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Halloween Classic Trick 'R Treat 5 Years On: Why Was It Kept From Cinemas?

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It’s been five years since Halloween horror movie ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ went direct-to-DVD – having sat on the shelf for two whole years. Why was the now-cult favourite kept from audiences for so long?

Almost everything about ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ screamed ‘hit.’ Produced by Bryan Singer, it was the directorial debut of his ‘X-Men 2’ screenwriter Michael Dougherty, and brought along some notable ‘X2’ alumni in front of the camera in Brian Cox and Anna Paquin. When the first stills and trailer were released in spring 2007, horror fandom got very excited indeed.

Here, it seemed, was the movie that many genre devotees had been crying out for: a new, original studio horror movie, not remade from a 1970s title or a recent Asian release as tended to be the norm in the mid-2000s.

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And it was a film which purported to really explore every horror fan’s favourite holiday, Halloween. While there were plenty of horror movies set on the day itself (the most obvious example being, of course, the ‘Halloween’ series), there weren’t too many which really made a point of examining the customs of the day (costumes, trick-or-treating, Jack-o-lanterns) and the meaning behind them, in a manner reminiscent of Ray Bradbury’s novel ‘The Halloween Tree.’

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On top of which, ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ brought back a time-honoured horror format, the anthology horror, which had not been seen in a mainstream horror movie for some time; perhaps since such 1990s releases as ‘Tales from the Darkside: the Movie’ and ‘Body Bags.’ One of the key advantages of such an approach is how it allows a film to encompass a range of horror subgenres and a variety of monsters.

So it was that ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ promised werewolves, serial killers, zombies, and a mysterious, diminutive trick-or-treater with a sack mask and button eyes, known only as Sam (a pun on Samhain, the original Celtic name for Halloween, which – regardless of what Donald Pleasance might have thought in ‘Halloween II’ – is in fact pronounced ‘sow-en’).

Everything seemed set for Warner Bros to have a seasonal hit on their hands come October 2007 – and yet ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ was unexpectedly pulled from its scheduled release date that summer.

No real explanation was given for this move, although there were rumours that the studio feared going up against both the ‘Halloween’ remake and ‘Saw IV,’ the previous entries in Lionsgate’s hugely popular torture series having dominated the Halloween box office three years in a row.

Ultimately, ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ had its premiere at Austin, Texas event Butt-Numb-A-Thon in the rather less fitting month of December 2007, and reactions were hugely enthusiastic. The film was provisionally rescheduled for an October 2008 release – and yet this too failed to happen.

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Again, it was rumoured that the ‘Saw’ series (on part V by 2008) may have deterred the studio a second time, but after further screenings of ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ went down a storm at that year’s Sitges Film Festival and LA’s Screamfest, heads were being scratched far and wide as to why Warners were sitting on a film that horror fans were anxious to see.

Ultimately, ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ was released direct to DVD and Blu-ray, without much publicity, on 26th October 2009. True enough, it was quickly embraced by fandom as an instant Halloween classic, and five years on its reputation remains strong, to the extent that a sequel is said to be in development.

Yet all these years later, there remains no clear, official explanation of why the film was essentially brushed under the carpet.

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Speaking to The Huffington Post in 2013, writer-director Michael Dougherty said of his film’s withdrawal from theatrical release, “To me, it was a perfect storm of factors. It is an odd bird. It is a horror comedy anthology, which is something that hadn’t been attempted in a long time, not since the ‘Creepshow’ days.

"Then we killed 14 kids [in the movie], so there was that factor!”

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Dougherty is not alone in speculating that discomfort over the child deaths in the film may have been part of what put Warners off – but I’m not entirely convinced by this, given the film’s overtly fantastical tone and the comparatively low gore quota (it was granted a 15 certificate by the BBFC without cuts, after all), We might note that the death of a child in the opening scene of 2009’s ‘Drag Me To Hell’ did not keep that film from cinemas.

Instead, many have speculated that Warner Bros’ treatment of ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ came down to studio politics. The film got the green light in 2006 at the behest of producer Bryan Singer, who at that point Warners were banking on having a long and profitable relationship with given that he was at the directorial reins of the highly anticipated ‘Superman Returns’ – which, of course, was co-written by Michael Doughterty.

Alas, ‘Superman Returns’ failed to revive the original superhero franchise the way the studio had hoped it would, and Singer and Dougherty’s sequel plans were scrapped not long thereafter.

This has led many to suspect that the fate of ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ may have been a simple case of the studio taking a somewhat petty revenge on the filmmakers for losing them a lot of money on ‘Superman Returns.’

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But even if there’s any truth to this idea, Dougherty says he has no regrets about how his love letter to Halloween ultimately made it to screens.

“At the end of the day, the studio looked at it, said it was weird, didn’t know what to do with it… They said maybe it needs time to find its audience, which is what happened and I’m actually grateful for the path it took.

“I wouldn’t change a thing. As painful as it was in certain parts of the process, especially when it was a big unknown and it felt like no one had faith in the film. This path, I think, let the movie find its true audience. When most movies come out, they have a big marketing machine behind them… you don’t know if a person genuinely loves your movie or [say so] because they saw commercials for it during ‘The Daily Show.’

“When someone says they saw my movie and loved it, I know it’s because it was through word of mouth and someone grabbed them and said, “You should check this out.” It feels more pure and, to me, makes the movie cooler.”

On which note - may we recommend that, if you haven’t yet given it a whirl, you might consider giving ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ a prime slot on your viewing list this Halloween.

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Picture Credit: Warner Bros