General Overviews and Introductions
Minimal scholarship and few trade publications are dedicated to horror-comedy alone. This heading, then, collects writings that primarily discuss horror as a film and literary genre but attempt to locate the precise limits of horror and comedy when both elements exist in a given work, or that note the particular flavors or types of comedy that emerge in specific horror cycles. Paul 1994 is the exception; in one of the few volumes devoted to horror-comedy, this cultural history explores the emergence in the 1970s and 1980s of “gross-out” horror and comedy and offers a careful explanation of how and why “gross-out” is a powerful mode in both genres. Both Clarens 1997 and Pirie 2008 update landmark scholarship on horror film; Clarens provides an illustrated history, primarily of classic Hollywood horror films, while Pirie traces the roots of British horror film themes and preoccupations to the English literary gothic. King 2012, an update of an earlier collection of observations on the horror film genre, explores its various pleasures. Both Skal 1993 and Tudor 1989 offer cultural histories of horror film; Skal’s work is more popular and focused on decade-by-decade trends in American horror, while Tudor’s study focuses more on the way familiar horror film villains change over time.