What is the horror genre Splatstick?

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With Terrifier 3 managing to combine sheer horror with some laughs, does it fall into the remit of a splatstick?   Actually, what is splatstick horror? Benjamin Jackson gives us a quick film lesson on what it is, what makes a splatstick a splatstick and what movies are considered the first or the defining works in the subgenre.

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00:00What is Splatstick? Is Terrifier 3 Splatstick? I wouldn't know because I don't like clowns,

00:08but Splatstick is a term used to describe comedy horror films that are a lot more gorier than your

00:14conventional comedy horror. Fans of Shaun of the Dead for example? We're looking at something a

00:20lot more gorier than that. The Portmanteau is very much how you would imagine Splat-style horror

00:26movies with a slapstick approach to it. There is some debate as to what the first official

00:33Splatstick movie is, with users of r slash horror debating if the 1985 film Re-Animator

00:40serves as the first official Splatstick feature. While others, including myself,

00:45feel that Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2 bears all the hard marks of what Splatstick is considered.

00:52But there's no debate in what many consider one of the leading examples of the horror sub-genre.

00:57Long before he was winning awards about people returning Jewelry and Middle Earth, New Zealand

01:02director Peter Jackson made his name with several over-the-top horror movies including Bad Taste

01:07and Meet the Feebles, one of which would be brain dead or dead alive for our North American viewers

01:14and is considered one of the finest examples of stomach churning splatter one would expect

01:19from an ultraviolet horror film with all the comedic charm of say a Charlie Chaplin or a

01:24Three Stooges film. The violence was so over-the-top that when it went for classification at the BBFC,

01:31they at one stage were going to grant it a possible 15 certificate, but the experience

01:36of the opinions of young people along with an awareness of the level of horror that audiences

01:41in 1992 would expect from a 15 rated movie led to the decision that an 18 certificate uncut

01:49was the most appropriate for, and I quote the BBFC here, the astonishing amounts of gore and

01:55excesses, comic as they are, of the delirious final reel. Again, the BBFC's words, not mine.

02:04While many may argue what was the first, no one can argue Brain Dead certainly is the leading

02:09example of it, so if you're arguing what to watch this Halloween and want something visceral but

02:14also with a good sense of intentional humour, why not check out what's on offer in the world

02:20of Splatstick, and yeah, why not revisit some of Peter Jackson's early works while we're at it.

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