Film subgenres

On Canada Day, a blessed holiday in the middle of the week, I watched one of my favourite movies again for about the 8th time: The Fifth Element. Bruce Willis is not my favourite actor, but he appeals to me in this sci fi movie, wherein I also happen to enjoy the storyline and directing so much that I don't really notice the Bruce but accept him as his character. And his recent  movie called Surrogates was way better than I thought it would be; that's not saying it was great or anything, just way better than a lot of actioner sci fi pics lately. Beyond the amazing production design and the Jean-Paul Gaultier costumes (orange is an important colour in the movie, which is why I keep putting those links in orange), a main reason that I enjoy The Fifth Element so much is for the comedy: I always laugh so hard when Korben, the main character, has these terribly annoying phone conversations with his mother while he's in the middle of getting fired or trying to save the world. Many of my favourite flicks fit snugly into the subgenre of comedy sci fi, such as Galaxy Quest, Evolution, Buckaroo Banzai, Repo Man, and Dude Where's My Car? (several others too). It's not a huge subgenre, but it's highly entertaining.
Subgenres guide me at the video store: I need the mash-up, the combo, because sticking too closely to one genre will likely lose me about halfway through the 90+ minutes of the average drama. Some of my favourite movies wedge themselves into the horror genre, but I don't actually like horror movies. Labelling films and filing them on certain shelves aids people who choose which movies to watch by their box artwork. I scan the horror shelves and read the blurbs on the back of the boxes just in case there's a new horror/sci fi (a la Alien, another fav) or comedy/sci fi (Evil Dead or Tremors are classics in that subgenre, although Abbott and Costello really nailed the comedy/horror movie in the 40s and 50s) that I missed because it went straight to DVD.
Many of my favs of all time are horror/sci fi, the ultimate action mashup, and if some comedic moments are slipped in at odd times, I'm in heaven. The Alien series is probably the best; I have watched Pitch Black with Vin Diesel about a dozen times, and I try to get everybody I know to watch it too. A little known and undervalued mid-nineties pic called Screamers grabs my attention every time it's on tv, and it certainly doesn't hurt that Peter Weller is the star.
Another subgenre I like lately is the zombie story, as all my friends know. Writing about the movie mashups has made me desperate to watch the new Zombieland. I think I must go buy some beer right now and rent that movie.