2004, R, 105 minutes

Club Dread, the newest offering from the comedy troupe known as Broken Lizard, is a fairly amusing film that is in much the same vein as their last movie, Super Troopers. This time around the setting is a tropical resort; a place where booze flows freely, and the women wear next to nothing. The place is owned by Coconut Pete, a kind of sleazy man’s version of Jimmy Buffet. Pete’s got a problem; his staff is being murdered by a psycho roving in the jungle next to his beautiful resort. It’s up to Pete and his remaining employees to stay alive until they capture the killer.

It is under this premise that the Lizard bunch is working and they mine the storyline for some pretty funny bits. Their comedy is based mostly on immature gags, but what keeps you from groaning is the sheer confidence they have in delivering even the lamest jokes. These guys will try anything to get a laugh from their audience, and here they succeed about seventy percent of the time. And they succeed without resorting to the gross-out humor that has been prevalent lately in such films as the American Pie series and more recently, the utterly brain-dead Eurotrip. That isn’t to say Dread’s humor isn’t sometimes raunchy, it can definitely be that, but it’s also thought out and executed with more tact than any movie starring a character named “Stifler." Not every joke in Club Dread is a howler, but it’s funny enough to keep a smile on your face the whole way through without feeling dirty for having seen it.

What is most impressive about this movie (oddly enough, more impressive than the humor in this film) is that as it sends up horror pictures, it also manages to be quite an effective little shocker itself. There are a lot of scares in Club Dread, many of them you never see coming. Even the most jaded horror movie fan will jump out of his seat once during this picture. Dread also mimics the ‘whodunit’ films very well, leaving you wondering who could possibly be offing the staff in some truly strange ways. Credit the film's ability to capture the style of these different genres without turning this movie into a spoof for director Jay Chandrasekhar, who also portrays Putman, the club's tennis instructor. If he were to take side projects, he could very well make a name for himself directing every Ashley Judd type thriller that comes down the pike.

Club Dread isn’t re-inventing the wheel, and its laughs may rely heavily on bathroom humor, but it's decently written stuff that reaches the comedic goals it has set for itself more often than it misses them. The scares are ultimately what Dread delivers with more satisfaction, but that being said, it is still ten times funnier than the whole Scary Movie series put together.