favorite things to watch, especially the giant bug movies of the 1950s – Them, Tarantula, The Deadly Mantis, etc. Tremors, starring Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward, is a send-up of all of the great b-movies of the 1950s and 1960s. Bacon and Ward live in a small desert community. The discovery of giant worm-like creatures dubbed “graboids” sends everyone into a tizzy. Michael Gross, Ariana Richards (Jurassic Park) and Reba McEntire also star. Finn Carter plays the scientist who first discovers the giant worms. The townsfolk gather together to fight the monsters with Gross and McEntire playing doomsday preppers who are armed to the teeth.

4. Shaun of the Dead

This is the film that put Simon Pegg on everyone’s radar. This send up of zombie films written by Pegg and Edgar Wright, and directed by Wright, is as much satire on the doldrums of every day life, loves and loves lost, as it is zombie film. Nick Frost co-stars with Pegg, a future frequent team-up, as two pals who are besieged by an outbreak of the undead. Hilarity ensues as Shaun and Ed (Frost) concoct a plan to rescue Shaun’s now ex-girlfriend Liz and his mom, and begrudgingly his step-father (played by the wonderful Bill Nighy) and his ex-girlfriend’s pals. The movie is well-written and well-acted with several side-splitting scenes. Many zombie movie tropes are skewered and one of the funniest scenes involves Shaun and Ed trying to kill a pair of zombies by flinging vinyl record albums at their heads. The music and pop culture references are enough to make this film enjoyable.

3. What We Do in the Shadows

New Zealand’s Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords fame is becoming a Hollywood powerhouse. He has done some pretty good voice over work to go along with his acting. He is also a writer and a director. Perhaps his best work to date is the vampire film, What We Do in the Shadows. Written and directed by Clement and Taika Waititi, this irreverent take on vampire myth and lore is filmed documentary style, almost MTV Cribs style. A reality TV crew follows a group of idiot vampires who each has unique traits or abilities. The bottom line is, none of them really know how to vampire. IMDB describes the movie this way: “Viago, Deacon and Vladislav are vampires who are finding that modern life has them struggling with the mundane – like paying rent, keeping up with the chore wheel, trying to get into nightclubs and overcoming flatmate conflicts.” It’s like Friends meets Keeping Up with the Kardashians, only with vampires. The film has spawned a popular TV series of the same name. The film and the series are hilarious.

2. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

I almost forgot about this one. I grew up on Universal Horror, fell in love with Universal Horror. Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf-Man, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, and all their sequels. I also grew up on Abbott and Costello films and routines. Their “Who’s on first?” sketch remains one of the funniest and timeless bits ever written and performed. There wasn’t much taste for horror films in the 1940s because of World War II. The world had witnessed enough horror. Universal decided to trot their beloved monsters out for one more go-round, this time with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. The best of the batch was Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. This film marked only the second time Bela Lugosi played Dracula on the big screen. And it would be his last. Lon Chaney, Jr., reprises his role as Larry Talbot/The Wolf-Man and he is as tragic as ever. Cowboy actor Glenn Strange takes a turn as Dr. Frankenstein’s creation. The boys run afoul of Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and Talbot’s werewolf in what is more comedy than horror. This 1948 film just might be Abbott and Costello’s best.

1. Young Frankenstein

I can practically quote this one by heart. I adore this movie. Gene Wilder is at his best in this 1974 Mel Brooks film. The usual suspects – Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman, Madeline Kahn, Terri Garr, Kenneth Mars, and Peter Boyle – are all pitch perfect in this send-up/mash-up of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. Filmed in black and white, the movie pays tribute to the great Universal horror films of the 1930s and early 1940s. Feldman, as Igor, chews scenery, literally in one memorable moment with Kahn, and steals every scene he is in. Wilder’s exchange with Leachman’s Frau Blücher upon his arrival at the castle is hilarious. Boyle is wonderful as the monster and Mars’ Inspector Kemp pays homage to the original film’s sequels. Gene Hackman is a delight as the blind hermit. There are too many great scenes to mention and too many lines to quote here.

My Obsession with “IT”

It takes quite a bit for me to obsess over a movie or a TV show. When it comes to TV, if I don’t finish a series, sometimes the show jumps the shark or loses me somehow. Sometimes, the show is cancelled prematurely. When it comes to Stephen King’s IT, I have been obsessed for the last two years. The last time a book or movie captivated me like this was the last time I watched Sergio Leone’s gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America all the way through, the almost four-hour version. The film affected me. I had to read and research everything I could about it. That’s where my head has been since IT: Chapter One came out in 2017.

This is another one where we all think we know the story. A group of kids, the self-titled Losers Club, band together to fight a demonic clown. They make a blood oath to reunite and fight the evil again if they failed the first time and IT returns. IT comes back to terrorize Derry, Maine, every 27 years, it casts a pall on the residents of this accursed town, and finds its food tastier when the food is scared. The Losers Club reunites and fights IT again. All the while, Henry Bowers and his gang lurk around every corner. IT’s favorite form is Pennywise The Dancing Clown, because, hey, who’s afraid of a clown? Right? We all are now, thanks Stephen.

I call myself a Stephen King fan but to be honest, I haven’t read as much of King’s work as I thought I had. Sure, I have seen numerous movie and TV adaptations for stories I have never read – Pet Sematary, Carrie, Creepshow, The Dark Tower, The Storm of the Century, Golden Years, Castle Rock, The Stand, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Tommyknockers, The Longoliers, The Mist, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Firestarter, Children of the Corn, Silver Bullet, Misery, Dolores Claiborne, 1408, The Running Man … I am sure I am missing something.

As for novels or books, I have read ‘Salem’s Lot, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, The Dark Half, Needful Things, Gerald’s Game, Bag of Bones, Dreamcatcher, Joyland, Revival, The Outsider, and On Writing. I have also read the short story collections Night Shift and Full Dark No Stars. In all, just 13 books. I made it my mission to read IT, all 1,153 pages of IT, before IT: Chapter Two hit theaters. I accomplished that goal. I put everything else I was reading on hold until I finished it. It took about a month. I read a bit of IT every night except for maybe two or three nights. So, make that 13.

Most of us remember the made for TV mini-series from 1990 starring Tim Reid, John Ritter, Richard Thomas, Annette O’Toole, Dennis Christopher, Richard Masur, Harry Anderson, et al. Ageless wonder Seth Green stars as Richie Tozier as a child. Emily Perkins plays young Beverly Marsh. She goes on to star in the cult favorite werewolf film Ginger Snaps as Ginger’s sister, Brigitte.

I watched the mini-series again when IT: Chapter One was on the horizon, and then again when IT: Chapter Two was nearing its recent release. It’s better than you remember, Tim Curry is, well, pretty darn good as Pennywise The Dancing Clown. He plays it pretty straight as a circus clown until the moments when he has to feed. Then he is downright monstrous. It is pretty faithful to the book. It transitions seamlessly between 1958 and 1988. You have to get past Harry Anderson’s shtick as he was riding high on Night Court, and the fact that Tim Reid once played a disc jockey named Venus Flytrap on WKRP in Cincinnati.

The mini-series gets vilified for two reasons: 1. it was made for TV so it had to go light on the gore; 2. the special effects in the boss battle scene with IT at the end were comical at best. It gets a bad rap on the whole, it is worth a watch.

IT: Chapter One was pitch perfect. The young actors cast to play the Losers Club were on the money, including Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard. Sophia Lillis is great as young Beverly Marsh. The timeline is shifted a bit. It is set in 1989, so the adults’ story that comes later can take place in our time. The decision was made to split the story into two parts – the kids’ part and the adults’ tale. Bill Skarsgard is wonderful as Pennywise. There is so much to like about this film. Director Andy Muschietti nailed the aesthetic, the 1980s nostalgia, the Easter eggs and homages to the book, especially for the things they left out of the narrative but found a way to incorporate. Bowers’ descent into madness, aided by IT of course, illustrated the bully’s pathology although it didn’t dive into the origins of his nature enough. His father was an asshole in the movie and that had to suffice.

IT: Chapter Two was a disappointment in my eyes. I had high hopes for the casting. James McAvoy as Bill, Bill Hader as Richie, Jessica Chastain as Bev, Old Spice pitch man and former football player Isaiah Mustafa as Mike, James Ransone as Eddie. McAvoy is miscast, as is Jay Ryan as the adult Ben Hanscom. Chastain misses the mark on her portrayal of Bev, who was tough and determined as a kid, but bursts into tears at the drop of a hat as an adult. Skarsgard is underused as Pennywise as he is replaced by bad CGI creature effects in many scenes. Mike is portrayed as a raving lunatic who lured his friends back to Derry on false pretenses, despite their blood oath. Hader is pretty good as Richie and Ransone is a pleasant surprise as Eddie. Teach Grant is completely wasted as the adult Henry Bowers. The attraction between Bill and Bev isn’t handled well, and Bev ending up with Ben makes no sense the way it’s filmed.

My mind was filling in the blanks while I watched this three-hour slough through the sewers and streets of Derry because I had read the book and it was fresh in my mind. I could go point for point on how the book differed from the movies and the mini-series, but there are plenty of YouTube videos that’ll do that for you. Trust me, I’ve watched them.

I think the following when it comes to the film makers on this one. They missed the point. Don’t get me wrong, I am as big a fan of creature features as the next person. But, the folks who made Chapter Two distilled all of what IT is into one monster – Pennywise. Pennywise is a great villain to be sure. In the book, however, IT is a shapeshifter and is rarely Pennywise. They also spent way too much time flashing back to the Losers Club as kids and not enough developing the adults’ stories. This is such a rich and layered story, to distill it down to a monster movie is downright sad. A big swing and a miss here.

I also thought they should have stuck to the source material a bit more in Chapter Two. I thought too many key elements were changed. I did like Stephen King’s cameo, however.

What they really missed was the whole point of the book. Trauma. Especially childhood trauma. Every single member of the Losers Club went through some sort of childhood trauma which is symbolized, in most cases, by an encounter with IT.

As adults, they repressed those memories, which was symbolized by their memory loss when they all left Derry (except Mike, who stayed behind). Beverly married an abusive man after growing up abused by her father, Eddie was brow beaten and turned into a hypochondriac by his mother and married practically the same woman, Bill lost his stutter but forgot how his brother had died and tries to work it all out by writing horror novels, Richie covers it all up with humor as a popular disc jockey (comedian in the movie and late night talk show host in the mini-series), Stan just can’t handle any of it so he chooses to end his life rather than face IT again, Ben obsesses over work and fitness after losing weight after being tormented as the fat kid and never publicly professing his love for Bev. And Mike, poor Mike, was left behind to pick up the pieces and prepare for the next round with the damn clown.

These elements are not present in the movie the way they should be. They’re there all right. You see them, you just don’t feel them or understand them.

The beauty of Stephen King’s story is that IT represents whatever it is that traumatized you as a kid. It really doesn’t matter what “IT” is. And the bottom line is, what “IT” is for you, “IT” has to be dealt with. And what better way to handle it than with the people who love you the most. The people who know everything about you and love you anyway.

That’s why I didn’t care for Chapter Two getting distilled down into a monster movie. Read the book, watch the mini-series, watch the two new films. Judge for yourself. The book is tremendous. It was exhausting, but I enjoyed it immensely.

So, now I am on a Stephen King kick. I immediately set to reading Doctor Sleep, so make that 15 King novels I have read. He’s only written 60+. Doctor Sleep is the sequel to The Shining, and a film adaptation is due out soon. I then started Mr. Mercedes.

There is a chart or a graph or something on the Internet that shows how all of King’s works are interconnected. He’s so much more than a horror writer. I think many people don’t realize that. He has created a multidimensional multimedia universe that the Marvel Cinematic Universe could only … marvel at.

Read it, watch it, enjoy it. Somewhere in the Stephen King universe, you’ll find something you like. Just don’t ask me to go to Maine.

You’ll float too.