Comedy Conventions

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"I'm a student of both horror and comedy because they're different sides of the same coin: Both are about using emotion to provoke an instinctual, physical response, and if you're lucky, spontaneous evacuation of bodily waste products."
— Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, Extra Punctuation

Comedy-horror is a literary and genre that combines elements of comedy and horror, It can generally be categorised under three sub-genres: black comedy, parody and spoof. Comedy-horror generally takes the conventions of a well-known film or concept and pokes fun at them, exaggerating their form and language.

The comedy-horror hybrid genre is a unique contradiction, but share an undeniable connection. This is an interesting topic that requires further research and …show more content…
Their plays were originally based on the genre of comedy and they decided to add horror into their work by creating haunted houses and monster stories such as: The Bat, The Cat & The Canary and The Gorilla.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) was the first hit comedy horror movie to be met with success upon it’s release. How could it not? The big bosses at universal studios conceived the film as a surefire hit cross-promotion between two of their most reliably bankable properties: a cast of iconic movie monsters (e.g. Bela Lugosi’s Dracula and Lon Cheney’s Wolfman) and beloved comedy duo Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Its success legitimised the genre and established it as commercially viable.

The 1960’s saw the innovation of original horror novels, movies and TV shows into new forms adding comedic elements in order to seem fresh and keeping up with the time. During this decade, some of the most famed classic television shows of all time were created such as The Munsters and The Addams Family, in which monsters were portrayed as typical families. 60’s comedy-horror was not only prominent in family sitcoms, but this decade also gave birth to the long-running cartoon Scooby Doo which became, and still is, a
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