The seventh art is a challenge to all genres of cinema. You’ve probably come across a movie in the movie industry that uses clichés and horror elements to mix them with comedy. Be it the excessive violence or the archetypes of characters and narratives, there is no lack of films – small or big productions – that mix elements of humour and horror to significant effect.
When we talk about horror and comedy, for sure some movies already come to your mind, especially the satires of horror movies. How about getting away from the obvious and getting to know some successful titles for challenging the style of horror movies? Here are three horror movies with dark humour for you to get some scares but also have fun.
1- Leprechaun 3
Starting with the less obvious, the Leprechaun movie saga tells the story of an unfriendly goblin. In the first movie, Leprechaun murders everyone who tries to get close to his gold. During the long run, the goblin gets trapped but is released and spreads chaos throughout the city. A group of young people is behind him to capture and kill him.
Following a slightly different and much more exciting plot, in Leprechaun 3, the goblin is on another furious hunt for his lost gold. This time he’s trying his luck in Las Vegas after an unlucky college student stumbles across one of the goblin’s stolen gold shillings. The difference of Leprechaun 3 is that it combines this horror with dark humour and a fascinating setting, Vegas. which might be a strange setting for a horror movie. But as you can see from online casinos, such as Netbet’s various horror slots, for example, Blood Sucker. It’s not an uncommon theme for casinos at all. Find out more on OLBG.com’s review of Netbet.
2- Gremlins
A film from the same year that mixes horror and comedy, this time focused on an eighties black comedy, is Gremlins, by director Joe Dante.
The plot follows young Billy Peltzer, who gets his pet Gizmo for Christmas. He just has to stick to three rules: don’t expose him to solid light, never wet him, and never feed him after midnight. The second movie is just as good, breaking the fourth wall with mastery and insanity.
3- Scary Movie
It’s impossible to talk about horror and dark humour without talking about everyone panicking. One of the most insane franchises in recent times, it became a hit because of satire mixed with fear. Twenty years ago, the slasher parody was released in American theatres and had since gained three sequels and a reboot starring Ashley Tisdale. Of course, everyone knows that the saga created by brothers Shawn and Marlon Wayans is terrible – but it remains our “guilty pleasure” to this day for the bizarre script and ridiculous scenes that reflect the level of irreverence in the feature films.
The debut iteration (and consecutive ones) were massacred by critics but became a box office hit, grossing nearly $280 million from a $19 million budget. And as we know that this film is one of the darlings of the genre, we brought three curiosities about it:
1 – In addition to the apparent references to recent movie releases, the comedy parodied no less than eight feature films: in addition to Scream, Scream two, and I Know What You Did Last Summer, the script also brought jokes about The Sixth Sense; The Blair Witch Project; The Shining; “Matrix” and Prisoners
2 – The script is a combination of two movies that Dimension Films acquired: ‘Last Summer I Screamed Because Halloween Fell On Friday The 13th’, written by Phil Beauman, and ‘Scream If You Know What I Did Last Halloween,’ written by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.
3 – The success of the first film came without any precedents, which culminated in several sequels. However, the poster for the first iteration said “no sequels”; to “fix the mistake,” the film’s creative and advertising team crossed out the phrase in question and wrote “we lied” to “Everybody in Panic 2”.
Want to keep up with horror movies? Our website made a list of the best horror movies last year; check it out here.