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Originally Posted by MichaelMyers
All of those are horror movies, IMO, because they all contain both horror and the supernatural. A film can be horrifying without being a horror (e.g., Schindler's List) and supernatural without being a horror (e.g., Close Encounters of the Third Kind). But horror mixed with supernatural means you get a horror.
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I thought about that too -- the element of the supernatural. If we're not trying to define horror, but rather what 'video store category shelf' to place a movie, so to speak, then the element of horror and supernatural comes into play.
As a kid, it's the horror element that made me interested in seeing Young Frankenstein. Funny about defining 'supernatural'... is Frankenstein 1933 supernatural, or is it science fiction? I'd say it's technically science fiction, but the producers/distributors certainly billed as horror at the time of the film's release. The "Frankenstein monster" solidified it as horror over time. Just like many people commonly call the monster "Frankenstein", instead of the Doctor.
The film defines bringing a dead body back to life as science, without supernatural means, so to speak. But some would argue all things, such as zombies, ghosts, demons, angels, miracles, space aliens, etc, are all natural things that aren't currently well understood. It's a very fuzzy line between sci-fi and supernatural.
To sum it up, like you say (MM), Young Frankenstein has the elements of horror and supernatural, where Schindler's List and Close Encounters only has one or the other. That's a very logical approach. Not many would cite you for placing Young Frankenstein on the Horror shelf, except for the Mel Brooks fans. :)