BETWEEN A LAUGH AND A FEAR DYING IS EASY ... DYING AND COMEDY IS HARD, AS THE MAVENS OF THE HORROR- SPOOF GENRE WILL TELL YOU.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

For the third time in the last four years, another ``Scary Movie'' spoof is haunting theaters this weekend, on the heels of a successful three-picture run of self-referential ``Scream'' satires.

Meanwhile, the second biggest box-office hit of the year, ``Pirates of the Caribbean,'' mixes swashbuckling with the comic potential of walking, talking skeletons. Not a studio that lets a hot concept cool, Disney - whose Dimension subdivision oversees the ``Scream'' and ``Scary'' franchises - has ``The Haunted Mansion,'' another theme-park-attraction-turned-movie, coming out next month with Eddie Murphy in the hopefully hilarious lead role.

Meanwhile, on the indie front, the recent ``Cabin Fever'' couldn't figure out whether it was imitating or sending up slasher flick conventions, while the weirdly inventive ``Bubba Ho-Tep'' pitted a comically cranky, over-the-hill Elvis against an ancient Egyptian demon. Both received more than their fair shares of positive reviews.

Obviously, horror comedy has an audience. But perhaps the weirdest thing about this Frankenstein monster of a spliced genre is that it's taken a long, long, long time for Hollywood to really capitalize on the concept in a concerted way.

``I don't know why that is,'' muses ``Haunted Mansion'' producer Don Hahn. ``They are always popular when they come out. They're great popcorn movies.

``They're probably hard to do because you're mixing your genres a little bit,'' Hahn surmises. ``You're trying to create something that's really scary - and that itself is hard to do - and comedy adds another level of difficulty on top of that. And to weave them together takes a lot of special alchemy and elements to pull it all off.''

Killer material

The genre was barely existent in the silent movie era that spawned innumerable horror and comedy classics. One, the 1927 ``The Cat and the Canary,'' was later remade in 1939 as one of several Bob Hope scaredy-pants vehicles, which included the 1940 ``The Ghost Breakers.'' (The film, which stars Hope as a radio criminologist helping Paulette Goddard find out what's haunting a castle, screens at 7:30 p.m. Friday at UCLA's James Bridges Theater. Call [phone] or go to www.cinema.ucla.)

The 1930s didn't prove much better, with Universal's iconic adaptations of ``Dracula'' and ``Bride of Frankenstein'' incorporating some humor into otherwise straightforward fright flicks. Boris Karloff poked fun at his creepy image in ``The Old Dark House,'' as Bela Lugosi did in ``Mark of the Vampire'' and the 1941 ``Black Cat.''

But, for the most part, classic Hollywood left the supernatural yuks to the romantic comedy specialists (``Topper,'' ``I Married a Witch''). It was after the war - and countless sequels that had worn out both franchises - when Universal got the bright idea to combine its two biggest assets, Abbott and Costello and the monsters, in a series of terror travesties.

But then the sounds of screams-mixed-with-laughter faded from theaters until the early 1960s, when low-budget laureate Roger Corman unleashed the original ``Little Shop of Horrors'' and brought back the aging '30s scream kings Karloff, Peter Lorre and Vincent Price in a series of Edgar Allan Poe pictures, some of which (``The Raven,'' ``Tales of Terror'') planted tongues in cheeks as vigorously as they did corpses in graves.

Price carried the attitude on into the '70s, making sure that Grand Guignol wit worked its way into horror programmers such as ``The Abominable Dr. Phibes'' and ``Theater of Blood.'' But during the same period, the Frankengenre mutated into more self-conscious spoofery of its own conventions. Roman Polanski's ``The Fearless Vampire Killers'' was an early example of that. Mel Brooks' ``Young Frankenstein'' became the best-loved horror comedy of several generations. And films such as ``The Rocky Horror Picture Show,'' ``Dawn of the Dead'' and ``Attack of the Killer Tomatoes'' developed cult followings of various sizes.

Horror comedy reached a kind of slick, commercial apotheosis in 1984 with the one-two punch of ``Ghostbusters'' and ``Gremlins.'' Tim Burton almost single-handedly turned the concept into an avenue of personal expression with such films as ``Frankenweenie,'' ``Beetlejuice,'' ``Edward Scissorhands'' and ``The Nightmare Before Christmas.'' Two future big-time auteurs, ``Lord of the Rings' '' Peter Jackson and ``Spider-Man's'' Sam Raimi, found fun in the gory excesses of ``Braindead'' (aka ``Dead Alive'') and the ``Evil Dead'' series, respectively. Another great gross-out comedy of the period that should not be forgotten is Stuart Gordon's ``Re-Animator.''

And through it all there were the witless ``Dragulas,'' ``Love at First Bites'' and ``Saturday the 14ths'' parodying cliches that had become as hoary as Karloff's Mummy - with jokes that seemed even older. Also, of course, certain serious horror franchises - ``Nightmare on Elm Street,'' ``Child's Play,'' ``Fright Night,'' ``Final Destination,'' etc. - worked gallows and gut-spilling humor into their revulsion-heavy agendas.

Terror and titters

But it was 1996's ``Scream'' that really got the formula right: Place a bunch of media-savvy kids in true horror movie jeopardy that they already consider ridiculous from watching too many horror movies. The Wayans brothers' ``Scary Movie'' parodied that unusually intelligent approach, in the broadest and most offensive manner possible - and, initially anyway, made more money at it than the ``Scream'' hits did.

Some other films that might fit in this subgenre include Barry Sonnenfeld's pair of ``Addams Family'' flicks, John Landis' ``An American Werewolf in London,'' Neil Jordan's ``High Spirits,'' Robert Zemeckis' ``Death Becomes Her'' and ``A Comedy of Terrors'' with Karloff, Lorre and Price from Jacques Tourneur (who directed the 1942 horror classic ``The Cat People'').

But while the preceding list doesn't cover all crossover creations, compared to the vaster troves of both scary and funny movies, this seems like a pretty paltry sum. Maybe that's because many filmmakers find the combination of the two entertainment impulses, well, unnatural.

`` 'Scary Movie' is just a wonderful idea for a franchise because there will always be new scary movies out,'' says David Zucker, who co-created the modern film parody formula with ``Airplane!'' and, when no Wayans decided to come back, took the helm of the current ``Scary Movie 3.'' ``But it would not have been my idea originally to do a 'Scary Movie' franchise because, at least from my point of view, horror and comedy don't mix. Horror is already outrageous and not really to be taken seriously, so how do you spoof it? But the Wayanses came up with the brilliant idea of doing it as an R-rated gross-out spoof. And they did a great job of it.''

``Scary 3,'' however, is rated a milder PG-13. But so were the main spooky films from last year, ``Signs'' and ``The Ring,'' that it makes fun of.

``But 'The Ring' was so unique,'' Zucker qualifies. ``A videotape would kill you; I mean, you can't not spoof it. It's an easy target.''

They mock death

And whether they're going for the gross gag or something more, ahem, cerebral, many who work on horror comedies these days feel that the bull's-eye has become so vast that more parodies are as inevitable as sexually active teenagers not surviving a ``Friday the 13th'' movie.

``There's an element of ridiculousness in every scary movie,'' says the ``Scary'' franchise's deathless heroine, Anna Faris. ``I really liked 'Signs' and 'The Ring,' but they were also so visually striking, in a way, that they're easy films to spoof.''

``I come from a generation of people talking back to the screen,'' adds ``Scary 3'' co-star Anthony Anderson. ``It's like, you know if she runs that way she's gonna die, so you go 'GIRL! DON'T RUN THAT WAY! DON'T RUN!' I think that's where marrying the two, horror and comedy, sort of was born from.''

``How many times do you look at a horror movie and ... you see two teenagers making out, you know that they're gonna die,'' continues Regina Hall, another actress who just can't escape from ``Scary'' movies no matter how many times her character dies in them.

Even ``Haunted Mansion'' producer Hahn, who acknowledges the difficulty of mixing horror and humor effectively, admits that there's a natural affinity between the two.

`They're actually pretty sympathetic, meaning that screaming and laughing are not that far removed,'' Hahn observes. ``When you're walking through a scary house at nighttime, or a graveyard or something, you have this inner monologue where you try to talk yourself out of your fears. And it's a pretty natural response to have that just turn to comedy. So, be it 'Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein' or 'The Ghost and Mr. Chicken' or whatever, I think we love to watch those characters deal with their terror with comedy because we relate to them somehow.''

And we have, apparently, raised an entire generation that does just that. In the theater, anyway - which may be the most instructive reason of all why horror comedy may be more of a movie staple now than it has ever been before.

``I remember, as a kid, I used to watch horror movies and my friend who was a little older than me would teach me to laugh every time I started to get scared, and that would protect me from actually getting scared,'' reveals Simon Rex, another young ``Scary Movie 3'' actor. ``So I'd laugh every time someone got stabbed or whatever.''

``So it desensitized you, is that what you're saying?'' co-star Anderson responds with exaggerated disapproval in his voice. He gets a laugh out of it. But when you think about it, he may be right. And that's kind of scary.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

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6 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover) CREATING A MONSTER

Horror-comedy movies like `Young Frankenstein' are packing theatres again

(2) Bob Hope, with Paulette Goodard in ``The Ghost Breakers'' (1940), helped to usher in movies that mixed humor and horror.

(3) When you need a star for your spooky holiday movie, who ya gonna call? Disney called Eddie Murphy, of course, for ``The Haunted Mansion.''

(4 -- 6) Boo Geoffrey Rush transforms into a ghoul in ``Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,'' which has grossed more than $300 million to date.