Horror Heaven (JB’s Horror Heaven). Jörg Buttgereit, 1984.
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Edition screened: Included on the Schramm Blu-ray in the Cult Epic box set Sex Murder Art: The Films of Jörg Buttgereit, released 2016. German language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 23 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Horror Heaven is one of the best “comedy horror” films I’ve seen. Films down-graded to Comedy Horror category usually are a mediation of failure between filmmaker and audience. A genuine horror film of quality is a difficult thing to make and a complicated thing to watch. Most directors address their inability to do so by instead making a film where things jump out from around corners and startle the audience; or a film with copious blood spurting to make the audience say ewwww; or most commonly, a film combining some of both of those tacts and also filled with stupid gags and jokes, thus allowing director and audience to conspire, relax, in the embarrassed apologetic lie of “comic relief.”
Horror Heaven is quietly clever, inevitably a better goal than “funny.” It summarizes a handful of classic horror films with a creative and unembarrassed attitude appropriate to a gifted beginning director. It is not a stellar film but is set far apart from most marriages of comedy and horror in not being completely atrocious.