Recent DVDs spotlight why horror-comedy is so hard to get right.  In fact, great horror-comedies, from A&C Meet Frankenstein (1948) to Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Slither (2006) make what they do look deceptively easy:  "See, just build a solid horror movie, then sprinkle liberally with laughs and serve to the cross-over audience of your choice."  However, for a single script to deliver the goods on both fronts is not as straightforward as it might appear—think about how many bad comedies or horror flicks you've seen and the fact that they only need to worry about one of these genres.

But that's only the beginning of why horror-comedies seem so daunting to me.  The director and the actors need to be capable of handling wild shifts in tone and content, i.e., they must be incredibly talented.  In fact, to stay on the issue of tone for a moment, the transitions between comedy and horror can be extraordinarily difficult to pull off.  Moreover, if you really want to be successful, you may want to hide the transitions or, harder still, mine them as a way of manipulating the audience.  ("Manipulate" in a playful, semi-obvious, Hitchcockian way, of course.)  That's a lot of things to get right, and the temptation to stay squarely within one's proven skill set must be huge.  Maybe that's why individual filmmakers tend to stress the one genre—comedy or horror—that they're most comfortable with.  Unfortunately, it's that lack of commitment to both sides of the hyphen that ends up creating those neither-fish-nor-fowl flicks that turn off audiences of all stripes.

A question naturally comes to mind:  is all this effort to get horror-comedy right "worth it" artistically?  I think when I was younger and more of a purist I would've said no—horror-comedy to me was Ghostbusters (1984):  basically a comedy with some horror trappings thrown in; the horrific as handmaiden to the comedic.

Now I think that such a facile judgment is the product of not looking deeply enough into what's really going on.  In short, these days I view horror-comedies as the most interesting hybrids on the block.  First, because revulsion and laughter are two of the more primal responses that film itself can evoke.  Secondly, because horror and comedy are commonly thought to lie on opposite ends of the genre spectrum, so their combination is intriguing precisely because it's so counterintuitive.  Finally, I sense that the most gifted filmmakers probably don’t approach this subgenre as something that's as neatly partitioned as I've been presenting it.  That is, horror and comedy not as different sides of the same coin, but linked together somewhere down there under the table where it's hard to see.  Newsflash:  maybe comedy is even more cruel than we thought and maybe horror is a lot funnier than generally supposed—which is a notion that nice folks probably don’t care much to admit.

With such thoughts in mind, let's revisit some horror-comedies that have recently been released for home viewing.

Severance (2006).  Watching the DVD's special features confirmed what I already suspected:  Severance started out as a smart satire involving team-building, corporate politics, stuffed shirts and maybe even a crypto-populist critique of capitalism itself—The Office meets Friday the 13th.  Somewhere along the way, though, in the long and winding road of script revisions, production decisions, and the editing process, that promising set-up remained just that:  a set-up, a way for the movie to distinguish itself, but ultimately not what the filmmakers ended up most caring about.  Unfortunately, the same lack of follow-through is evident in the narrative itself.  At the outset, the script layers on the arch absurdism with brushstrokes that are almost Monty Python-thick, but pretty soon those concerns are left in the rear-view mirror and the black comedy becomes much, much broader in its intentions.  Despite several remarkably and audaciously funny visuals and situations, the emphasis turns to navigating the same tired plot formulae you've seen in countless horror movies and thrillers, right up to and including Severance's downright moldy-textbook approach to dispatching its main villain/monster.

Sure, there's a lot to like about this movie.  I was particularly impressed with the short movies-within-the-movie that showcase the sheer creative talent of director Christopher Smith.  And the charismatic Danny Dyer, playing quite a different character from Wasp (2003), the role where he first made an impression on me, is a standout.  Laura Harris, now appearing in the dreadful Woman's Murder Club on ABC, also does nice work, as does the rest of the cast.  However, that only serves to make the mean-spirited sequences a little harder to take.  Not that I have anything against killing off likable characters—that's what drives shock cinema to some extent.  Just don’t expect big laughs to come from the sadistic treatment of those with whom you've spent some quality screen-time.  (In contrast, Black Sheep, below, is both much more thoughtful in how it treats its characters and considerate of what the resulting impact on the audience is apt to be.)

Black Sheep (2006):  In terms of set-up, this movie has a wonderfully simple horror-comedy strategy:  take something patently not scary and attempt to make very scary.  (Hint:  the title gives away what's being made scary.)  However, that same tight focus also lends a rather pronounced one-note feel to the proceedings.  Although Black Sheep boasts considerably higher production values than, say, Severance, it has few, if any, aspirations above the level of being a B-grade popcorn flick.  In the end, the movie comes to resemble nothing so much as a tongue-in-cheek siege movie along the lines of Feast (2006).  Like Feast, it never quite achieves the full promise of either its horror or its humor, but is content to take a middle-of-the-road position and remain agreeably silly.  Yes, some of the "green" jokes at the expense of Danielle Mason, the female lead, fall terribly flat.  But all in all Black Sheep is a harmless if diverting "mad science" escapade of the type I wish we'd see more of in horror.  I think part of the reason the movie enjoyed such critical buzz upon its theatrical release is that mainstream critics could use the rationale of "it's not supposed to be serious" to absolve themselves from actually enjoying all the gore and mayhem on display.

The Insatiable (2006):  This awkwardly-titled pseudo-romcom has a lot of light touches, many of them amusing, and a handful of strong scenes.

  But in tone and theme the movie often seems like a throwback to the spate of "sexy/quirky" entries in the vampire subgenre (Vampire's Kiss, Vampire in Brooklyn, Innocent Blood) that I thought audiences gave up on years ago.  Maybe they did, which explains why someone thought it was once again time to give this dubious approach another try.  Sean Patrick Flannery is cast against type and goes a bit overboard to compensate, walking around with his shoulders in a permanent hunch to convey his dweebiness, but overall he does a good job.  The female lead, Charlotte Ayanna, delivers a performance that's more inconsistent, albeit in a role that's not entirely easy.  And the final key ingredient in a romcom, the chemistry between the leads, is serviceable here but hardly more than that.

For hardcore horror fans, though, The Insatiable is problematic for several reasons, including its reliance on coincidence and its rehashed monologues about the predatory "nature" of vampirism.  More importantly, the setting is all wrong—the premise could work in a small town, but never in a big city unless the protagonist owns a building such as brownstone.  Also, there's not the quantity of carnage, effects, or suspense that the typical horror audience expects from a vampire flick.  Most criminal of all, however, at least to me, is the waste of Michael Biehn.  His character is established as intriguing fairly early on and then forgotten about for virtually the rest of the movie.  If this were one of the Grindhouse movies, I could assume that the reel with his subplot was missing, but sadly there's no such excuse handy.  However, in defense of The Insatiable, its single-mindedness somehow works better than Black Sheep's.  You may not like where it goes with its premise (and vampire fanatics may spot the ending a mile away), but at least it goes somewhere and tries its hardest not to be entirely predictable.  Poised somewhere between a black comedy, an offbeat romance, and a made-for-cable horror flick, The Insatiable does a passable job in all departments but doesn't hit in a home run in any.  The bottom line is that maybe this title could be a decent Valentine's Day rental for the horror enthusiast.  Maybe.

Grindhouse (2007):  I'm still struggling to understand the incongruity:  why I enjoyed Grindhouse so much in the theater, where it struck me as a must-see event for horror fans and really anyone in love with movies and movie culture… and then why upon re-viewing its two features on DVD, my reaction was that these were basically kinda-fun novelty acts.  Maybe the sharp end of the movies' respective shocks were too blunted the second time 'round.  Or maybe the absence of the whole deliriously unpredictable mix of faux trailers and other in-theater gimmicks had something to do with it.  Most likely, though, is simply that the nostalgia factor wore off:  I grew up in the Times Square grindhouses in their '70s and '80s heyday, and the look-and-feel that Grindhouse reproduced theatrically was transportive to say the least.

Death Proof:  This movie makes me wish that Tarantino would simply direct a straight-ahead horror flick instead of flirting with the genre or producing others' efforts in it.  How great could that be if he set his mind to it?  He's so internalized the visuals of menace that in Death Proof the most dread-evoking shots come effortlessly—the dolly-ups on Kurt Russell's parked car, the pans to follow it moving slowly in the distance.  A little cheesy at times, but effective nonetheless, which is impressive.  Indeed, Tarantino achieves a great mood with a just few key touches here and there, but ultimately doesn't seem concerned much about sustaining, let alone building upon, that mood.  He's only too ready to ditch the horror elements in order to make his car-chase movie.

Death Proof 's self-consciously hip Tarantino-speak dialogue is often mildly amusing, but it never achieves the quotable, LOL quality of some of his earlier scripts.  What this movie does have going for it as a comedy is the great work of Kurt Russell—a true star and veteran of comedies and more somber fare for more than 35 years.  When he's on the screen, everything becomes focused and alive.  When he's not, things are interesting at best.  You probably need someone like him in your picture if it's going to work as both scary and funny.  Maybe in a quarter century we'll be saying these same things about Simon Pegg.  Let's see.

Planet Terror:  For me Planet Terror holds up better on a second viewing than Tarantino's half of Grindhouse.  Like Death Proof, this movie takes a similar tack in terms of leavening the horror with copious helpings of "action" and in the end it becomes all about the action.  To be fair, this same opportunistic strategy in terms of appropiating different genres is reminiscent of authentic grindhouse cinema back in the day.  However, it's not surprising then that Grindhouse didn’t do such great box office domestically:  audiences can tolerate splicing two genres, but when you start layering in more than that, they're not sure what they're getting and don't know how to recommend the movie—or more importantly, whom to recommend it to—even if they love it.

That said, if you're a fan of zombie films you've probably got to see Planet Terror even though technically it isn't really a zombie film (reanimation is hinted at once or twice, but doesn't drive the horror).  And while there are a couple of eye-popping action sequences, the movie's energy and craziness certainly derives from its mix of horror and comedy.  The audience it seems to target are those who grooved to stuff such as pre-Spidey Sam Raimi movies and the I-can't-believe-I just-saw-that vibe of the original Dawn of the Dead (1979).  That is, the humor comes from both a nod-and-wink campiness and a willingness by the filmmaker to go out of his way to create buttons just so that they can be pushed.

The phenomenally talented Robert Rodriguez takes an authorial tone similar to that in his From Dusk Till Dawn (1996); if you call it ironic, you're missing the point—everything is meant in fun, sure, but underneath the wild lack of inhibition, this fun is played out with a very straight face.  He's not content to reference other actual grindhouse films, or simply to pay homage to them, but actually wants to add his work to that "canon."  As with Tarantino's films—which may explain the bond the two directors share—it's kind of up to you, the viewer, to sort the silly from the serious.

For the record, my favorite horror-comedies of 2007 are Behind the Mask, now available on DVD, and Botched, which as far as I know has been released in Europe but not in the U.S.  But please—let me know if I've missed a worthy title somewhere along the way…