ABOUT THIS BOOK

Horror films strive to make audiences scream, but they also garner plenty of laughs. In fact, there is a long tradition of horror directors who are fluent in humor, from James Whale to John Landis to Jordan Peele. So how might horror and humor overlap more than we would expect?

Dead Funny locates humor as a key element in the American horror film, one that is not merely used for extraneous “comic relief” moments but often serves to underscore major themes, intensify suspense, and disorient viewers. Each chapter focuses on a different comic style or device, from the use of funny monsters and scary clowns in movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street to the physical humor and slapstick in movies ranging from The Evil Dead to Final Destination. Along the way, humor scholar David Gillota explores how horror films employ parody, satire, and camp to comment on gender, sexuality, and racial politics. Covering everything from the grotesque body in Freaks to the comedy of awkwardness in Midsommar, this book shows how integral humor has been to the development of the American horror film over the past century.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

DAVID GILLOTA is an associate professor of English at University of Wisconsin, Platteville. He is the author of Ethnic Humor in Multiethnic America (Rutgers University Press) and is the editor of the journal Studies in American Humor.

REVIEWS

"[Gillotta's] conceptual and structural economy gives the study a rare tightness, allowing it to unfold with depth without losing focus. . . . The book not only reframes how we read horror's comic sensibility but also opens conceptual pathways for comparative and transnational research on genre across global film cultures. . . . Overall, the book stitches a hybrid film historiography in which humour is deeply embedded in the genealogy of horror. It promises to be a touchstone for subsequent works to examine how humour and horror intersect in shaping bodies on screen, influencing cinematic form, and charting the fluid configurations of generic systems."

— Screen

"Dead Funny broadens our understanding of how humor and horror work together. Gillota's close readings offer new perspectives on familiar topics from evil clowns to the representation of race in Night of the Living Dead that should provoke scholars of both humor and horror to consider different lenses for analyses."

— Studies in American Humor

“Historically, horror scholarship has often displayed an almost phobic disregard for horror-comedies and the comedy in horror. You almost would not know that horror is often intricately enmeshed with comedy. David Gillota's Dead Funny corrects this omission, taking on comedic horror from the silent era to Jordan Peele with care and rigor. And the best part: it is even funny.”

— Murray Leeder, author of Horror Film: A Critical Introduction

"Dead Funny offers a brilliant rethinking of the horror genre as profoundly comic. Exploring parody, the comic monster, body humor, queer camp, cringe comedy, and satire, Dead Funny serves up a comprehensive look at humor’s centrality to the structure and tone of U.S. horror film since the 1930s. You’ll be surprised at some of the films that come up in David Gillota’s provocative book—but I guarantee you’ll also be convinced."

— Dawn Keetley, author of Making a Monster: Jesse Pomeroy, the Boy Murderer of 1870s Boston

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Approaching Horror through Humor

1. Parodying Horror, Horror as Parody

2. Clowns, Fools, and Dummies: Horror’s Comic Monsters

3. Painfully Funny: The Humor of Body Horror

4. Camping Out: Horror’s Queer Humor and Gender Play

5. Cringes and Creeps: Exploring Awkward Horror

6. Horror, Humor, and Critique: Satire in Horror

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index