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Life Holidays
Halloween
On Halloween,
people watching their favorite horror
movies can be heard shrieking with laughter...
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1940's:
Chills
and chuckles
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Halloween
Treats:
Spoofs of Horror Movies
Making
Light of the Dark Side
What's the
attraction of horror movies?
Americans
love a good scare, but a belly laugh during Halloween can be just
as fun. This is evident in the parodies or spoofs of horror flicks,
said Wes Gehring, a film professor at Ball State University.
"Sometimes
people only see a movie one way, such as just being a horror or
comedy movie," he said. "But, movie
genres together can work on multiple levels."
The first
popular parody of horror movies occurred shortly after World War
II when Universal Studios combined two of its best-loved franchises
of the 1930s and '40s - monsters and Abbott and Costello - to
create 1948's Abbott
and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
In the 1950's,
horror films served mainly as nuclear-age parable, as "alien"
radiation infected humans (and insects), wreaking unexpected havoc.
Today, of course, they're considered some of the funniest films
ever made.
Gehring says
horror movies are continuously changing to meet the demands of
the audience or to find new ones. In the 1970s, films such as
Carrie
were about grossing out the audience.
In the 1990s,
parodies took center stage after several decades of serious
and lucrative horror flicks.
"It seems
that horror is the genre of choice for the younger generation,"
he says. "It's no surprise that movies like the Scream
trilogy quickly became so popular.
In the 1990s,
horror movies evolved into films such as the Scream movies
and The
Blair Witch Project.
"As a
genre gets old and worn out, parodies come to center stage,"
he said. "Then, the genre begins to re-invent itself, as
it did in the 90s with the Scream trilogy and Blair
Witch.
"These
kinds of horrors weren't being made, and a movie like Blair
Witch shows that the genre is still undergoing change,"
he said. "Each time the horror movie genre changes, the parodies
change."
Gerhing's
favorite horror parodies include:
The
Lost Boys - "Much like Fright Night, a
humorous look at vampire movies."
An
American Werewolf In London - "A spoof of werewolf
movies where the main character actually becomes a werewolf."
Source:
Ball State University
also
see ->
Monsters
& Demons: A Short History of the Horror Film
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