I was excited to see Christopher Moore has a new novel, Fool, coming out this month. Moore is a fine writer who routinely mixes genre tropes -- demons, vampires, angels and murderers -- with a lot of humor in novels like Practical Demonkeeping, Bloodsucking Fiends, The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror and Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. With each new novel he releases, Moore's readership of horror, science fiction and literary fiction fans grows. Which got me thinking. I know an awful lot of horror fans who strongly believe humor and horror don't mix. I don't get that.

I suppose I can understand where the sentiment comes from. There have been an awful lot of failed attempts at mixing the two. Movies like STUDENT BODIES and SATURDAY THE 14TH come to mind, as does the seemingly endless and increasingly unfunny SCARY MOVIE franchise. But I see it differently, which should come as no surprise from someone who admits without shame that ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN is one of his favorite movies of all time.

The prevailing argument from these humorous-horror-haters is that laughter and screams come from opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, the alpha and omega of catharsis, if you will. I disagree. A laugh and a scream are both physical releases of pent-up energy, and both are brought on by a frisson of excitement, regardless of whether that thrill is intended to chill your bones or tickle them. And when you're in the hands of a master who knows how to deftly mix the two, there's nothing like it.

Can you imagine a world without YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN? Or Peter Jackson's DEAD ALIVE? What would FRIGHT NIGHT be without Peter Vincent and Evil Ed? What if Sam Raimi had never made EVIL DEAD 2 and ARMY OF DARKNESS because someone told him he couldn't mix the funny with the scary? We would all be the poorer for it. Plus, a world where GHOSTBUSTERS never happened is a world that doesn't deserve to exist.

I say to these haters, can you imagine RE-ANIMATOR or SHAUN OF THE DEAD as straight-up zombie movies? Nothing would differentiate them from the ten thousand other zombie movies clamoring for attention. It's the humor that sets them apart, that gives them their personality, and that, ultimately, makes them the classics we know and love today. When you pop RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD into your DVD player, I'd wager it's not the gore effects you're giddily anticipating, but the classic, funny lines like, "Send more paramedics." The same goes for AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. Imagine if Jack had returned to haunt David as a shambling, moaning zombie instead of a wisecracking corpse frustrated by his own rapidly decomposing body. It would be a completely different movie, and a forgettable one.

Because humor relies so much on visual and aural stimuli, it's a lot harder to pull off in prose than it is on screen (and by the way, so is terror, and for the same reason). For example, Herbert West trying to get Dr. Hill's head to sit upright on his desk in RE-ANIMATOR would probably read as gruesome on the page, but on screen it's an inspired bit of slapstick with one hell of a punchline. In prose, then, humor requires a lighter touch, but it can still be done well. There's the aforementioned Christopher Moore, of course, but he's certainly not alone. William Browning Spencer is another author who brilliantly mixes horror and science fiction with a healthy dose of humor. His novel Resume' with Monsters is one of my favorite Lovecraftian horror stories not written by Lovecraft. It also happens to be funny as hell. And smart funny, not the farts and trailer-trash jokes I've seen in other horror authors' attempts at humor. Even Edgar Allan Poe, the godfather of the modern gothic, knew there was no shame in mixing humor and horror, and aimed for the funny bone in stories like "Some Words with a Mummy."

The key is to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em, know when to go for the creep-out and when to go for the laugh. SHAUN OF THE DEAD is an example that balances the two perfectly. It's seriously scary when it needs to be, and extremely witty between fright scenes. So the next time someone tells you humor and horror don't mix, ask them if they own DVDs of RE-ANIMATOR or AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. Odds are they do, and then you can school them on why they're wrong.

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When he's not chuckling at movies like LOVE AT FIRST BITE, Nicholas Kaufmann is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated author, reviewer and interviewer. For more regular doses of Kaufmannia, visit his blog at http://nick-kaufmann.livejournal.com or his website at http://www.nicholaskaufmann.com .