The 10 most unintentionally hilarious horror movie monsters
Horror, when done poorly, can transform into high comedy.
Horror is often considered the most personal of genres, as it is learning what someone is most terrified of that scares them the most. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many of the best and most successful horror films in history are those that can be enjoyed by an audience together, as few things are more fun than reacting to jump scares with a crowd. However, the genre often invites parody because people have a deep affection for movie monsters, even if, in retrospect, they seem a little big goofy.
There are instances in which films don’t resonate generationally with audiences in the same way, which is why The Exorcist is such a fascinating example of the way that the genre has shifted. At the time of its release, William Friedkin’s masterpiece was considered to be so disturbing that audience members were becoming nauseous, but today, it doesn’t hold the same value for younger viewers. While sometimes awkward laughter is to be expected because it is the way that some viewers react when they are scared, there are also instances in which what is intended to be scary just completely misses the mark.
Unintentional comedy in horror cinema is most often found in classical ‘movie monsters’, as the genre has changed in recent years to reflect more social themes, with this year’s Obsession being one of the best horror films in years because it plays upon the idea of someone being corrupted. However, all this is not to say that monsters have had their day, but that they don’t always hold up to scrutiny.
10 unintentionally hilarious horror movie monsters:
Predator Dogs – ‘The Predator’ (Shane Black, 2018)
Shane Black had faced critical disappointments before, but since he was an actor in the original Predator, he seemed to be a good choice to write and direct The Predator, a new instalment in the series, but he completely lost the plot with a reboot that didn’t understand why the original John McTiernan film worked so well.
Part of the reason Predator was successful was because of the parallels it drew to the Vietnam War, including the notion of an unknown enemy who was shrouded in secrecy. That tension evaporated in The Predator because of Black’s decision to show exactly how the alien hunted down its prey, including using modified ‘Predator Dogs’ that simply looked ridiculous. The terrible CGI also ended up being much funnier than any of the supposedly ‘comedic’ banter that Black had written for the characters.
Ghoul Man – ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’ (Ed Wood, 1958)
Ed Wood is infamously known as ‘the best bad movie director ever‘ because he made many terrible, incompetent classics that turned into cult discoveries because of how unintentionally funny they were. Plan 9 From Outer Space is essentially the “Citizen Kane of bad movies”, as its low-budget confinement, poor acting, and confusing story made for high comedy.
Bela Lugosi, the legendary Dracula actor, was cast to play the villainous ‘Ghoul Man’, but died amidst the production. Since Wood was not able to reshoot his scenes, he hired a different actor to stand in for the rest of the film and had him obscure his face with a cape the entire time. The transitions between the two actors are hilarious; it also inspired Tim Burton’s masterpiece Ed Wood, in which Martin Landau won an Academy Award for playing Lugosi.
Dr Jekyll – ‘The Mummy’ (Alex Kurtzman, 2017)
There hasn’t been a contemporary franchise disaster more embarrassing than the ‘Dark Universe’. Universal planned to create a cinematic universe, similar to the MCU, that used all of the classic monsters that they had in their library, but all of their slate was scrapped after The Mummy proved to be a calamity.
Russell Crowe had a brief scene in the film in which he is introduced as Dr Henry Jekyll, and is essentially given the job of delivering exposition about what other ‘Dark Universe’ films audiences should expect. Of course, The Mummy couldn’t help but briefly turn him into his alter ego, Mr Hyde, in what is the most obvious twist of all time. Crowe’s overreacting, the bad special effects, and the hilarious realisation that this setup won’t lead to anything else make for one of the wilder misfires in recent years.
Roy Burns – ‘Friday the 13th: A New Beginning’ (Danny Steinmann, 1985)
Friday the 13th is a franchise that somehow managed to stay durable, despite several awkward changes where its mythology made no sense, and while the fourth film, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, ended on as definitive a note as its title would suggest, the fifth film, A New Beginning, tried to start from scratch by introducing a new villain in Roy Burns, played by Dick Wieand, who is pretending to be Jason Voorhees.
The twist is easy to see coming based on how many times Roy’s name is called out in the beginning, making it clear that there’s something that the audience should be clued into. Roy has none of the presence that Jason does in the first four movies, and left such little impact on the film that the franchise had to immediately bring back its best slasher in the next instalments, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.
Lucien – ‘Morbius’ (Daniel Espinosa, 2022)
Jared Leto is the type of actor who ruins everything that he’s in, but in fairness, there wasn’t much potential for a Morbius film to begin with. Sony Pictures had been trying to make use of the Marvel rights that they still had, but had a contract with Disney over the use of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in the MCU. As a result, they made spinoffs about Spider-Man villains and decided to make Morbius into a horror film, with Jared Leto as the titular anti-hero. It’s painfully obvious that the film went through multiple stages of reshoots, which may explain why it was pushed back many times.
The one redeeming aspect of the film is Matt Smith in the role of the villain Lucien, who somehow turns into a dancing maniac whenever he gains powers; it’s as if Sony was trying to recreate ’emo Peter Parker’ from Spider-Man 3.
The Great White – ‘Jaws 2’ (Jeannot Szwarc, 1978)
Jaws was such a phenomenon that it inspired dozens of cheap rip-offs, but Universal managed to get its own sequel off the ground with Jaws 2, without Steven Spielberg at the helm, and the only cast member reprising their role was Roy Scheider, who still had to fulfil another film part on his contract with Universal after he dropped out of The Deer Hunter.
The original Jaws was scary because it created a situation where an unfathomable force of nature could not be predicted, but Jaws 2 implies that the Great White has a specific feud against Chief Brody. Hilariously, no one seems to remember that Brody saved everyone in the last film, and refuses to believe him when he tries to warn everyone to get out of the water; the mayor in Jaws is even in the same position in Jaws 2.
The infant Freddy – ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child’ (Stephen Hopkins, 1989)
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a franchise that quickly went off the rails, as the sequels made without the involvement of original writer/director Wes Craven shied away from the dark backstory of Robert Englund’s Freddy Krueger, and turned him into a more schticky character. While the fourth film, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, had fun taking the character in a campy direction, its direct follow-up, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, attempted to carve out a tragic backstory that showed how Freddy was conceived.
While there are some genuinely upsetting moments involving the assault on Freddy’s mother, the attempt to turn him into a mutant, disfigured infant was laughable, even if it took place in a dream. It’s hard to imagine Craven not being disgraced by what was done to his greatest character.
Morgan – ‘Morgan’ (Luke Scott, 2016)
Anya Taylor-Joy is one of the best scream queens of her generation, as she had her debut performance in Robert Eggers’ folk horror masterpiece The VVitch before creating an iconic final girl in M Night Shyamalan’s Split, a role that she reprised in Glass. Thankfully, Taylor-Joy wasn’t famous at the time that Morgan was dropped into theatres, as the artificial intelligence thriller can’t help but commit to every cliché in science fiction.
Taylor-Joy’s performance isn’t bad, but director Luke Scott had no idea how to create an intimidating humanoid robot that didn’t feel like an angsty teenage girl. While the notion that the titular character, Morgan, is a lethal danger that could destroy the human race is at least hilariously awful, a plot twist that reveals another android has been hiding in plain sight is just downright insulting to the audience.
The Hybrid – ‘Alien: Resurrection’ (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997)
Alien created one of the greatest heroes in cinematic history with Sigourney Weaver’s performance as Ellen Ripley, and it became a problem for 20th Century Fox when the character sacrificed herself dramatically at the end of Alien 3. It would have been impossible to generate enthusiasm for a new Alien film without getting Weaver involved, and so the next sequel, Alien: Resurrection, conceived of a bonkers storyline involving genetic splicing and fusing, which involves no shortage of pseudoscience.
The same technology that results in Ripley’s resurgence also creates one of the goofiest-looking monsters in sci-fi history, which somehow looks worse than the completely practical effects in the 1979 original. While director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a great filmmaker, he is best left to make artsy French films like Amélie, and should leave the Alien series to someone with more background in horror.
The Wolf Man – ‘Wolf Man’ (Leigh Whannell, 2025)
Blumhouse had found success when director Leigh Whannell created a remake of The Invisible Man that was updated for modern times, so it only made sense that he would be hired again to tackle another iconic movie monster. Unfortunately, it seems as if there’s not much more that can be done with Wolf Man that hadn’t been better depicted in earlier versions of the story, as Whannell’s decision to make a confined thriller set in the woods gave the remake little dynamism.
Christopher Abbott is a great actor and gives a compelling performance, but the makeup used to create his werewolf persona simply doesn’t look good. By the time that there are two different werewolves fighting one another, the supposedly serious horror remake ends up feeling a lot closer in tone to the schlocky B-movies of the ‘50s that Whannell was attempting to subvert.
