Horror and Humor

Abstract

During the last decade or so, the subgenre of the horror-comedy has gained increasing prominence. Movies such as Beetlejuice, a triumph of this tendency, are predicated upon either getting us to laugh where we might ordinarily scream, or to scream where we might typically laugh, or to alternate between laughing and screaming throughout the duration of the film. One aim of this genre, it would appear, is to shift moods rapidly-to turn from horror to humor, or vice versa, on a dime. Gremlins (both versions), Ghostbusters (both versions), Arachnophobia, The Addams Family (both versions), possibly Death Becomes Her, and certainly Mars Attacks and Men in Black are highly visible, blockbuster examples of what I have in mind, but the fusion of horror and comedy also flourishes in the domain of low-budget production, in films like Dead/Alive as well as in the outre work of Frank Henenlotter, Stuart Gordon, and Sam Rami. Nor is the taste for blending horror and humor restricted to film. The recently discontinued daily comic strip by Gary Larson, The Far Side, consistently recycled horror for laughs, as do the television programs Tales from the Crypt and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And even the usually dour, intentionally deadpan television series The X-Files makes room for comedy in episodes like Humbug. Likewise, Tom Disch's recent novel The Businessman generates humor by sardonically inverting one of the fundamental conventions of the horror genre-representing a ghost who is stricken with disgust by the human she is supposed to haunt, rather than the other way around. And Dean Koontz's new, best-selling novelTickTock-moves easily between horror and screwball comedy, while James Hynes's Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Tenure and Terror restages classic horror motifs and stories for the purpose of academic satire. Of course, not every recent attempt to fuse horror and humor is effective. Lavish film productions like The Golden Child and Scrooged earned far less than anticipated. But what is more perplexing from a theoretical point of view is not that some fusions of horror and humor fail, but that any at all succeed. For, at least at first glance, horror and humor seem like opposite mental states. Being horrified seems as though it should preclude amusement. And what causes us to laugh does not appear as though it should also be capable of making us scream. The psychological feelings typically associated with humor include a sense of release and sensations of lightness and expansion;' those associated with horror, on the other hand, are feelings of pressure, heaviness, and claustrophobia. Thus, it may appear initially implausible that such broadly opposite affects can attach to the same stimulus. And yet, the evidence from contemporary films, television shows, comic strips, and novels indicates that they can. Moreover, though my examples so far are all of recent vintage, the phenomenon is long-standing. From earlier movie cycles, one recalls Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and before that there was the naughty humor of James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, and, even more hilariously, his Old Dark House. Furthermore, in literature, there has been a strong correlation between horror and comedy since the emergence of the horror genre. Perhaps Walpole's Castle of Otranto is already a horrorcomedy.2 But, in any case, soon after the publication of Mary Shelley's classic, stage parodies