The road to comedy superstardom doesn’t always start where you’d think. Open mic nights at local comedy clubs, or even improv classes, on the surface, seem like logical places to begin. Hell, I don’t know, but maybe auditioning for a role in a comedy of some kind would make a little sense if your goal was to try to make people laugh. However, if the names you see below are any indication, going in a completely different direction can be the right move.
That said, let’s take a look at five comedy titans who decided to go the horror route before scoring big in the laugh department.
5. John Candy
Though he’d appeared in a few movies prior, John Candy’s first substantial film role was in a low-budget 1976 horror flick titled The Clown Murders. There, he plays the not-so-funny Ollie, who plans a kidnapping with his friends to prevent a real estate deal from happening. The harebrained scheme results in several characters dressing up as clowns and, as the title also pretty clearly implies, well, you get the point.
Candy would go on to have minor roles in thrillers like 1978’s The Silent Partner and 1980’s Deadly Companion (alongside Anthony Perkins) before landing a part later that year in The Blues Brothers and focusing almost entirely on comedy moving forward.
4. Paul Rudd
Clueless might have come out two months earlier, but the first movie Paul Rudd featured in was the sixth entry in the long-running Halloween series. In 1995’s Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Rudd starred as Tommy Doyle, the now-grown survivor whom Laurie Strode was babysitting for in the original Halloween film.
Seventeen years later, Tommy has become obsessed with Michael Myers and with getting to the root of his quirky behavior, eventually leading to a memorable showdown between the two old acquaintances. It’s arguably not as memorable as his breakout role in Clueless. However, the role was significant enough for the makers of Halloween Kills to offer him the opportunity to reprise the role years later.
3. Dana Carvey
Paul Rudd wasn’t the only future comedic actor to cross paths with Michael Myers—or to be in the general vicinity of him. Dana Carvey has the distinction of being the first of his kind to take a trip to Haddonfield, Illinois. In 1981’s Halloween II, Carvey makes two blink-and-you’ll-miss-them appearances as a news reporter who, for some reason, was given a first and last name even despite having a total of zero lines.
You can first spot Carvey having nothing to say at the scene of the murders from the first movie, and then not talking anymore as Laurie Strode gets wheeled to an ambulance at the end. Carvey ended up in This Is Spinal Tap three years later and joined the cast of Saturday Night Live two years after that, leaving his horror days behind.
2. Jason Alexander
If you ever thought that it would be interesting to see George Costanza in a slasher movie, we have some (sort of) good news for you. Harvey Weinstein’s The Burning is the closest thing to that premise we’ll likely ever get.
Jason Alexander made his acting debut playing a counselor in this 1981 movie about a serial killer at a summer camp that apparently wasn’t a Friday the 13th ripoff, somehow. Alexander provides some much-needed comic relief with several risqué jokes that we, in hindsight, really hope Harvey Weinstein didn’t write. Unfortunately, it did not appear to do anything for Alexander’s comedy career.
1. Andy Kaufman
Andy Kaufman began appearing on television in the 1970s, performing his famous Elvis routine as early as 1972. However, his first film appearance was in the 1976 sci-fi/horror B-movie God Told Me To, directed by Larry Cohen.
Kaufman shows up briefly as one of several possessed murderers who claim their crimes were committed at the request of God. It’s revealed later that the killers are linked to a cult led by a human-alien hybrid who was born to an extraterrestrial virgin. That last sentence is not a joke, nor is it an Andy Kaufman prank, as much as we all might wish it was.
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