Horror Spoofs and Parodies
Dying of Laughter
Editor(s) Reece Goodall
Language: English
Genre(s): Media, Film and Theatre
Series: Horror Studies
- October 2026 · 280 pages ·216x138mm
- · Hardback - 9781837724345
- · eBook - pdf - 9781837724352
- · eBook - epub - 9781837724369
This edited collection explores the world of the horror parody, examining how people take and transform the works that make us scream into ones that make us laugh. It explores famous parodies such as the Abbott and Costello Meet… films, Young Frankenstein and Scary Movie, as well as lesser-known works such as Psycho Beach Party, Student Bodies and Found Footage 3D, to see how they make the scary funny, offering both a potted history of the genre mode and an analysis of key strategies used in parodic transformation. The volume takes us on a journey to see how the cinemas of other nations (Brazil, Cuba, China and Turkey) engage with national and international humour and horror through their own parodies, and moves us beyond the silver screen to unpick the way in which horror is parodised across media including video games and web videos.
Processes of Parodisation
‘Dying of Laughter: Fusing Fear and Fun’ – Reece Goodall
‘First as Fear, Then as Farce: Horror Film Sequels, Surfaces, and Serialized Silliness’ – David Scott Diffrient
‘Scarily Bad Acting: Perceptions of Performance within the Scary Movie Franchise’ – Abigail Whittall
Genres and Spoof Phases
‘Let’s Get That R-Rating: Student Bodies and Early Horror Parodies’ – Samantha Janes
‘Queering and Historicizing Psycho Beach Party’ – Jeremy Freeman
‘‘Who shoots their vacation videos in 3D?’: Parodying the Inescapability of Convention in Found Footage 3D’ –
Heather Roberts
Global Spoofs and Parodies
‘Night of the Imperialist Living Dead in Socialist Cuba: the Case of Juan of the Dead’ – András Lénárt
‘Hopping Corpses and Fanged Laughter: Parodying the Vampire Genre in Mr. Vampire Films’ – Diganta Roy
‘From Global Movies to Glocal Parodies: Spoofing the Horror in Turkish Cinema’ – Orhan Sezgin
‘Killer Codfishes and Tramp Monsters: Spoofy Horror Rip-offs in Brazilian Popular Cinema’ – Laura Cánepa, Rogerio
Ferraraz and Tiago Monteiro
The Media of Horror and Spoof Humour
‘Nintendo’s Lark in the Dark: A Humour Theory Analysis of Luigi’s Mansion’ – Matthew McKeague
‘‘What my thumbs knew’: phenomenology and the uncanny digit(al) in The Blair Thumb – Kaitlin Lake
‘Playing with Horror: How Tim Story’s The Blackening Parodies Tabletop Games Than Slasher Flicks’ – Heather Bas
Author(s): Reece Goodall
Reece Goodall is a Student Experience Director at the University of Warwick, where he completed a PhD thesis on contemporary French horror cinema.