With all due respect, artguylarry, I think that horror was on life support before Friday The 13th. Till the early Seventies horrors were primarily costume pictures, often set in the past or what felt like the past, as in old dark houses and castles; it was a somewhat ritualized genre, had its own stars, directors, writers and even studios. As this kind of horror, for which I think the word Gothic is the best word to describe, began to fade, big time, in the wake (so to speak) of The Exorcist, truly, the times were changing, as horror was drifting all over the place: a Texas chainsaw here, an Omen there. The relaxation of censorship and movie ratings generally opened the floodgates for a new, more modern kind of horror.
Oh well. Just my opinion. As to humor in horror, it's been there all along, for good or ill. I don't hate it when there's comedy in horror. When it's done well I like it, when it's done badly, I don't. In the days when horrors were less graphic, like back in the middle of the last century, give or take, horror often came from tension, fear of the unknown rather than a swinging axe, blood splattering all over the place. They couldn't show much, so the emphasis was on as much what one couldn't see (and only imagine) as what was there, as in a creaking door, a flash of lightning, rain on the roof, the howling wind, a barking dog or wolf, a sobbing sound coming seemingly from nowhere, and so on and so forth. In such an environment comedy relief helped relieve the tension (it also diverted it), and many people enjoyed it. Even straight horrors featuring vampires, zombies and the like often featured some comedy along the way.
But then movies were so different back in the day: musicals sometimes had tragedies worked into their stories; a movie could be a mystery AND a comedy, and no one minded; a cowboy in an otherwise serious western could burst into song. Films are more serious now, it seems, more linear, clearly defined as to what they're about.
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