Horror movies are ripe for parody. Since the tropes and clichés of the genre have become so well-worn and overused, naturally, they are easy to make fun of. A lot of straight horror films end up working better as unintentional comedies because they fall into all the conventional trappings and their jump scares are hilariously ineffective. Of course, movies that intentionally set out to spoof the genre are even funnier.
While the endless slew of Scary Movie entries keeps wasting a lucrative opportunity to poke fun at contemporary horror hits, there have been plenty of other movies that have succeeded in mocking the genre. Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein is a perfect example.
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Gene Wilder originally approached Mel Brooks with the concept for Young Frankenstein on the set of Blazing Saddles. The story is of a Frankenstein descendant, who wants to distance himself from his ancestors' reputation to claw back credibility in the scientific community.
The resulting movie is not only one of the funniest comedies ever made, with a ton of laugh-out-loud moments regardless of the audience’s point of reference. It’s also a perfect recreation of the uniquely creepy aesthetic of the old black-and-white Universal monster movies.
Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil (2010)
Backwood serial killers have become as commonplace in horror cinema as either escaped psychiatric patients and/or vampires. Tucker & Dale vs. Evil posits the question: what if they’re just nice guys caught in compromising positions? Just because somebody’s wielding a chainsaw, it doesn’t mean they are a murderer.
Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine are perfectly matched in the title roles and director Eli Craig has a strong command of the movie’s unique tone. It’s a shame fans will probably never get to see the oft-teased sequel.
Night Of The Creeps (1986)
With influences from zombie movies, slasher movies, and alien invasion movies, writer-director Fred Dekker put everything and the kitchen sink in Night of the Creeps, his satirical homage to a bygone era of B-movies.
Dekker essentially put every trope and cliché he could think of into this script. By combining every B-movie, Dekker made the B-movie-est B-movie of all time (if that title doesn’t already belong to Plan 9 from Outer Space).
The Cabin In The Woods (2011)
Drew Goddard’s directorial debut The Cabin in the Woods initially sets itself up as a straight horror movie, utilizing every cliché in the book. In this film, a group of college kids drive out to an isolated cabin and discover something sinister is afoot.
But the meta twist here is that all the monsters being unleashed on the unsuspecting protagonists are being controlled from a mysterious underground facility.
This Is The End (2013)
After handing their scripts for Superbad and Pineapple Express over to other filmmakers, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg made their directorial debut with the apocalyptic comedy This is the End. In this movie, Rogen and various familiar co-stars play themselves as they try to survive the end of the world.
Rogen and Goldberg specifically avoided lighting This is the End like a bright, cheery Hollywood comedy and instead went with the darker, gloomier colors of horror cinema. The movie could be broadly described as a horror comedy, but it also has specific parodies of iconic scenes from The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby.
Evil Dead II (1987)
Sam Raimi’s superfan Stephen King begging a producer to pick it up, Evil Dead II is essentially a comedic remake of the original.
The original Evil Dead movie still has plenty of Raimi’s signature pitch-black humor, but it’s primarily a straight horror film where the sequel is an all-out wacky slapstick comedy.
What We Do In The Shadows (2014)
Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement co-directed What We Do in the Shadows, which is a mockumentary chronicling the lives of some vampires living in modern-day New Zealand.
The movie wrings a ton of laughs out of putting the bloodthirsty undead into mundane, relatable, everyday situations. What We Do in the Shadows has since been adapted into an equally acclaimed TV series airing on FX.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
The mother of all cult classics, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a hilarious musical comedy paying homage to the schlocky sci-fi and horror B-movies from the ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s.
Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick play newly engaged couple Janet and Brad, who find themselves marooned at a creepy mansion when their car breaks down. Tim Curry steals the show as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the mad scientist who invites them in.
Scream (1996)
It was an odd choice for the first Scary Movie to parody Scream, because Scream was already a kind of parody. Wes Craven’s movie works as a straight slasher, but it also deconstructs the genre with its subversions of the usual tropes and its characters’ familiarity with the history of horror cinema.
Kevin Williamson’s brilliantly crafted script satirizes slashers by bringing a darkly comic edge to the violence and shrouding the Ghostface killer in “whodunit” mystery.
Shaun Of The Dead (2004)
Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost kicked off their genre-riffing Cornetto Trilogy with Shaun of the Dead, an affectionate parody of zombie movies.
Wright and Pegg’s watertight script hilariously translated the tropes of George A. Romero’s zombie-infested classics to a British setting. The movie opens as a standard Richard Curtis rom-com before being abruptly interrupted by the rise of the undead, at which point the survivors decide to hole up in their local pub.
