Lennon takes pride in his ‘Baby’

Thomas Lennon, co-writer and codirector of Friday’s “Hell Baby,” knows the power of the comma.

“We could have done ‘Hell, Baby!’ but this is probably the stupidest title we could have come up with even though others made more sense.”

The 43-year-old, renowned for writing/producing/playing Lt. Dangle in “Reno 911!,” also stars as Father Padrigo, a demon-busting Spanish priest sent by the Vatican to help a New Orleans couple (Rob Corddry, Leslie Bibb) plagued by diabolical entities, a nosy neighbor, a hound from hell and clueless doctors.

“I’m a failed matador who went to the priesthood after not succeeding in the bullring — and this is the longest I’ve ever thought of the character outside of the funny accent and what kind of mustache I was going to grow,” Lennon said.

“This is very loose movie,” he continued. “For better or worse, Robert (co-writer and co-director Robert Ben Garant, aka Deputy Travis Junior on “Reno 911!”) and I wanted to do a film that was shot in 20 days with six of our best friends for next to nothing.

Lennon and Garant “met in 1988 laughing about the same Monty Python sketches.”

Now they’re up to “10 movies together and three TV shows,” Lennon said.

“While some of the things are funny and some fall flat, it’s a pretty weird movie, about as silly as it can possibly be, but it takes itself very seriously.”

“It’s not a spoof,” Garant noted. “It’s genuine dumb movie horror, a horror movie cast with the funniest people we know, a group of very focused goofballs: professional idiots.”

“There is a lot of literal throwing up,” Lennon said with pride, “and many people have pointed out it definitely goes off the rails most of the time.

“I’m not a big fan of spoof movies really,” he added.

“For us it was keeping the ball in the air, like spinning plates. Other than that Hell Baby will come out and eat people’s faces, there are tangents.”