Skip to main content

Hell Baby (2013) - Robert Ben Garant & Thomas Lennon

This movie is an strange roller-coaster ride of comedy and horror. It stumbles through comedic scenes like a variety show on prime time Comedy Central. If you like Key and Peel, Reno 911, The Nick Kroll Show, and comedic shows like that, then you will really like this. It's a good thing I am a fan. 

This horror film is brought to you by Lieutenant Dangle and Deputy Junior. That is the most hook-worthy way to pitch this to friends. Robert Ben Garant started his film career back in 1992. He hadn't wandered into the horror genre much, if at all. However, he is incredibly seasoned. His long-time writing partner, Thomas Lennon, is no rookie behind the camera either. He has held positions in editing, producing, writing and directing. By the time he is working on this, he has already been a huge contributor to many comedy troupes and programs including Human Giant and the Upright Citizens Brigade. 


This movie is about a very expectant couple, Jack and Vanessa (Rob Corddry and Leslie Bibb), that move into an incredibly haunted house. This house is falling apart with ghosts. Supernatural stuff happens all over the place. Not to mention the creepy drifter, F'resnel, that just happens to always be under-foot. Vanessa becomes entranced by the house, or some dog, or the pregnancy and starts some really evil shit. Jack has to call upon the Catholic Church to help in exercising his wife. The Church sends two bad-ass priests.

Demonic possessions, ghouls, creeps, ghosts, and Keegan-Michael Key haunt this movie and do a good job at it. From jump scares to creepy scenes, this movie has them all. So it has the horror side covered. It has more comedy than horror, so it should balance out and make for a killer date movie. Other comedic horror movies run into various problems quickly. The Wayne's have a lot to do with that. However, every now and then something awesome slips though and is made. This movie is further from Scary Movie  and closer to Mel Brook's Haunted Honeymoon, in a good way. The cameos are non-stop. A ton of comedians from Kumail Nanjiani to Dave Holmes all make appearances. I really liked the Kumail character's punchline. It was hilarious. 

I highly suggest this movie. It's funny. It's scary. It's pretty well made. Like I said above. It's a great date movie. Very funny and just a tad bit raunchy. Maybe too much for really conservative types but smooth overall. 

Country: USA

Did ya know...
Riki Lindhome was so comfortable with Lennon and Garant. She chose to do her introduction scene in full frontal.







Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ju-On (2000) - Takashi Shimizu

Watching Japanese horror is similar to watching British comedy. If you enjoy dry whit then you probably enjoy the boys of Monty Python in drag. That's the joke, they're dressed like women. Get it? Well, that's British humor. But if you're like most Americans you probably prefer Adam Sandler farting his way across a football field and hooking up with chicks that are way out of his league. Americans usually prefer this more in your face, crass brand of humor. My point is funny in England is different from funny in the US. The same goes for J-Horror. What the Japanese consider scary is very different from what Americans consider scary and it shows in this horror film. Japanese horror is generally slow (a little too slow sometimes), suspenseful and creepy. Ju-On is a creepy effing film. The movie has almost no soundtrack. It is incredibly suspenseful and the pay-offs are pretty awesome, but I think that it was done better in the American version (cultural t...

Le Diable au Convent (1899) - George Melies

Le Diable au Convent is longer than the two previous Georges Méliès ventures into short form horror. This particular French short shows the Devil himself running a convent and terrorizing the poor old nuns that live there. However he is finally vanquished by the good of Faith. This is yet another Méliès classic, showcasing the art work that really goes into his short film-making. This is one of the earliest examples of a horror movie that could rely on its elaborate set design and artistic design. Everything in this film, although horribly aged, has been packaged extremely well. If you are a fan of production and set design then I would highly recommend just about anything that Melies has his name on. Though nothing that is considered too extreme actually happens, Satan does have his way with a convent. The satanic imagery itself must have kept this film on the traveling carnival circuit. It certainly wouldn’t fit into the good moral bag that society shoved i...

Spookies (1986) - Genie Joseph, Thomas Doran, and Brendan Faulkner

It's impossible to get a decent movie when you take two films and just squash them together. That is essentially the story of how this movie came together. The film started as Twisted Souls. However, according to the financial backer they didn't have enough horror. So they ended up hiring another guy to come in and add a monster in virtually every scene.  This movie started out being directed by Brendan Faulkner and Thomas Doran. It basically is the tale of two sets of teenagers that arrive to a strange building surrounded by a strange cemetery. It was your usual tale of teenagers in a big hows with a few monsters. Then they brought in Genie Joseph and added even more. Like a haunted birthday party, a murderous cat-man, zombies, and an old wizard. It really became a smorgasbord of horror with a very thin plot-line leading it around. This movie is hard to summarize in a conventional way. It just packs so much.  The most interesting part of this movie are ...