Humour in Poe, Humour in Horror

[Caligari]

Greetings, all.

Just thought I'd share a thought I bring up in meatspace when a discussion turns to Poe.

There is plenty of black humour in Poe, if you know where to look. The best example, I think, is "Some Words With a Mummy," and while it's well known to be satirical, frankly it had me howling. It's a perfect example of the unreliable narrator technique. Our protagonist enjoys a "frugal," meal of three pounds of welsh rabbit, for instance.

While the satire in "Some Words with a Mummy," is pretty clear, it leads to a more interesting question, or series of questions: Can horror be funny and still be horror?

"Some Words with a Mummy," while a satire, and certainly ghoulish, (they hook the mummy up to a battery to get his legs kicking), is more of a satire. Perhaps I'm being too analytic with potentially pointless classifications, but it's much easier to think of comedies with horror themes than it is to cite horror stories with bits of humour.

In the former case there are numerous examples in film and literature. Some well known examples of comedy-gone-horror are things like Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein, the Munsters, Shawn of the Dead, Eight Legged Freaks, arguably Fido, etc. Note how only some of these are any good.

So the question to you, dear reader, who has subjected himself to these ramblings, is can something be fundamentally horror and still have a joke or two, or does the comedy somehow negate the horror?