10 – Bringing Up Baby

The oldest film on the list, Bringing Up Baby is classic slapstick, mile a minute comedy. It’s a story about a scatterbrained heiress who has a pet leopard named Baby, and a paleontologist who keeps on getting wrapped up into the misadventures and clumsiness that goes on. What really makes this film stand out, though, is the frenetic pace that it’s written. They generally say that a page of a screenplay is the same as about a minute of screen time. Bringing Up Baby has a 102 minute run time and a 200+ page script, so the dialog doesn’t stop, which is where so much of the humor comes form.

9 – The Fearless Vampire Killers

Also known as Pardon Me, Your Teeth Are In My Neck, The Fearless Vampire Killers walks that line between horror, of the time period, and comedy. It follows an inept group of vampire hunters who end up in a remote village in Transylvania. There, the dimwitted assistant falls in love with the beautiful daughter of the innkeeper. Unfortunately for them, the mysterious Count Krolock is also interested in her. I think that this one is a bit more of a deep cut for a lot of people in terms of comedy. I really enjoy the way that the story unfolds.

8 – Shaun of the Dead

Basically anything that Edgar Wright does is brilliant, and his work with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost at the top of what he does. The start of their parody trilogy, Shaun of the Dead is a humorous look at a zombie apocalypse. Oddly enough, though, not my highest zombie comedy. This one just parodies zombie films so well and also is just very British. If you haven’t seen it, check it out, I think even if you don’t like zombies normally, this parodies it just so well.

7 – Cockneys vs Zombies

Straight into the other zombie film, this one is a much smaller budget but funnier in my opinion. Some of that is because it has Shaun of the Dead leading the way, but also because it’s just more British. They weren’t trying to create something to hit theaters, they just wanted to make something very goofy. And it works, with a cast that isn’t highly recognizable, the tropes it plays off of are and the acting is good enough to really make it work. It has some of the most iconic zombie moments I’ve seen, such as a slow speed chase that I won’t spoil, but so good. This does lean into a bit more of the zombie gore that you’d expect, so probably not where I’d start with zombie comedies.

6 – The Fifth Element

The Fifth Element is one of those movies that whenever it’s on TV, I have to stop and watch it, at least for a minute, which is bad because it’s always on TV. The absurd world that is created and the juxtaposition of Bruce Willis and Chris Tucker’s characters just works so extremely well. And to have Gary Oldman in a role that is completely out there is fun as well. This film really shouldn’t work, there are so many random parts working against each other, but it’s just a hot mess but an enjoyable and very funny one. Maybe not originally meant to be a comedy, because of how it plays out, it’s hard to see it as anything else than that, with some adventure undertones.

5 – Doctor Strangelove

Back into older films, Doctor Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Love the Bomb is a satire of American lifestyle and the power and destruction that it might be bring, but at the same time having much more going on than that. Peter Sellers does a great job in all of the roles that he plays in the film, and it just moves along so quickly as well. The whole thing is completely absurd and doesn’t ever really stop pushing itself further out there. And it’s not just simple comedy in the film, but there’s a lot more going on, which was fun to dig into after a few viewings. I think this film still holds up even with it being a bit older.

4 – Hot Fuzz

The second film from Edgar Wright and Nick Frost and Simon Pegg makes the list a bit higher than Shaun of the Dead. This film, because I think we’re all more familiar with cop shows, just has the parodying nature work better. This whole play on a buddy cop film and just even regular cop films works really well, and the jokes are very good. While there is a bit of gore, the whole thing plays out well in the film and definitely a parody worth checking out, especially if you’re not sure about parodies.

3 – Big Trouble in Little China

Jack Burton is an incompetent buffoon who happens to stumble onto some Big Trouble in Little China. What works so well in this film is that fairly often an incompetent main character will luck their way into being the hero in the end. In the end, though, Jack Burton is still an incompetent buffoon who has to be saved by a lot of other people throughout the film and can’t do really anything for himself when stuff starts to get weird. However, when stuff gets weird, you start to get a lot of good comedic moments as Burton needs to be bailed out of situation after situation. Definitely a cult classic comedy.

2 – Tucker and Dale vs Evil

What happens when you go up to the cabin for the weekend with a bunch of college friends? Nothing good, that’s for sure, and those hillbillies who live next door, they are definitely trouble and out to kill you. Then, deaths start to happen, and it’s totally them. But Tucker and Dale aren’t killers, they’re actually just pretty laid back good guys who are getting way to stressed out as the college friends start dropping like flies and they keep on getting blamed. A great parody of standard horror tropes, while definitely bloody and gross at times, it’s simply so funny with all the misunderstandings that happen.

1 – Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

So, by now you’ll see that I like parodies and satires a lot, and at the top of my list, it’s no exception. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is an amazing film that parodies buddy cop films, Robert Downey Jr’s criminal character accidentally stumbling into a casting room and then getting paired up with a hyper particular Val Kilmer to learn how to become a detective just works so well. The whole thing is completely absurd and plays off of the trope of two seemingly unconnected stories actually being connected. This one is just over the top, and it has a big name cast that works really well.

What are some of your favorite comedy movies? Do you like a more slapstick style of comedy, or dark comedy, parody, what is your favorite type?

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This is definitely going to be grim fantasy setting where you are dealing with some fairly heavy issues. Much like the show The Walking Dead and game Dead of Winter deal with humans who are causing problems to the other humans.

So, we have a small group of survivors who are our players. They are going to have to look for a safe haven. Whether they all know each other before the apocalypse is up to the players, but it’s possible that some of them could be an outsider to the group. I think that would be a way to cause tension in the game quickly by planting seeds of doubt, whether the person can be trusted fully or not.

You can also set this up by having an DM PC, something that I would say never do, in the party where you have a character, but really they are a reoccuring NPC who is going to screw over the party some night. They are using the party for their own good, but then they decide that the party isn’t useful for them, so they are going to take what they want and then leave. I’d make this a lower level bad guy for them to deal with, while still having to fight zombies often or try and sneak around zombies. You could even, if they don’t track down the NPC and kill them, have that character build up into a larger bad guy.

If they do kill the NPC, then create a new one who has a rival gang fighting for resources and doing a scorched earth policy to keep other people from following behind them and getting the zombies to follow those people and getting to them. However, this would obviously have a very negative effect on other survivors beyond the more resourceful PC’s.

Eventually, I think the big bad of the campaign, besides the zombies, should be a wizard or lich who has a controlling rod that they build after the apocalypse has started. This rod is what they are using now, to control zombies and take over territories and subjugate people. Taking out the lich/wizard won’t solve the problem of the zombies, but will at least give people a fair chance.

I’d make it so that the BBEG is either the only who who can control the zombies, or that the rod is something like a crystal ball so that the players won’t likely get the magical item that allows them to send zombies away or keep them away from an area. Or at least cause that as a threat for the players and the players can either decide that destroying the control rod, which would then cause the zombies to attack the BBEG as well as the players might be an object, or try and figure out how and use the control rod.

Maybe give it to the players, now that I’m thinking about it, or give them a chance to get it, because then you could narrate a cool ending where the players could use the control rod to create a little oasis of safety for people to live.

With all these kind of major points, I’d also have the players dealing with survivors, dealing with injured people, dealing with bitten people who haven’t turned yet, and things like that. I would nerf a few healing options, basically only wish should be able to stop the zombie virus as it takes over the body where it could be argued that Greater Restoration or even Lesser Restoration might be able to normally.

Now, would I want to run this game? I think it could be interesting to run. I think the big focus of this game is going to be putting the players into situations where there isn’t a good outcome. This is supposed to be a dark fantasy scenario, and you don’t want them to be too heroic. I’d throw them up against situations where it’s about surviving. With that, though, I’d also give them a saving throw against turning into a zombie, but I would expect some PC’s to die along the way.

Would you want to play in a dark fantasy game?

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