In my ongoing quest to find the most over-the-top horror comedy known to man, I think I’m getting close with Mitchell Altieri’s The Night Watchmen. One of the common throughlines I’ve noticed when it comes to great horror comedy is the use of a confined setting, people who don’t get along but have no choice but to set aside their differences, gratuitous amounts of bloodshed, and found objects being used as weapons in the most ridiculous ways imaginable. The Night Watchmen has it all, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a film that has so much going on while telling such a concise story.

The Night Watchmen

The Night Watchmen is about a group of stoned slacker security guards working the overnight shift at a Baltimore newspaper office. We’re introduced to Justin (Max Gray Wilbur), who used to be a musician but is looking for steady work. Unfortunately for Justin, the three current security guards, Ken (Ken Arnold), Luca (Dan De Luca), and Jiggets (Kevin Jiggets), love hazing the new guy, and make him wear the name tag of a previous employee named Rajeeve.

For a majority of The Night Watchmen, Justin is referred to by his coworkers as Rajeeve because nobody bothers to learn his real name.

Killer Clowns

While Justin is learning the ropes and introducing himself to the rest of the staff working at the newspaper, there are news reports about the untimely death of a famous clown named Blimpo.

The news reports at the beginning of The Night Watchmen suggest that Blimpo and the rest of his comedy troupe died in Romania while on tour, and require autopsies in the United States in order for an official cause of death to be announced.

While the guys are using their security cameras to watch pornography and eat a bunch of snacks, they witness two delivery men dropping off a coffin the warehouse, and head down to investigate.

Clown Bitten By Vampire

The delivery men inadvertently deliver Blimpo’s corpse to the wrong address, thus introducing The Night Watchmen’s primary antagonist … a clown that was bitten by a vampire.

Thinking nothing of it, the security guards let the delivery men leave the coffin in the warehouse in exchange for a bag of marijuana, as well as a promise that they’ll pick up the coffin in the morning and deliver it to the correct address. As luck may have it, Blimpo is let loose, and starts biting everybody he can sink his teeth into, causing a chain reaction that turns most of the newspaper’s staff into a ravenously hungry horde of vampires looking for blood.

Armed with toilet plungers, Justin’s drumsticks, a large bag of pot, and a meatball sub for self-defense (there’s garlic in it), the night watchmen get to work fighting off the undead with the help of Karen (Kara Luiz), a tabloid reporter who also works the overnight shift.

Jokes Come Back And Work

The Night Watchmen works so well because it runs its gags into the ground to the point of not being funny anymore, only for the same jokes to come back in the third act and stick the landing.

Taking a page from the South Park playbook, every time somebody dies, they pass gas or defecate themselves and everybody has to stop what they’re doing to acknowledge it. No matter how fast-paced the action sequences are, or how brutal the bloodshed may be, if a corpse lets one rip, it has to be announced as if it marks an official time of death.

Low-Budget Horror

For a low-budget horror comedy that didn’t have a wide theatrical release, the production values are surprisingly on point, and I’d put the gore levels up there with films like 28 Days Later if I had to make a comparison.

What’s more, the insane amount of violence generated by The Night Watchmen’s premise is offset by such immature levels of toilet humor that you simply have to admire how much Altieri and company committed to the bit.

Streaming The Night Watchmen

That being said, you have to belong to a very specific kind of audience to fully appreciate films like The Night Watchmen. But if you’re a part of that very special group of people who have a sense of humor that’s stuck in a permanent state of arrested development, then this is the perfect movie for you.

The Night Watchmen is crude, juvenile, offensive, and absolutely hilarious from start to finish. If you like your low-brow humor to be executed flawlessly, you can head on over to Tubi and watch this movie for free.