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On Halloween, people watching their favorite horror
movies can be heard shrieking — with laughter...

1940's: Chills and chuckles

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.

Since that time, parodies have taken 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. "As a genre gets old and worn out, parodies come to center stage," he said. "Each time the horror movie genre changes, the parodies change."

Sure enough, with the dawn of a new century the release of Scary Movie in 2000 spun together practically every horror film parody up to that time, and became a wildly popular pop hit that enjoys a cult following to this day.

Top Ten Horror Spoofs

More about horror film spoofs around the Web:

The Best Horror Movie Spoofs & Satires

Top 10 Scary Movie Comedies

also see -> Monsters & Demons: A Short History of the Horror Film

Halloween TV