An invisible dinosaur, a weredog, zombie bug spray, and Lovecraftian lunacy. Do these four flicks live up to the horror comedy label?
THE INVISIBLE RAPTOR (2023)
With a title like The Invisible Raptor, I kind of assumed the hubby and I were in store for a throwback to SyFy crap like Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus or Piranhaconda. Instead, this is a creature comedy camp fest loaded with gore, guts, and crass, tasteless humor. Its only flaw is that it’s 114 minutes long. Not even something this much fun can support a nearly 2-hour runtime.
We immediately meet the invisible raptor in its cage in a secret lab. You know those raptors. They are smart. And this one outsmarts Sean Astin and escapes.
Next we meet our main characters at a dinosaur park—a paleontologist, his ex-girlfriend, and an insecure security guard with a small dick.
Pretty soon, the invisible raptor is terrorizing the town, breaking into suburban homes and chomping the heads off children, dogs, cats, old ladies, and the disabled. It’s old school offensive fun, with the biggest piece of evidence being a huge pile of invisible raptor shit.
There are loads of references to classic sci-fi and horror flicks, like Predator, Gremlins, Jaws, and of course, Jurassic Park. Action scenes are bloody and funny. There are crazy massacres at a stoner party and a house party. There’s a cameo by Jeff Goldblum’s daughter from Jurassic Park 2. Mr. Heckles from Friends has a cameo and totally delivers a line that is a nod to his sitcom character.
And in the end, sex humor abounds as the heroes decide to use sexual desire to lure the invisible raptor into a trap.
This one is definitely a party movie for those who like flicks like Cocaine Bear.
THE YORKIE WEREWOLF (2024)
I’m not even going to spend much time on this one. You’d think with a title like The Yorkie Werewolf this would be a totally watchable, silly, hot mess. It runs only about 73 minutes long, but it felt like forever because it’s virtually all talk…and no humor.
The plot is about a teenage girl pitted against her mob boss dad after he kills her witch mom. This is only after the mom’s coven does a sacrificial ritual that results in the main girl being cursed as a Yorkie werewolf that looks exactly like an Ewok.
The main girl teams up with a young vampire dude to take on the mob boss dad, who is known for killing creatures of the night and was responsible for killing the vampire’s parents.
Lots of nonsensical goodness going on, right? Wrong. Like I said, it’s mostly all talk with no humor that works, there’s barely any fighting, and there’s barely any Ewok action. I mean…Yorkie werewolf action.
ZOMBIE REPELLANT (2025)
This 73-minute indie has several clever plot aspects—a straight couple heading to Vegas gets stuck in a small town where the locals happen to know that zombies occasionally appear. The problem is that it’s so occasional that the movie ends up being dialogue heavy with few zombies.
The dialogue is where the humor is forced to reside, but it is very dry, flat humor with no energy, and it remains at that level. It’s as if the slow drawl of the locals of the town is reflected in the humor, so you won’t find any laugh-out-loud moments here.
If only there had been more zombie action, this one really could have taken off. The couple arrives in the town, finds lodging in the home of a creepy woman, there’s a cowgirl who likes to kiss girls, a backstory about a mining disaster, a creepy fisherman portrait that is highlighted yet never develops into anything, and a simple solution for contending with the occasional undead—cans of zombie repellent spray! Awesome.
However, we only see zombies mostly in groups of…um…one at a time: 30 minutes in, 45 minutes in, and 57 minutes in. Yikes.
It’s a bummer, because the twist at the end of the film is such a goodie and perfect for a horror comedy.
HOW TO KILL MONSTERS (2023)
Stewart Sparke, the director of The Creature Below and Book of Monsters, is becoming the king of pseudo-Lovecraftian cosmic horror, and How to Kill Monsters lives up to the genre most of all.
It begins at the end, with a monster massacre at a cabin in the woods on Halloween night and only one girl surviving. As a sort of meta in-joke, the final credits begin rolling. In fact, the film has a load of fun with its meta awareness.
After the credits, we jump right back into the movie. It’s still Halloween night, landing this one on the holiday horror page, and our main girl is tossed in jail with a bunch of other girls in costumes. As she tries to explain that she and her friends accidentally summoned a monster with a sacrificial dagger, the dagger is being examined as evidence, and the monster is released again!
We are treated to nonstop practical effects as a monster reminiscent of Audrey II and some Critter-like minions terrorize the police and prisoners in the police station…which ends up getting lifted up into the air in another dimension like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz.
It’s action and humor-packed energy as the group works together to try to send this monster back to hell, and the film takes an awesome detour in the final act, refreshing the whole premise somewhat without cutting back on the thrills and fun.
