January 29th, 2006 By Chris Hartley, head writer of The Video Graveyard. Last time in the "Grab Bag" we took a look at horror movies that slung the gore at the screen while making us laugh with slapstick antics, dark humour, and outright nuttiness. That's one of the great things about being a horror fan; the chance to see our beloved genre flipped into something fun and original. While this week's selections can't boast about originality too much (well, perhaps one of them can), they each succeed in their own way in bringing comedy into the forefront of the horror genre. That's right, I'm talking about spoofs. With the explosion of slasher movies in the early 1980's came the satirical jabs of such films as Wacko, National Lampoon's Class Reunion, and Saturday The 14th. And the spoofs don't seem to be stopping anytime soon as evidenced by Scary Movie 4 arriving in theatres later this year...
A staple on pay-TV movie channels in the early 80's, Student Bodies has sadly faded away into obscurity. Long out-of-print on VHS, rarely seen on television these days, and with no impending DVD release in sight (c'mon Paramount!) if you can get your hands on this you shouldn't hesitate in picking it up. It may not be outright hilarious, and it's more lamebrained than witty, but it's worth seeing simply because it has an odd charm about it and it was put out by Paramount Pictures in, what I assume was, an attempt to poke fun at the success they were having with the Friday The 13th movies.
Longtime special effects men, the Chiodo's not only created the awesome looking alien clown creatures, but they also let their imaginations run wild as we're told the story of some invading big-top aliens who are harvesting humans, turning them into cotton candy, and taking them to their home planet for food. Showing a creativity that typified a lot of low-budget 80's horror flicks, Killer Klowns From Outer Space is a fun, charming, and highly amusing ride loaded with over-the-top moments (like the shadow puppet moment) and the late character actor John Vernon stealing the show as grumpy Sheriff Mooney.
Zucker is one of the men responsible for some of the best joke-a-minute comedies out there (Top Secret!, the Naked Gun movies, and Airplane!) and he hasn't lost his touch as he throws tons of pop culture references, spoofs of The Ring and Signs, and new jokes every fifteen seconds it seems at the viewer. The difference is, they're actually funny - not like the first two entries in the series. Taking away the "lowest common denominator" attitude of the original and treating horror fans with some intelligence, Scary Movie 3 was a surprisingly entertaining entry and makes us look forward to the upcoming fourth entry (also helmed by Zucker). |
Student Bodies [1981] takes the attitude of such films as Airplane! and gives it a slasher bent. One of the original spoofs of the "stalk 'n' slash" sub-genre, Student Bodies paints everything in broad strokes as a heavy breathing psychopath sulks around a high school killing off students while the film generously keeps track of the body count on screen for us.
Killer Klowns From Outer Space [1987] marked the directing/writing debut of the Chiodo Brothers and is still one of the very best horror-comedies to poke fun at 1950's creature features out there.
Scary Movie 3 [2003] was like a breath of fresh air in a series filled with tasteless, vulgar, and horrible jokes about body fluids, testicles, and kung-fu cats. After the Wayans Brothers made me hate horror movie spoofs with the first two movies, Dimension Pictures wisely went out and recruited David Zucker to direct the third movie.