The Comedy of Terrors (1963)

I've never really made up my mind as to whether or not I actually like horror comedies.   In my younger days, as a horror purist, they were anathema to me - horror, I believed was a serious business, with no place for comedy undercutting the scares.  Also, most of the horror comedies of the era were pretty lame.  Either they were directed by horror directors with a leaden touch when it came to levity, or by comedy directors with no grasp of the horror genre.  All too often they displayed a condescending attitude toward the horror elements.  In truth, of course, their main problem was that they tried to inject the wrong type of humour into horror scenarios.  The most appropriate type of humour for horror is, of course, black humour.  Whish isn't to say that all horror comedies built around more conventional comedy and comedians failed - things like the Bob Hope version of the Cat and the Canary and its follow up, The Ghost Breakers, for instance, are a lot of fun, but more often than not, the star comedians plonked down into horror comedies looked all at sea in the horror genre.  Horror comedies employing black humour, though, were in short supply, with James Whale's The Old Dark House coming to mind (Whale also injected a fair amount of sly black humour into Bride of Frankenstein which, like The Old Dark House eschewed importing star comedians and instead drew its humour from the scenarios and performances of the cast).

All of which brings us, in a roundabout way, to The Comedy of Terrors (1963), which I rewatched for the first time in years the other day.   The film was an attempt by AIP to follow up the success of the Roger Corman's recent comedic Edgar Allan Poe adaptation The Raven (1963) and features the same leads:  Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre (in his last film appearance).  It also adds Basil Rathbone to the cast. It certainly meets my younger self's criteria for being blackly humourous, with its plot involving undertaker Vincent Price drumming up business by helping various potential clients 'on their way', then offering his services to their grieving families.  He is reluctantly assisted in this by his associate Lorre, under threat of blackmail, while all the time being harassed by his wife and her senile father (Karloff), the business' former owner, (who Price is constantly trying to poison).  The greatest threat comes from his landlord (Rathbone), who is continually attempting to collect his unpaid rent, making him a prime target for Price.  Unfortunately, every time Price thinks he's killed Rathbone, he keeps reviving, sitting up in his coffin at the wrong moment and so on.  Comedy of Terrors is a fascinating film to watch, with a cast and sets clearly left over from the Corman-Poe films and sharing an overall atmosphere of dank morbidity with those films but, instead of following their usual descent into madness and terror, it consistently pushes its scenario into the absurd.  

To be sure, seen today, it doesn't come over as funny as the writer (Richard Matheson) and director (Jacques Tourneur) clearly intended, but its humour is certainly pitch black.  It is, nonetheless, still amusing to watch, due mainly to the carefully pitched performances of Price, Karloff, Lorre and Rathbone.  Interestingly, it was something of a box office failure, with 1963 audiences clearly not knowing to make of it - the cast and AIP connection doubtless making them think that were going to get another Poe film.  Even if they were expecting a comedy, audiences were probably expecting something lighter, along the lines of The Raven, unprepared for the relentless blackness of Comedy of Terrors, which replaced the amusing antics of the duelling magicians of the earlier film with murder plots devised by grasping and venal poverty row undertakers.  To go back to my original point, the passing of the years has made me more benign in my attitude toward horror comedies - I'm still a bit conflicted about them, but more inclined to give them a chance.  Comedy of Terrors I now find admirable, not because it is particularly successful in its comedic elements, but it at least makes the attempt to match its comedic approach and style to its subject matter.