"Horror-Comedy is a literary, television, and film genre, that combines elements of comedy and horror fiction."
This genre is categorised into three subtypes; dark comedy(Heathers, 1988), parody (Scary Movie, 2000), and spoof (Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday The 13th, 2000). Many comedy-horrors and parodies satirise the slasher character archetypes, and are prevalent throughout pop-culture.
Background and History:
The short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving is considered to be "the first great comedy horror", being published in 1820 and taking place around Halloween. The first horror-comedy film is the 1920 short film Haunted Spooks, by Harold Lloyd, but the most successful first release was Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, 1948, directed by Charles Barton. The initial reasoning behind the film, was to combine iconic monsters such as Dracula, Frankenstein, and the werewolf, played by household comedy names. This unintentional hybridity proved commercially viable, and evolved into four quadrant films such as Beetlejuice (1988), The Addams Family (1991), or Casper (1995).
After the first slasher cycle ended in the late 1980s, and slasher conventions had been established, postmodernist films and parodies or spoofs began to emerge. An early example is 1981's Student Bodies, followed by Bride of Chucky in 1998, and notably Scary Movie (2000). This exaggerated slasher tropes and plot lines, ridiculing them and directly referencing popular films of the time. This resulted in strong box office figures and a large number of sequels, and solidified the horror-comedy genre. Another film of the time was the zom-rom-com, Sean of the Dead (2004), which added a further layer of hybridity and was followed by large success and further adaptations (Warm Bodies, 2013). In recent years, the self-awareness and mockery of tropes in films such asThe Cabin in the Woods (2012), The Final Girls (2015), and The Babysitter (2017), have dominated the horror-comedy genre.
Psychological Elements:
Apart for the increased commercial appeal created through hybridity, the popularity and success of comedy-horror lies in the safety felt by the audience compared to a classic thriller or slasher. In "Comedy-Horror Films: A Chronological History", Bruce Hallenbeck summarises this best:
"(comedy-horror films) provide the permission to laugh at your fears, to whistle past the cinematic graveyard and feel secure in the knowledge that monsters can't get you."
Definitions/Concepts:
Comedy: laughter and humour is created due to the contrast of a characters existence and the attempt to achieve their goal, which a viewer is able to watch from afar and see elements a character cannot perceive about themselves.
Horror: discomfort, terror, and repulsion is created to provoke a psychological reaction within the viewer.
The sub-types of the comedy-horror:
As I had previously mentioned, there are three main types of the horror-comedy; dark comedy, parody, and spoof.
Parody: A common way and type of comedy-horror, as it relied on parodying the distinct tropes of the horror genre. This is because of the horror's set conventions that an audience can recognise and see in a different element. For example, the film Scary Movie (2000) is a great example of a parody, as it makes fun of the film Scream (1996), as well as many other classic horror films. For example, the opening sequence is a recreation of Scream, but adds elements of humour such as the "safety/death" sign or the slow motion running of the victim.
The reminder of watching a film allows a viewer to laugh at their own fears, while also leaving them vulnerable for a scare, as laughter is relaxing.
Dark Comedy: Dark comedy creates humour from a dark subject matter as a coping mechanism, to remove the seriousness or fear from a bleak situation. It is not as reliant on horror conventions as the other sub-types, and often ends negatively, but the manner in which the story was carried out does not have the same effect on the viewer as a serious horror film would. For example, the film Heathers (1988), features comedic ways of death or accidental killings, and the protagonist ignores the death of her friends as she has her own teenage problems, as well as the de-sensitisation of her classmates. This creates humour as it is an inappropriate manner in which to react at the horror, while having the bleak situations still depicted.
Spoof: A spoof refers to the humorous exaggeration of something for comic effect. When a situation is depicted extremely, this removes the horror element and allows for more violence as it is seen as comedic. The more unbelievable and exaggerated something is, the more humour it creates. For example, the clips of The Babysitter (2017) seen below, contain a lot of violent imagery such as blood, but because it is so exaggerated, the viewer is aware it is fictional, and humour is created.
Conclusion:
The most frequent combination of horror-comedy in these films is in jump scares (false scares), killing methods, the killer, or the victims reaction. This hybridity allows for a wider audience appeal, and more commercial adaptations of the genre, as family films (The Addams Family, 1991), or satire (The Final Girls, 2015). However, the main reason behind the comedy-horror's success is the genre purism of horror, and the distinct conventions it has. In order to effectively create a comedy-horror, the filmmaker must establish and recognise the conventions, in order for them to be subverted.
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