J. M. Levinton

7 Classic Comedy-Horror Films

• October 26, 2020
• Blog
• 2 Comments

I’m not a big fan of serious horror films. It’s too hard to turn off the lights at night after I’ve watched, so I gave up (the exception is Bela Lugosi in Dracula and the version with Louis Jourdan).

But I love what I call spooky-funny films that may or may not actually involve the supernatural. Here’s my list:

1. The Cat and the Canary (silent, 1927)

2. The Cat and the Canary (1939, with Bob Hope)

Both are excellent and there are enough differences between them that I love both. It’s the classic setup of relatives staying overnight in a spooky mansion in order to receive their inheritance.

3. For a cartoon take on this theme, watch the season five episode of The Flintstones (1964) “A Haunted House is not a Home.”

4. And yet another version has Abbott and Costello in Hold That Ghost (1941). (I guess it’s obvious that I like this sort of plot.)

5. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). True monsters galore!

6. The Bowery Boys in Spooks Run Wild (1941) was fun, though to be honest it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. But for nostalgia purposes, it earned its place on the list.

7. Another Bob Hope film with ghosts and zombies: The Ghost Breakers (1940). I saw this for the first time a few years ago and was startled by how easy it was for people to take a boat to Cuba.

I have more but they are more recent than the movies listed here. Of course there will be another list one of these spooky days…