A throwback horror film that hinges on good old-fashioned storytelling with unique characters, Trick R’ Treat has earned its cult following and it’s a film that absolutely warrants repeat viewing every year on Halloween. But beyond the on-screen goodness exists an interesting backstory about a film that crawled up from the bottom of a pit to get to its audience and several little-known facts that might make you love it even more. Here’s that story and some of those facts.
Securing distribution was hellish.
The film was originally supposed to be released in 2007, but that never happened. There have been multiple rumors surrounding why the film was never released in theaters, but the most prevalent one was that the film would have been competing with Saw IV. Warner Bros. made a couple more attempts over the next two years to “try and release it in theaters,” but it eventually went straight to DVD.
It was based off a short film.
The short film was called Season’s Greetings and centered on the character of Sam. Sam is the lovable little monster-child of Halloween that simply wants to play. This is a true short film and features a clever plot twist where Sam is followed by a suspicious person on Halloween night. As Sam goes into a dark alley, the suspicious figure follows and is then beaten to a pulp by Sam. The film captures this side of Sam, but differs in the fact that his face is eventually revealed. Michael Dougherty made the short film much earlier, back in 1996.
Brian Cox’s character is based on horror director John Carpenter.
Cox wanted to pay homage to the master director (Halloween, The Thing), so they ended up making the character of Mr. Kreeg look almost identical (minus some of the weight) to him. Cox even delivers the exact same line of “You gotta be f*cking kidding me” from Carpenter’s The Thing in the same tone.
Many of the trick or treaters were little people.
Because of the shooting schedules, the majority of shooting was done at nighttime and ran into the early morning, so child actors were not available. Director Michael Dougherty decided to cast little people in the roles of trick or treaters to guarantee he’d have them available for filming into the night.
There were multiple titles before they landed on Trick ‘r Treat.
The original, 1996 short was titled Season’s Greetings, and Dougherty was going to keep this same title. But as the studio got more involved, the title cycled through options like Halloween Terrors and Jack O’Lantern Tales before landing on Trick ‘r Treat.
The film was supposed to be an anthology of stories.
Writer/director Michael Dougherty first created his Sam-centric short, but then wanted to mold something that was a collection of stories. This was later changed to one coherent story with Dougherty simply connecting the dots and merging all of the stories into one. As a result, due to good writing and precise directing, Trick ‘r Treat became a well-paced, engaging horror story.
“No pumpkins were harmed while making this film.”
That’s right, there was not some on-set pumpkin carver cranking out pumpkin after pumpkin. And to be honest, that job would be enjoyable for about two pumpkins, then it would be miserable. Almost all the pumpkins were made from plastics and/or ceramics.
There’s a sequel comic book called Trick ‘r Treat: Days of the Dead and a potential movie on the way.
Trick ‘r Treat developed a massive cult following and Michael Dougherty took note of it. So he decided to put together a sequel in the form of a graphic comic book series that continues to follow the character of Sam. This, similar to the original idea of the first film, is an anthology of four stories. And according to Dougherty via Joblo, a second film (based on this graphic comic) is on the way:
“This is a sequel which is definitely being made because of fan demand, and because of word of mouth, which has been building for years. It’s not a sequel that’s just being rushed out because the movie had a big opening weekend. This is a sequel that people actually want, which I think is a rarity. I’m just eternally grateful for the fans for the constant, constant support.”
The sequel is still listed as still “in development,” so there’s no telling when we will see it on the big screen.
(Via GeekyRant, IMdB, Google Books, Geek On Film, Dread Central & JoBlo)
