2. Tallahassee - Zombieland (2009)
The second comedy entry on our list is another case of Harrelson playing crazy and getting it right. Zombieland imagines a world in which a mutated form of 'mad cow disease' has spread to humans and turned most of America into zombies. College student Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) is unaffected by the disease, and travels from Austin, Texas to Columbus, Ohio to see if his parents are still alive. Along the way he teams up with Tallahassee (Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), and suffice to say a lot of zombies get killed in hilarious ways. While often regarded as a poor man's Shawn of the Dead, Zombieland is a funny and breezy little horror comedy which took over four times its $23m budget on release. Like its British counterpart, its success lies in the believability of its central pairing, with Harrelson's unbridled psychosis balancing out Eisenberg's nervous disposition. If you don't believe me, check out the scene in the grocery store at a guide, where Harrelson lets forth a passionate monologue about Twinkies before bashing an overweight zombie in with a banjo.