South Park will parody anything and everything, including some of the most terrifying horror films ever made, from The Silence of the Lambs to A Nightmare on Elm Street. No one is safe from the satirical wrath of Trey Parker and Matt Stone. South Park lampoons both the liberal and conservative views of every political issue and the show has mocked every celebrity from Barbra Streisand to Tom Cruise. The show also finds plenty of opportunities to poke fun at classic movies, from 300 to Scarface to High School Musical to The Lord of the Rings trilogy. One of Parker and Stone’s favorite genres to satirize is horror.
Throughout the series’ run, South Park has spoofed a bunch of iconic horror movies. The town’s kids attempted to create their own society a la Children of the Corn when their parents left them. Ike was tormented by the lost souls of dead celebrities in a riff on The Sixth Sense (with some Poltergeist thrown in there for good measure). From Kyle getting stitched into a real-life Human Centipede by Apple to Randy traipsing through the aisles of a haunted Blockbuster Video like Jack Torrance, South Park is full of great horror movie parodies.
10 Children Of The Corn
In season 4, episode 16, “The Wacky Molestation Adventure,” the kids of South Park realize they can do whatever they want if they falsely accuse their parents of sexual abuse and get them sent to prison. With all the town’s adults in jail, the kids are free to reshape society to suit their own vision. This sets up a hysterical spoof of Children of the Corn in which a couple passing through are horrified to discover that the town has been overrun by kids and there are no other adults in sight. The zany kids of South Park were perfectly matched with a Children of the Corn storyline.
9 Red Dragon
Season 8, episode 13, “Cartman’s Incredible Gift,” sees Cartman being recruited to help the cops find a serial killer when he suffers a head injury and believes it’s given him psychic powers. The episode parodies a bunch of different serial killer movies, but its funniest scene spoofs a memorable moment from Red Dragon. In one of Red Dragon’s most unnerving scenes, the serial killer forces the detective to watch a slideshow of all the horrifically violent things they’ve done. In South Park, the serial killer forces Cartman to sit through a boring slideshow of his vacation photos. The detective’s horrified reactions are hilariously replaced with Cartman’s unbearable boredom.
8 A Nightmare On Elm Street
For the most part, season 14, episode 10, “Insheeption,” is a parody of Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending sci-fi epic Inception. But in its third act, when the dream-incepting job gets way out of hand, the U.S. government turns to the original dream inceptor: A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger. It was hilarious to see Freddy, one of the most iconic horror villains of the ‘80s, as a bearded mountain man with a wife and kids. The episode retcons the whole franchise and reveals that Freddy’s on-screen killing sprees were sanctioned by the government in a bid to “stop the Russians.”
7 The Sixth Sense
Much like Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, Ike can see dead people in season 13, episode 8, “Dead Celebrities,” but he doesn’t see regular dead people; he sees the spirits of famous people. This episode aired around the time that a lot of celebrities were passing away – Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Patrick Swayze, Walter Cronkite, Ted Kennedy, Bea Arthur, Ricardo Montalbán – and supposes that none of them can move on to the afterlife because Michael Jackson has unfinished business on Earth. “Dead Celebrities” also has a great parody of the eccentric medium character played by Zelda Rubinstein in Poltergeist.
6 Cloverfield
Randy buys a video camera and insists on documenting everything the family does, much to their chagrin, in season 12, episode 10, “Pandemic.” When the town is attacked by giant guinea pigs, Randy keeps filming and the episode becomes a hilarious parody of Cloverfield. The animation of the episode perfectly recreates the movie’s signature shaky-cam style, with well-timed cutaways showing just how ridiculous that kind of camerawork looks from a third-person perspective.
5 Pet Sematary
The A-plot of season 9, episode 9, “Marjorine,” sees the boys faking Butters’ death so he can go undercover at the girls’ slumber party. But the B-plot revolves around Butters’ parents mourning his fake death (which they don’t know is fake). An old farmer, a hilarious caricature of Pet Sematary’s Jud Crandall, comes over to warn the Stotches against using a nearby mystical burial ground to bring their son back to life. This scene sharply points out the weird hypocrisy of Jud telling people all about the cemetery he doesn’t want them to use. If he wants them to stay away, he could just not tell them about it.
4 The Human Centipede
In season 15, episode 1, “HumancentiPad,” Kyle agrees to Apple’s terms and conditions without reading them (as everyone does) and learns that he’s unwittingly signed up to take part in a real-life Human Centipede experiment. Dieter Laser’s disturbing surgeon character from The Human Centipede is replaced by a megalomaniacal Steve Jobs, who wants to turn Kyle and the other unwilling participants into Apple’s greatest product. The making of this episode was chronicled in the documentary 6 Days to Air.
3 The Silence Of The Lambs
After the boys T.P. their teacher’s house in season 7, episode 3, “Toilet Paper,” Officer Barbrady consults with sociopathic convicted toilet-paperer Josh Myers at the local juvie. These scenes are a hysterical parody of Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-winning scenes as Hannibal Lecter opposite Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs. When Barbrady leaves, the juvie guard asks if he was doing “the silly voice” for the police officer, revealing that the Hannibal thing is all an act. The final scene of the episode hilariously parodies the final scene of the movie as Josh speaks to Barbrady on the phone and prepares to T.P. the White House.
2 Night Of The Living Dead
Season 11, episode 7, “Night of the Living Homeless,” doesn’t just borrow its title from the classic George A. Romero zombie movie; it’s a spot-on spoof of the genre that the Romero masterpiece pioneered. It follows the same story structure of a group of survivors arming themselves and holing up in a discreet location away from the ravenous hordes – except, instead of avoiding a gruesome demise at the hands of the flesh-eating undead, they’re simply avoiding giving change to homeless people. The episode deftly mixes a Night of the Living Dead parody with a real exploration of the issue of homelessness.
1 The Shining
Right at the advent of the streaming takeover, Randy decided to buy a Blockbuster Video location in South Park season 16, episode 12, “A Nightmare on FaceTime.” Randy is the only one who thinks it’s a good business venture; Sharon and the kids are aware that streaming services are driving Blockbuster out of business, and he’s determined to prove them wrong. The store has been abandoned by the living and is haunted by the spirits of the dead (hilariously highlighting how antiquated Blockbuster has become). The isolation drives him to madness, much like Jack Torrance in The Shining, leading to pitch-perfect parodies of all the movie’s most iconic moments.
