Chosen genre and it's conventions - Research

What are conventions of the Comedy-Horror genre? 

In comedy-horror movies, "Gallows humour," is often an element that is used. Gallows humour is defined as being humour that stems from very unpleasant, serious or painful circumstances. For example, if someone were to make a joke about war or disease then that joke would be defined as being gallows humour.
Within the comedy horror genre specifically, gallows humour is quite important because it allows the audience to laugh at the unpleasantness that they see on screen. For example in the movie "Shaun of the Dead," many violent things happen such as people get ripped apart by zombies, but it is done in a comical way. For example when Shaun and Liz try and rescue David from being eaten by zombies and they end up pulling his legs off. This is Gallows humour, as it is making light of dark events that are happening.
The same thing can be seen in "The Cabin in the Woods." Many of the characters die in horrible ways, but we never take the action too seriously as the film is obviously exploiting gallows humour to be funny.

I think that to make a successful film within the comedy-horror genre, I need to carefully exploit gallows humour. I would probably have initially done this without even knowing what it was as the comedy-horror genre is just that; making fun of dark things that are happening. However, I think now I know exactly what gallows humour is it will help with the overall production of the media piece as I can use it as much as I can.

From my research into the genre, I can also gather that the horror and comedy genres have been closely associated with each other for a long time. In literature, many novels have taken advantage of both the horror and comedy genres. For example many nineteenth century authors used black humour in their horror stories. For instance after the publication of "Frankenstein," many comedic parodies were made.

The first commercially successful comedy-horror movie is said as being "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein," which is a 1948 American film directed by Charles Barton.

Another thing I found from my research into the genre is that the comedy-horror genre generally has three elements, which are black comedy, parody and spoof. Black comedy is a genre which is very closely related with the comedy-horror genre, and inevitably both genres tend to cross over a lot. Parody is also obviously an element that will be used, as comedy-horror movies are generally making fun of horror movies. This links with the "spoof," element of the genre as well.
I found that the majority of comedy-horror movies will use "satire on horror cliches as it's main source of humour." It will also sometimes take a story and change it so it pans out differently for comedic effect. Successful films in the genre that manage to exploit all the conventions correctly are said as being films that will both scare you and make you laugh within the same scene. This is obviously hard to pull off, making the comedy-horror genre quite a challenging genre to work with.

To summarise, conventions of the comedy-horror genre include:
-Gallows humour
-Black comedy elements
-Parody elements
-Spoof elements
-Using satire on horror clichés as it's main source of humour
-Changing the plot of a well known horror movie so it pans out differently for comedic effect
-Scenes that, in successful films, will make you laugh and cry at the same time