Horror comedies that are genuinely scary

When we watch a horror comedy the goal is often to be entertained and have a good laugh rather than get scared. But what are some which succeeded well at both?

House is easily the scariest horror comedy I've ever seen. It was hilarious a lot of the time, but I was surprised by how many moments got a shock out of me as well, to the point where I was getting scared just as much as a fully serious horror movie.

Hausu is also worth mentioning in this regard, though that one goes so far with the surreal wackiness some of the edge you still found myself amused even when the visuals are creepy.

The Return Of The Living Dead features one of the more realistic and unsettling zombie transformations. It's more disturbing than the skin growing green or rotting since it's so subtle it won't be immediately clear what is happening at first.

Are the Scream movies officially considered comedies? The first two have some pretty effective moments in particular.

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Quite frankly, I found the first Ghostbusters to be a rather unsettlingly horrific - even apocalyptic - experience when I first saw it in its 1984 theatrical run at the age of eleven!

No kidding, Gatekeeper Zuul and Keymaster Vinz Klortho were my first introduction to the whole concept of demonic possession. It was extremely unsettling to watch Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis behaving with completely different and sinister personalities, and knowing that they were the personalities of those two Terror Dogs! That whole bedroom scene I found absolutely terrifying as a kid, Bill Murray's joking around about Weaver having "at least two people in there" not even remotely taking the edge off.

Years later, I would watch William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973) as well as Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981) and Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987). I love those movies a great deal, but on first viewing I certainly didn't find them half as scary as the minions of Gozer the Gozerian. You might say that Ghostbusters busted my "possession cherry"!

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"It's what people know about themselves inside that makes 'em afraid." - Clint Eastwood as The Stranger, High Plains Drifter (1973)

Night of the Comet has some genuinely eerie moments (including the part where the two nurses(?) are

The part in Death Becomes Her with the nuns walking through the hospital is genuinely scary to me.

Both the original and the remake of Fright Night have some scary parts.

Definitely the first Ghostbusters movie, with the second on a distant second. It's scary because the ghosts are well done and the cast plays it mainly "straight" in spite of the comedy. It helps that most of the locations in New York are quite familiar to me, having been around there many times, lending some more believability.

Evil Dead 2 scared the piss out of us while make us ask what the f*ck was going on when we were 15 years old back in the 80s. And actually I think The Buckners in The Cabin In The Woods were legit for their time in the film.
I agree that RotLD has both.

I never thought of either of those films as Comedy. And I don't even mean strictly I mean even loosely. Even less so Fright Night than Night Of The Comet but even that one has some humor but not that much, certainly not to the degree that I think of it as a feature of the film or in any way would categorize either as Comedy.
And I don't mean to be the Genre Police here but you really made me scratch my head with both.

I give a lot of credit to the cast of Ghostbusters for making it genuinely scary. A lot of it (especially Sigorney Weaver's chair scene) could've come off as silly if they hadn't 110% sold their character's fear.


Fright Night is a good one, and perhaps the perfect balance of funny-scary-horny.


Little Shop of Horrors works well, although as an adult what's scariest are the depths Seymour sinks to, to achieve his dreams.


Both Get Out and Us also balance the scares and laughs fantastically.

They're both tagged that way on IMDb, though I think that both skew much more toward the horror side of the equation.

Evil Dead 2 is by far my go to for the best at doing both the scary and the humor and in segments like the house coming alive almost combining them.

The Wolf of Snow Hollow pulls off the trifecta of being funny, taking it's horror seriously and also pulling off some very compelling human drama.

Lastly while Young Frankenstein is far more on the Comedy side of things the moment where the Monster breaks out of jail and kills the guard and his freak out on stage with the lights is done with such genuine anger and confusion and it sells the actual horror homage element of the film and is one of the reasons that it works so well. Is it scary, not by todays standards but it certainly falls in line with the original universal horror films and for me that certainly counts.

This was the first one I thought of. Saw it when I was 12, had no idea that it was a comedy. When that librarian ghost transformed I damn near shat myself.


it's funny now.

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Fright Night isn't, but Night Of The Comet is. Fright Night takes itself seriously, it plays all of the events completely straight even if there are some funny moments here and there.

Has anyone else seen Housebound (2014)? I think it meets both conditions.

Peter Jackson's earlier movies were fairly unsettling and filled with weird humour.

And if you don't mind a series then give this a watch.
Quirky and uncomfortable to watch, with loads of body horror.




Brilliant flick that. It is on YouTube for free. Just a brilliant little indie film with copious amount of gore.

It's never occurred to me that Fright Night would be considered anything but a horror comedy.


It's about the films tone. How it portrays the characters of Brewster and Vincent and how they relate to eachother and everyone else. How it is playful with the genre expectations it uses and upends.


Reviews consistently talk about its use of humor (Ebert for one) and the theater I was in seeing it as a kid, clearly viewed it as at least partially comic.


It's certainly no straight horror. It's scary elements have clearly been diluted a little with something outside the genre, and if it isn't comedy, I'm not sure what else you'd call it.

Is it a laugh riot? No. It's humor is more amusing than side splitting. But that's still comedy in my books. No one has ever fell over

I almost said something about Wolf of Snow Hollow. Especially toward the end.

Great call. This made a little splash on its release, but you don't hear as much about it these days. Maybe we should do a "not forgotten" horror Hall of Fame.

I'd be up for that. October can't come soon enough.

I don't really get scared by movies anymore but from the 80's, The Re-Animator, Vamp, and April Fools Day are old favorites.

Ebola Syndrome (1996) is a Cat III shocker with plenty of laughs.

Not everyone likes it but I'm a big fan of Cabin Fever (2002).

Inbred (2011) can be a little silly but has it's moments.

The Golden Glove (2019) is macabre and hilarious.

I'm going out on a limb here, but personally, I don't know of ANY horror comedies that are genuinely scary.

There are some genuinely scary movies that have light-hearted or comedic moments and some comedies that contain "jump scares" - but I can't think of any that are comedy and which genuinely scared me.

There are some movies called "comedies" that are "scary" based only on the fact that people think they're funny or the fact that they actually got made and were released to the public.

Has nobody cited An American Werewolf in London yet? That movie absolutely destroyed me when I saw it at the movies as a kid - laughter and nightmares in equal measure.

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That's a good one. I've got to watch that again.