Top 21 List of Zombie Comedies - Kevin David Anderson

Horror Comedy, when done well, is a rare and wondrous thing. Delivering real terror and side splitting laughs in the same scene is a daunting task. I don’t think any filmaker hit the ball further out of the park in this genre than Jon Landis, with An American Werewolf in London. The film is a steady stream of gore, terror and laugh out loud funny moments. But in the sub-genre of horror comedy, there is one specific incarnation that I truly love – the ZomCom, sometimes called Zombedies or more simply, Zombie Comedy. Whatever you call it, there is no type of film I enjoy more. It’s a genre that says, just because it’s the apocalypse doesn't mean we should stop laughing.

I’ve compiled a list of what I think are the twenty-one best Zombie Comedies to date. It’s not based on anything other than my humble opinion. To keep the list to twenty-one, (I started off trying to do a top ten list) I had to eliminate films that were not really zombie films. These distinctions are all debatable, but I decided not to list the Evil Dead films (deadites), movies like The Signal (people turned into murderous lunatics), or the Re-animator films. All great movies, but you have to draw a line somewhere.

21) Hide and Creep (2004) – Unexpected visitors wake up the sleepy town of Thorsby, Ala., when a bloodthirsty army of the undead wreaks havoc in the streets.

20) Bio Zombies (1998) – A Japanese cult favorite that pits unwary shopping mall strollers against a horde of ravenous zombies. Two clerks who work at the mall -- unwittingly raise an army of ghouls when they slam into a biochemical company employee with their car, creating a  wholesale infection. Better charge it!

19) Deadheads (2011) – Undead slackers Mike and Brent are reborn as part of a major zombie outbreak in this gore-happy comedy and love story. While searching for Mike's missing fiancée, the two monster pals find themselves quarry for bounty hunters.

18) Boy Eats Girls (2005) – Resurrected by his mother after a tragic accident, 17-year-old Nathan awakens with a taste for human flesh. A run-in with a school bully sets off events that spread Nathan's "condition" all over town. Meanwhile, the undead Nathan tries to curb his appetite for his dream girl.

17) Aaah! Zombies! (2007) – A group of undead -- who think they're living -- are just beginning to grasp the implications of their horrific new existence.

16) Cemetery Man (1996) – Rupert Everett stars as an oddly unflappable cemetery watchman fighting off zombies in this droll send-up of 1950s drive-in horror flicks. With the dead on the rise, Francesco Dellamorte (Everett) and his half-wit sidekick (Francois Hadji-Lazaro) must be always at the ready to crack the corpses' skulls and send them back under.

15) The Mad (2007) – On an outing to the country, a doctor and his daughter stop in a town known for its organic beef. But the travelers run up against a mutated virus that turns people into the undead and hamburger patties into ravenous killers.

14) Night of the Living Dorks (2006) – the three biggest dorks at Frederich Nietzsche High School get a chance at coolness when they're killed in an auto accident and reanimated as flesh-eating zombies. Thanks to their rapidly decomposing bodies, there's no need for eating or sleeping, which leaves plenty of time for partying, girl-chasing, and getting even with their enemies.

13) Undead or Alive (2007) – Fugitive soldier Elmer teams with lovelorn cowboy Luke to rob a crooked sheriff and skip town with the help of an Apache warrior princess. But robbing the sheriff proves easy compared with surviving a zombie plague that's sweeping the old West! Former "South Park" writer Glasgow Phillips makes his directorial debut with a new undead twist: the zombie western comedy.

12) Undead (2003) – When an intense meteor shower covers the countryside, it spreads an incurable infection among residents of a peaceful fishing town, turning them into flesh-eating zombies. Running for her life, Rene finds refuge in an isolated farmhouse. There, she meets four others who survived the disaster. Together, they fend off the walking dead and learn the truth about those they're fighting.

11) The Return of the Living Dead II (1988) When a barrel of mysterious gas rolls off an Army truck, the lethal contents wafts into a nearby cemetery, reanimating a horde of ravenous zombies. Kind of a rehash of the original but one that never takes itself seriously, and even pokes fun of itself.  

10) Dead Snow (2009) – A group of friends run into Nazi zombies, armed with machine-guns. A quirky comedy horror, shot on location in the mountains of Norway.

9) Zombies of Mass Destruction (2009) – When flesh-eating zombies assault their idyllic town, a ragtag group of locals -- including a gay couple, an Iranian American college student, and a conservative Reverend join forces to repel the brutal onslaught. Set in a paranoid post-9/11 America, this film offers witty social satire as well as an abundance of blood and guts.

8) Dance of the Dead (2008) – On the night of the big High-School Prom, the dead rise to eat the living, and the only people who can stop them are the losers who couldn't get dates to the dance.

7) Doghouse (2009) – Six guys hell-bent on having a raucous weekend away from wives and lovers arrive in the remote town of Moodley -- but something is amiss in the quaint hamlet. Where are the men? And why do all the women look as if they want to feast on male flesh?

6) Dead and Breakfast (2004) – Six friends on their way to a wedding, stop for the night at a quaint bed and breakfast in the sleepy town of Lovelock. But after a night that ends with both the inn’s owner and his chef dead, the gang finds themselves fighting for their lives when the already bizarre residents of the town become possessed zombies.

5) Dead Alive (1992) When a Sumatran rat-monkey bites Lionel Cosgrove's mother, she's transformed into a zombie. She begins killing (and transforming) the entire town while Lionel races to keep things under control. Events culminate at a house party that turns into a blood-drenched zombie buffet. NOTE: try to see the Peter Jackson’s original uncut version. Many great scenes were cut for an American release. 

4) Fido (2006) – A young boy, Timmy Robinson has a very unusual pet -- a loyal, lumbering zombie named Fido, played by Billy Connolly. Problems arise when Fido breaks loose and noshes on a neighbor. Timmy is suddenly forced into damage-control mode while he tries to persuade his parents not to put Fido down.

3) Zombieland  (2009) – Looking to survive in a world taken over by zombies, a dorky college student teams with an urban roughneck and two grifter sisters. But after making their way to an allegedly safe Los Angeles amusement park, the quartet learns that no place is safe.

2) The Return of the Living Dead  (1985) – The freshly risen undead are ready to party in this horror-comedy that finds two employees of a medical supply company unwittingly releasing several zombies from cylinders in which they've been trapped for years. Soon, the local citizenry is forced to deal with a large-scale zombie epidemic as the nasty, brain-eating creatures go on a rampage

1) Shaun of the Dead  (2004) – Zombie rise in the streets of London, and slacker, Shaun and his  well-meaning best mate try to save his girlfriend and mum. I’m not just a huge fan of this film, but of the filmmakers as well. Coming off their BBC series Spaced, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edger Wright put together what I believe is the best Zomcom to date. Not only is the film brilliant in every sense of the word, it rekindled my interest, as it did for many others, in the zombie genre.

Because I had to cut the list off at some point, here are some Honorable Mentions: The Stink of Flesh (2004), Slither (2006), Night of the Creeps (1986), My Boyfriend’s Back (1993), American Zombie (2008), Chocking Hazard (2004), Dead Heat (1988), Dead Moon Rising (2007) Tokyo Zombie (2009) Zombie Strippers (2008)