Monster Makers: Bloody Hilarious: When Vampires Make Us Laugh Instead of Scream 🧛‍♂️

When Vampires Are Funny (and Why That’s Delicious)

Hey Monster Makers!

My very first vampire wasn’t Dracula.

It wasn’t Anne Rice’s Lestat, or even the Bela Lugosi classic.

It was the Count.

Yes—that Count.
Purple felt skin, monocle, widow’s peak, tuxedo, cape, and an accent thick enough to butter your bread with. Sesame Street introduced me—tiny me—to a buffet of vampire tropes that still define the genre:

• The dramatic Eastern European accent
• The aristocratic wealth signaled by tux and cape
• The widow’s peak like a dagger into his forehead
• The obsessive fixation—in this case, counting everything in sight

The Count wasn’t scary. He was ridiculous. And that was the point.

Enter the Carnivalesque Vampire

When we make a monster funny, we’re not just getting giggles—we’re using the iconography of grotesque realism to stage a carnivalesque critique of power.

Carnival (as described by Mikhail Bakhtin) exaggerates traits—making the refined ridiculous, the fearsome foolish—not for the sake of absurdity alone, but to flip the hierarchy playfully.

In the case of the vampire, the hierarchy we’re flipping is fear itself. The dignified, aristocratic, immortal predator becomes a bumbling, lovable, all-too-human oddball.

This playful reversal destabilizes the power binary between monster and human, turning terror into amusement and inviting us to embrace what once threatened us.

Funny Bloodsuckers Take Fear Down a Notch

• Grandpa Munster from The Munsters: A sitcom dad… who just happens to turn into a bat. The literal patriarch of the family turned into a joke? I see you, Munsters!
• Hotel Transylvania: Turns gothic menace into overprotective dad comedy, poking fun at helicopter parenting, generational gaps, and the absurdity of trying to control a chaotic world. The Count von Sandler.
• Taika Waititi’s Viago in What We Do in the Shadows: Old-world politeness meets flatmate squabbles about dirty dishes. Turning the wealthy effete vamp into a mundane bumbler? Eat the rich, dearie.

These characters still carry the fangs, the mystique, and the tropes, but through humor, they disarm the fear and invite us to laugh in the monster’s face. Carnival at work!

🩸 Craft Corner: The Comedy in the Creepy

Funny monsters aren’t just “haha” material—they’re sly little satirists.

When we laugh at a monster, we’re often laughing at something else entirely: a cultural fear, a social taboo, a ridiculous authority figure.

This is where Bakhtin’s carnivalesque comes in: we use the iconography of grotesque realism (those big, absurd, bodily traits) to playfully flip the hierarchy—taking something that once terrified us and turning it into the butt of the joke.

Craft Exercise – The Satire Under the Fang

1. Choose a funny monster from pop culture (Count von Count, What We Do in the Shadows, Hotel Transylvania, etc.).
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2. Ask:
   • What real-world fear, power structure, or cultural “no-no” are they poking at?
   • How does their absurd exaggeration undermine or reverse that fear?
3. Write a quick note (2-3 sentences) about what their humor is actually critiquing.

🖋️ Monster Maker Prompt: Turning Fear into Farce

Sometimes the best way to deal with what scares us is to laugh at it—loudly, and with a little too much enthusiasm.

This exercise will help you take a terrifying monster and strip away their power by making them hilarious.

Writing Exercise:

1. Pick Your Monster: Choose the one that genuinely gives you the creeps—werewolf, ghost, vampire, tax auditor, whatever.
2. Identify the Fear Factor: Write down the one thing that makes them truly scary. Is it their strength? Their speed? Their hunger? Their unblinking stare?
3. Turn the Dial to 100: Take that scary trait and crank it so high it breaks.
   • Werewolf who transforms every time they see a cute dog video.
   • Ghost who’s too good at haunting—accidentally knocks over furniture constantly, like an anxious poltergeist on espresso.
   • Vampire who’s so obsessed with blood they start rating it like wine connoisseurs (“I detect notes of despair and a hint of rosemary…”).
4. Make It Absurd: Push it into situations where that overblown trait is ridiculous instead of frightening.
5. Write the Scene: Just a quick paragraph where your “scary” monster’s worst trait becomes their most laughable one.

⚰️ Check out these examples:

1. The Bloodthirsty Overachiever

• Scary Trait: Unquenchable thirst for blood.
• Funny Twist: Drinks everything red just to be safe—tomato soup, Kool-Aid, nail polish remover and of course posts Yelp reviews for every single one.

2. The Seductive Predator

• Scary Trait: Irresistible, hypnotic charm.
• Funny Twist: Is too good at flirting and can’t turn it off—flirts with ATMs, trees and flowers, and once tried to seduce a Roomba.

3. The Eternal Night Stalker

• Scary Trait: Can’t be stopped, endlessly hunting their prey.
• Funny Twist: They keep following the wrong person . . . for decades. And now they’ve become weirdly attached to them (“We do brunch every Sunday now, it’s fine.”).

Because when we laugh at our monsters, we’re the ones holding the stake. 🗡️

🩸 Over to You

Turn your scariest monster into the most ridiculous version of itself—and then show it off!

Share your absurd creation on Instagram, tag me @iliketododrawrings, and use the hashtag #AbsurdMonsterChallenge so we can all cackle together.

Or just hit reply and send it to me. You know I live for monstrous delights!

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Until the shadows snicker,

Heidi

Monster Mentor | Dark Humor Diva | Batty Bard 💋🦇

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