The prior four articles of the good and ugly in comedy horror, all of it was in the run down to this final part. We’ve looked at Frank Henenlotter, Joe Dante, and an unfathomable number of pratfalls, puns, sarcastic one liners and gore, gore, gore. If you’re favourite comedy horror hasn’t appeared, tell us what it is in the comments section below. Maybe a variation on this article will appear in 12 months with some of those omissions included.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Now to the meat of the matter, what are the greatest films that combine both comedy and horror?
Wallace & Gromit And The Curse Of The Were-rabbit
Wallace & Gromit made their debut feature length with one of best horror homages in many a year. Maybe that’s a biased viewpoint as a Brit, Wallace and his pet dog can do no wrong on these shores.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Now to the meat of the matter, what are the greatest films that combine both comedy and horror?
Wallace & Gromit And The Curse Of The Were-rabbit
Wallace & Gromit made their debut feature length with one of best horror homages in many a year. Maybe that’s a biased viewpoint as a Brit, Wallace and his pet dog can do no wrong on these shores.
- 10/31/2012
- by Rob Simpson
- SoundOnSight
Skyfall
Directed by Sam Mendes
Written by Robert Wade, John Logan and Neal Purvis
2012, UK / USA
After the void that was Quantum of Solace, Bond is back to his best in Skyfall. In Daniel Craig’s third outing as Bond, he is shot by friendly fire in a vital mission to retrieve a hard drive full of classified information about undercover agents all over the world. M is forced to make a snap decision during the latest of Bond’s furiously paced chase sequences, the result of which sees Craig falling from a train to the river below in spectacular fashion. After which Bond is presumed to be killed in action. As he is “enjoying death,” M16 is faced with the threat posed by M’s past.
Skyfall is largely contrary to what one might expect from Bond, continuing a personal theory that this iteration is the most complex to...
Directed by Sam Mendes
Written by Robert Wade, John Logan and Neal Purvis
2012, UK / USA
After the void that was Quantum of Solace, Bond is back to his best in Skyfall. In Daniel Craig’s third outing as Bond, he is shot by friendly fire in a vital mission to retrieve a hard drive full of classified information about undercover agents all over the world. M is forced to make a snap decision during the latest of Bond’s furiously paced chase sequences, the result of which sees Craig falling from a train to the river below in spectacular fashion. After which Bond is presumed to be killed in action. As he is “enjoying death,” M16 is faced with the threat posed by M’s past.
Skyfall is largely contrary to what one might expect from Bond, continuing a personal theory that this iteration is the most complex to...
- 10/28/2012
- by Rob Simpson
- SoundOnSight
Killing Them Softly
Directed by Andrew Dominik
Written by Andrew Dominik
USA, 2012
New-Zealand-born Andrew Dominik is one of the best directors you’ve never heard of and with his filmography in Chopper, The Assassination of Jesse James and now Killing Them Softly, he is one of a select few who have a talent for merging black comedy and character led drama. His third feature is based on the George V. Higgins’s 1974 novel Cogan’s Trade, only Dominik updated the setting to the modern day economic crisis.
Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn are hired to hit a mob-protected poker game ran by a hapless Ray Liotta. They may be clad with cleaning gloves and a shotgun that stretches the very boundaries of “sawn off” but they carry out the raid successfully, by casting doubt on the man who runs and took advantage of the poker games previously. Sadly for the...
Directed by Andrew Dominik
Written by Andrew Dominik
USA, 2012
New-Zealand-born Andrew Dominik is one of the best directors you’ve never heard of and with his filmography in Chopper, The Assassination of Jesse James and now Killing Them Softly, he is one of a select few who have a talent for merging black comedy and character led drama. His third feature is based on the George V. Higgins’s 1974 novel Cogan’s Trade, only Dominik updated the setting to the modern day economic crisis.
Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn are hired to hit a mob-protected poker game ran by a hapless Ray Liotta. They may be clad with cleaning gloves and a shotgun that stretches the very boundaries of “sawn off” but they carry out the raid successfully, by casting doubt on the man who runs and took advantage of the poker games previously. Sadly for the...
- 9/24/2012
- by Rob Simpson
- SoundOnSight
Moonrise Kingdom
Directed by Wes Anderson
Written by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola
2012, USA
Not every film is accessible to every person. Sometimes this is because of ingrained gender values or extremities in the presentation, other times it’s just down to directorial style. Wes Anderson encapsulates that as much as any director. His deadpan, twee and quirky styling’s are very much in the beholder’s eye. For his many detractors this signals bad news as his new film, Moonrise Kingdom, is his most Andersonian effort since The Life Aquatic. Conversely, for fans of his work, this is fantastic news.
Taking place on the small island of New Penzance off the coast of New England in 1965, Moonrise Kingdom sees the effect that two runaways have on the small community, whether it’s the local police officer, Bruce Willis, head of the Khaki scouts and Americana icon Ed Norton, a...
Directed by Wes Anderson
Written by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola
2012, USA
Not every film is accessible to every person. Sometimes this is because of ingrained gender values or extremities in the presentation, other times it’s just down to directorial style. Wes Anderson encapsulates that as much as any director. His deadpan, twee and quirky styling’s are very much in the beholder’s eye. For his many detractors this signals bad news as his new film, Moonrise Kingdom, is his most Andersonian effort since The Life Aquatic. Conversely, for fans of his work, this is fantastic news.
Taking place on the small island of New Penzance off the coast of New England in 1965, Moonrise Kingdom sees the effect that two runaways have on the small community, whether it’s the local police officer, Bruce Willis, head of the Khaki scouts and Americana icon Ed Norton, a...
- 5/27/2012
- by Rob Simpson
- SoundOnSight
With The Raid: Redemption now in cinemas around the world or on the cusp or release, the names of its stars have been gaining traction, those names being Iko Uwais, the star and master practitioner of Pencak Silat, and the director, Gareth Evans, from the Welsh valleys, who grew up with a love of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sam Peckinpah and John Woo. That love relayed itself into pursuing a career in cinema. Despite the misstep in 2006, with his little seen directorial debut, Footsteps, Evans never gave up on his dream until a moment of genuine serendipity when he found himself with the opportunity to direct a documentary about martial arts in Indonesia, an opportunity that lead from his Japanese-Indonesian wife. That lead to him making his next film, Merantau, where he started his work partnership with Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian, and the rest is history, as they say.
- 5/18/2012
- by Rob Simpson
- SoundOnSight
In the ensemble tour de force that is John Luessenhop’s Takers, Idris Elba masterfully says, without a hint of irony, “We’re takers, gents. That’s what we do for a living. We take.” Apparently, along with being a competent actor by day, Elba also moonlights as Captain Obvious by night, but in addition to being heavy with deep, poetic truth, his quote is also indicative of a phenomenon that was hitherto seen as common knowledge.
Which is to say, words should mean what they mean.
Yes, takers take. Drivers drive and writers write; lovers love and teachers teach. Words have meanings, and meanings never change. But sadly, the most glaring contemporary misnomer is one that disheartens the most – scary movies no longer scare.
Secretly, we all know it. Drew Goddard must too.
To try and prove my point, let me ask you a simple question. When was the...
Which is to say, words should mean what they mean.
Yes, takers take. Drivers drive and writers write; lovers love and teachers teach. Words have meanings, and meanings never change. But sadly, the most glaring contemporary misnomer is one that disheartens the most – scary movies no longer scare.
Secretly, we all know it. Drew Goddard must too.
To try and prove my point, let me ask you a simple question. When was the...
- 4/14/2012
- by Justin Li
- SoundOnSight
The Cabin in the Woods
Written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard
Directed by Drew Goddard
USA, 2012
How to discuss the cabin in the woods? Now there is a million dollar question. A group of college students made up of Chris Hemsworth (pre-Thor), Anna Hutchinson, Fran Kranz, Kristen Connolly and Jesse Williams all decide to disappear off the grid and go to Hemsworth’s cousin’s cabin in the woods for the weekend. The horror archetype is right there, only instead of each of the characters being stupid stereotypes, they are each intellectual in their own way. Keeping true to the genre stereotypes, they have a run in with a creepy local before arriving at the cabin. This is a sequence of oft-traveled horror clichés, and it takes very little time to shake those shackles free.
As far as describing Cain in the Woods’ plot goes, that’s as...
Written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard
Directed by Drew Goddard
USA, 2012
How to discuss the cabin in the woods? Now there is a million dollar question. A group of college students made up of Chris Hemsworth (pre-Thor), Anna Hutchinson, Fran Kranz, Kristen Connolly and Jesse Williams all decide to disappear off the grid and go to Hemsworth’s cousin’s cabin in the woods for the weekend. The horror archetype is right there, only instead of each of the characters being stupid stereotypes, they are each intellectual in their own way. Keeping true to the genre stereotypes, they have a run in with a creepy local before arriving at the cabin. This is a sequence of oft-traveled horror clichés, and it takes very little time to shake those shackles free.
As far as describing Cain in the Woods’ plot goes, that’s as...
- 4/6/2012
- by Rob Simpson
- SoundOnSight
The latest list in sound of sights month long look at the greatest horror films ever is taking a different look on the horror genre. There is a very narrow line that divides finding something funny and scary, which is exactly the sort of film this list is celebrating. As a genre there is two ways you can address the comedy horror. The first and the much more popular route is comedy about horror, these films rarely attempt to attain any qualities other than a comedic jibe at the genre. If you were to pick one classic example it would be Young Frankenstein – a film that satirises early horror and Frankenstein in what is close to comedy perfection (the Gene Wilder effect). The contemporary take on the genre has given the world some of the worst films of recent times in the Scary Movie franchise and its brood of mutant off-shoots.
- 10/31/2011
- by Robert Simpson
- SoundOnSight
To investigate the origins of the horror film, it is necessary to discuss the German expressionism movement of the 1920s in films such as Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Der Golem. This time around a genre whose peak was the 1950s and 60s is up for discussion in the creature feature. There is one name that is instantly synonymous with the creature feature and that is Roger Corman. There will be no debate on his prolific output as he is a genre unto itself, much in the same way that Ed Wood was with “the bad movie”. Instead the three films this article will be focusing on are: Godzilla, Them (!) and Night of the Living Dead.
For those that debate that the zombie film doesn’t feature under the canon of the creature I say this. It may definitely not be an easy argument to make now, but...
For those that debate that the zombie film doesn’t feature under the canon of the creature I say this. It may definitely not be an easy argument to make now, but...
- 10/19/2011
- by Robert Simpson
- SoundOnSight
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