Two quotes from you, gerfalcon...
"Horror is all about building up tension and comedy is all about breaking down tension, that does not go together so don’t try it, it simply won’t work. "
and
"...it takes a master to mix those two in a sensible way, I can not come up with an example right now, let that speak for itself. I found one! Braindead by Peter Jackson."
Ok, first off, I LOVE Peter Jackson. But I did not, and have never encountered ANYONE, in real life OR THE INTERNET, that found Braindead/Dead Alive to be frightening, scary or indeed, tense. The more horrific elements presented in the film were ALL played for gross out laughs.
It's incredibly fashionable, especially on this site, to cite Brain Dead as some sort of masterpiece in marrying horror and comedy. I have never understould this, as while it is a wonderfully humourous movie, there are no real 'scares' in the film and many times I have read Peter Jackson interviews where his thoughts on this, and his prevous two films, are that they are SILLY and not to be taken seriously.
Horror and Comedy have been mixed very well before. Some films have decided to tread the line leaning more toward the horror or some huge unfolding story with humourous asides in the film and others have put us in the same position as their respective antagonists, laughing along with them at the protagonist.
EVIL DEAD 2 is a classic mix of surrealistic nightmare imagery and taking the violence to it's logical, slapstick conclusion.
George A. Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD has a few comedic highlights among it's surreal visions of zombies wandering a shoppign mall.
Re-Animator is a classic, witty adaptation of a H.P. Lovecraft story, where the humour is nearly all within dialogue - the characters do not know they are being funny, like say, SCREAM - yet the moral drive of the film (to play God and resurrect the dead) is handled with gentle respect.
I should also note, Lloyd Kaufman's TOXIC AVENGER was also greatly influencial on the horror/comedy hybrids coming out in the nineteen eighties; it's own monster cartoonily (but brutally) dismembering the true monster of the era (evil capitalist governing bodys). It's a warning disguised as a b-movie and it's enduring legacy is testament, at the very least, to it's unique taste - a cocktail of gore and comedy.
David Lynch's Blue Velvet and Eraserhead are also worth mentioning, for being both tremendously effective horror films (more in the atmospheric and metaphorical sense rather than literal "BOO!" scares) while maintaining an off-beat deadpan cynicism.
And the final film I will mention for the moment is Dan O'Bannon's Return of the Living Dead, which also brilliantly marriend the genres.
Anyway, hope that suggested a new perspective to you
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justin_of_the_dead
18 years ago
i love horror comedies and theres also undead,dead and breakfast and cabin fever although cabin fever isnt that good both others are excellent
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CrazyJim2004
16 years ago
"i love horror comedies and theres also undead,dead and breakfast and cabin fever although cabin fever isnt that good both others are excellent"
Cabin Fever isn't that good but Dead and Breakfast is excellent? Couldn't disagree more with that one.
As far as this horror-comedy thing goes, there are plenty who succeed quite well at it. I think Joe Dante's earlier films are good examples, particularly the stuff written by John Sayles. Like any film, it just comes down to knowing how to balance everything out. Humor is great in horror films when it's either used to relax the crowd after a very tense situation or lore them into a false sense of security. I don't care for a lot of the modern day self-aware parodying of genre films within genre films. They often go overboard in making fun of their own premise to the point that they never end up being scary.
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