15 Greatest Horror Movie Comedies

Also know as Dead Alive, this is an early Peter Jackson splatter fest set down under. The prologue introduces us to the deadly Sumatran Rat Monkey as it is captured by a zoologist. When the zoologist is bitten the locals immediately dispatch him so as to ensure the virus the monkey carries does not spread.

Jumping to New Zealand, Lionel (Timothy Balme), a put upon man under the cosh of his controlling mother takes a local girl, Paquita, on a date to the zoo. When the paranoid mother follows them she is bitten by the rat monkey and infected. Initially Lionel covers this up but increasingly she manages to come into contact with and infect some of the locals who then spread the disease uncontrollably.

What follows from here is an astonishing amount of slapstick violence and gut churning gore. Lionel has to step up and dispatch the growing horde of zombies in wonderfully inventive ways and there are some truly unbelievable moments involving a zombie priest, a zombie baby and some uncontrollable intestines. It showed the promise of Peter Jackson and his talent as a director in what was only his third feature at the time.