There are some moviegoers who don’t like genre-blending in films. It’s understandable that when you’re in the mood for a good mystery, or a straightforward romance, perhaps a western, or whatever type of film it might be, you don’t want to mess with the standard formula by combining the elements from other genres and creating some hybrid film. We all can relate to that, including us horror fans. However, I believe that horror fans are broadminded and are always open for something different. In particular, when horror and comedy are blended together, you never know what you’re going to get, but you know it will be different each time. Afterall, each director has a unique, individual sense of humor.
For me, there is a difference between a horror-comedy film and a comedy-horror film. A movie that is a comedy first, set within the backdrop of one horror trope or another, is different from horror movies that utilize comic elements to enhance the appeal of the film. You can’t call Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein a horror movie, so it isn’t a horror-comedy. Rather, it is a comedy-horror film. I would say the same thing about films such as Young Frankenstein , Ghostbusters, and even Beetlejuice, movies which may not be overtly farcical as the Abbot and Costello monster films, but they are parodies, movies principally intended to be comedies. In a horror-comedy, the horror has to come first. What does that mean? Well, for me the characters in horror-comedies have to be in actual peril, vulnerable to suffering and dying. And yes, there has to be blood. In fact, I would say that in a horror-comedy there needs to be even more blood than a typical horror film to show that it is a horror movie first and foremost.
Having said that, going forward, I would also like to mention that rankings are subjective, so keep that in mind as you read through my list.
My number 5 is John Carpenter’s They Live. This film is actually multiple genres rolled into one including horror, comedy, science fiction, and action.
This film is a cult classic for a reason. Released in 1988 and directed by horror film icon, John Carpenter, there’s plenty of tension and violence, though certainly not what you would say was an excessive amount of blood, which was never Carpenter’s style. Like Alfred Hitchcock, Carpenter is a horror filmmaker who has always relied on drama and building a sense of dread rather than gore to get his audience on the edge of their seats.
They Live is about a no name drifter named Nada, played by professional wrestler-turned actor “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, who stumbles upon a pair of special sunglasses that let him see that the world is actually inhabited by skull-faced aliens disguised as humans. Regular people, like him, have been living their lives alongside these beings without knowing it, and worse still, are being manipulated and controlled to work and spend their money on consumer goods. The glasses also allow Nada to see the subliminal message that are prevalent everywhere in society, suggesting that people “conform” and “consume.” There’s your science fiction.
Casting Roddy Piper was no accident. In the ring, he was fearless and didn’t back down from anybody, and these are the very traits his character needs in this film as he pursues justice for humanity and fights to free them from their extraterrestrial enslavement.
There’s your action film.
Roddy Piper plays his character tongue-in-cheek from beginning to end, and his comic timing is excellent. In one scene, he walks into a bank that is filled largely with people who he can see are aliens. He is armed to the teeth, which gets everyone’s attention. Just as cool as he can be, he tells them, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubble gum.”
These kinds of lines, and there are many others throughout the film, don’t make They Live a comedy. But it’s the kind of humor that makes this movie a lot of fun to watch.
In talking to people about this film, one of the most entertaining scenes is a long fight sequence between Roddy Piper’s character and co-star Keith David’s character. It was staged as an alley brawl, and these two men trade blow after blow, throwing punches and landing kicks on one another for nearly six straight minutes, though it seemed even longer than that. As vicious and as sustained as this fistfight was, it was one of the funniest moments in the movie.
Moving from aliens to zombies and now to the lycanthrope, number 3 on my list is An American Werewolf in London. With comedies such as Animal House, The Blue Brothers, Trading Places, and Coming to America under his directorial belt, John Landis manages to mix horror and comedy perfectly in this story about two young Americans backpacking their way through England when they encounter a werewolf that slaughters on of them, leaving the other with both the curse of turning into a beast every full moon and haunted by his dead friend, who returns to him as a decaying corpse in his visions and begs him to kill himself before he kills more people. These scenes between David (David Naughton) and his dead friend Jack (Griffin Dunne) are brilliant and hilarious. The carnage in this film is high, but the special makeup effects by Rick Baker is even better. For his effort, Baker went on to win the inaugural Academy Award for Best Makeup. He also drew the attention of Michael Jackson, who would request to work with both Baker and Landis on his iconic music video/short film, Thriller.
For my number 2 and number 1 horror-comedy, I’m going to do my own kind blending here by having Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness share the top spot on my list, and in no particular order because they are both on a level all by themselves, as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t matter which is number one or number two, or 1A and 1B if you prefer. Either way, you can’t go wrong.
Sam Raimi did a remarkable job directing his horror-comedy classic, Evil Dead 2, released in 1987, but he didn’t let his fans down when he was given a much larger budget to work with in 1992’s Army of Darkness, delivering and equally inspired and unforgettable horror-comedy masterpiece.
There are some who might want to lump these two films together, but they are vastly different and wonderfully unique, stand-alone films, despite both being directed by Raimi and starring the inimitable Bruce Campbell, in all his square-jawed campiness as the Deadite-fighting hero, Ash Williams.
Evil Dead 2 is a hybrid unto itself, being both a sequel and a remake of Raimi’s 1981 The Evil Dead. Because the story in Evil Dead 2 is virtually the same as the 1981 film, it can be a little confusing to some fans. Bruce Campbell categorized the second film this way, calling it a ‘re-quel.’
In Army of Darkness, the background shifts drastically from a secluded cabin in the woods. When we left Ash at the end of Evil Dead 2, he had been pulled through a portal and transported back into time to 1300 A.D., arriving in the desert before being captured by the court of King Arthur’s men. Now, he must do battle with the undead in the Middle Ages. How’s that for a comic set up?
With his chainsaw arm-weapon and his one-liners, the hilarity ensues as Ash seeks the help of a wiseman so he can retrieve the Necronomicon and return back to his own time. Along the way, Ash not only has deadites to contend with, there is also an evil Ash and tiny versions of himself that taunt him, providing some of the funniest moments in the movie.
Both Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness overachieved in both the horror and comedy genres, providing buckets of blood, literally, along with the franchise’s signature stop-motion spookiness, and delivering laughs that left audiences of the day rolling in the theatre isles.
If you liked the 2013 Evil Dead film and 2023’s Evil Dead Rise, you have to go back and watch Raimi’s films. The television series, Ash vs. Evil Dead, which ran from 2015-2018 on Starz, would give you a better idea of what to expect from Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, if you haven’t seen them before.
So, let’s hear it. What are your favorite horror-comedy films?
Published 7/1/25