Mera Caulfield was watching television a couple of months ago when the screen suddenly erupted with characters doing their best evil laughs. Ms. Caulfield turned to her two roommates, Alixandra Matos and Megan Mandrachio.
“I was like, ‘That’s literally us,’ ” Ms. Caulfield said.
Their apartment in Queens was soon filled with a cacophony of evil laughs. By her own admission, Ms. Caulfield, 25, who subsidizes her nascent career in comedy by waitressing and being a nanny, was disappointed in her performance. (“I don’t have a good one,” she said, sounding distraught.) But she also knew what she needed to do.
“We need to take this to Brooklyn,” she recalled telling her roommates.
The result of that jolt of inspiration played out on Thursday night at Nighthorse, a cocktail bar and event space in Greenpoint, where 39 contestants squared off in the inaugural Evil Laugh Competition before a standing-room-only crowd of about 120.
The evil laugh is a time-honored pop-culture staple, an affectation that somehow pulls off the high-wire act of being both villainous and hilarious — although some lean more heavily in one direction than the other.
Villainous? Think of the O.G., the Wicked Witch of the West from “The Wizard of Oz,” or Ed the hyena from “The Lion King.” On the more purposefully funny side: Dr. Evil from “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery,” and Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons.”
For the event itself, however, there was a strict rule in place: no stand-up comedy, under the threat of “immediate disqualification.” More specifically: “There will be zero tolerance for any type of ‘tight 5’ behavior.” Ms. Caulfield vowed to uphold the integrity of the competition.
“Let’s make sure we’re keeping things evil,” she said.
The first round of the bracket-style tournament — May Madness, if you will — was made up of several groups. Four other contestants, including Ms. Caulfield’s mother, Sandy, competed via video submission.
By the end of the evening — after loud laughs and high-pitched laughs, laughs that ranged several vocal octaves and laughs that included blasts of confetti and setting things on fire — Ena Da edged Gracie Hirsch for evil laugh supremacy.
Ms. Da, a writer and comedian from Brooklyn, had little preparation for the event, she said, since she found out about it only five hours before it began. But she knew that she wanted to “represent the broad spectrum of evil, so I started low and pitched it up.”
She went on to describe her laugh as “sinister and full of malice — the kind of laugh that someone would let out when their biggest object of detest, who has always been successful, has a big downfall.”
For her efforts, Ms. Da came away with a T-shirt — “I WON THE EVIL LAUGH COMPETITION 2024” — along with homemade cinnamon buns and pigs in a blanket, courtesy of Ms. Caulfield.
Ms. Da was unwilling to share with her fellow contestants.
“Absolutely not,” Ms. Da said. “In the spirt of evil, I simply took off with my spoils.”
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From her first appearance on the stage, Ms. Da made it clear that she had a formidable ability to channel evil.
Ms. Hirsch had a slow burn to her performance, with it building into something worthy of a true movie villain. All that was missing: actual flames shooting from her hand.
Paying homage to “Wicked,” Ian Smith defied gravity by spraying some confetti at the peak of his laughter. The extra bit of flair worked wonders with the crowd.
What’s an evil laugh contest without some pyromania? Mackenzie Thomas lit some scraps on fire. (Stand-up comedy was forbidden, but no one thought to ban props.)
Few contestants were able to bring the energy of Ellijah Mussig, who was nearly exploding on the stage.
Jill O’Connell said she was “an evil hipster.” But considering the contest was in Brooklyn, she may have just been a random passerby who stumbled into the bar.
Archie O’Dell double-tasked by getting in some plyometrics. The laughs were Tony Horton approved.
Matilda Armstrong’s performance was somewhere between laugh and scream. But she gave the whole thing enough enthusiasm that the crowd was behind her.
Dee Harvey seemed to melt as he laughed — a key component of good evil laughing.
While most of the contestants drew loud cheers from the crowd, Evan Lazarus very likely left them all with the same question: Are you OK?
