All of a sudden there were Internet reviews popping up every day."ĭougherty has some practical, business-y reasons for preferring the kind of release that Trick 'r Treat eventually got ("There are a lot of films that come out and have huge theatrical releases but they're forgotten two weeks later," he points out), but talking to him, you get the feeling he actually enjoyed joining the ranks of cult filmmakers as much as working on the big-budget superhero movies ( Superman Returns, the X-Men series) that he's worked on.
I'll never forget emerging from this dark theater that I've been sitting in for 24 hours into the bright morning sunlight and just all of the sudden being introduced to its first fans. "They all woke up," he says, "and really embraced the movie. Dougherty remembers that he could already see the roots of a Trick 'r Treat cult at that very first screening, at the very end of a nonstop 24 hour program. Legendary ran off a couple prints and he was soon accompanying them to whatever niche film festivals around the country were willing to show it, starting with Ain't It Cool News founder Harry Knowles's annual Butt-Numb-A-Thon in Austin. In a horror market crowded with torture porn and remakes of Japanese horror flicks, Trick 'r Treat seemed doomed to be a square peg trying to fit in a round hole.ĭougherty quickly adapted to the film's more limited circumstances. got the movie made, but also doomed it to a straight-to-DVD fate. Initially backed by special-effects-legend-turned-producer Stan Winston, then genre-film powerhouse Legendary Pictures, a deal with Warner Bros.
Like misremembered school bus tragedies and rumors about candy tampering, Trick 'r Treat has managed to incorporate itself into Halloween observances through word of mouth, but its followed a rocky path to get to this point. You look at him and you can't tell if you should be running away or hugging him." He's that perfect balance of cute and creepy and scary and funny.
"My hope with creating Sam was that he'd appeal to that inner child that I think we all have. To the type of person who will laugh out loud over an especially clever way of decapitating someone, Trick 'r Treat was a breath of fresh air in a genre that had become suffocatingly grim.ĭougherty says the film's irreverent appeal is embodied in Sam, the film's mascot (named after the ancient proto-Halloween festival Samhain), who was originally conceived for an animation project when Dougherty was in school. His gleefully psychopathic comedic sensibility is straight out of the most outrageous horror flicks of the VHS era like Evil Dead, Sleepaway Camp, and Night of the Demons, where deliriously grisly deaths also double as punchlines. The film's abundant gore is admirable, but its nasty sense of humor is what really put it over the top with horror fans. Oh, except for this night it's safe and you're going to go out in these crappy costumes. As a kid that's the first rule that you're taught, don't talk to strangers and don't take candy from strangers. We've turned it into this very commercial, kid-friendly thing where we dress our kids up like monsters and send them out into the night to collect candy from random strangers. I was always really fascinated with the notion that here was this holiday that's really centered around kids and candy but if you peel back the layers just a little bit you find out that it goes back to a very real, ancient pagan mystical holiday. I've been reading about it ever since I was a little kid, and had built up a pretty deep knowledge of the holiday and its traditions and its roots going back to Europe. "My birthday's a few days before the holiday," he says, "so it's always a really magical time of year for me.
The film's emphasis on Halloween's rites comes from a fascination with its peculiar history and unflagging creepiness that goes back to writer-director Michael Dougherty's childhood.
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