It’s easy to take the cult classic status of Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat for granted these days, but I think it’s worth remembering that the film’s success didn’t happen overnight. Initially released straight to video back in ’07, it took a while for this tongue-in-cheek anthology to reach its intended audience and become what is arguably the definitive movie of the Halloween season.
In fact, it’s something of a small miracle that the film’s mascot became a horror icon at all. Originally meant to be the protagonist of an animated school project that Dougherty created at NYU back in 1996, the live-action incarnation of Sam somehow climbed his way to the top of horror’s Mount Rushmore despite only having a single feature-length film under his belt.
Against all odds, the diminutive Soul of Halloween currently inhabits the same space as other genre giants like Freddy, Jason, and even Michael Myers. Sam costumes can be found in Halloween-adjacent shops everywhere, and don’t even get me started on the collectible figures (of which I personally own several).
If you ask me, a big part of this success is due to Sam’s appearances outside of Trick ‘r Treat, as both genre fans and Dougherty himself recognized the character’s potential as an ambassador for spooky season as a whole. That’s how word-of-mouth led to Sam becoming a seasonal licensing giant without the need for a studio-backed marketing budget. However, out of Sam’s many surprise appearances over the years, my personal favorite has to be the series of spooky shorts produced by the now-defunct FearNet back during the early 2010s.
With Sam undergoing a long-awaited renaissance through Dougherty’s ongoing multimedia project Sam: The Soul of Halloween, which aims to provide fans with a plethora of new shorts, artistic collaborations and merchandise, I think now is the perfect time to revisit some of the extra-cinematic appearances that helped to keep Sam alive in the public consciousness.
For starters, I think it’s worth explaining the concept of FearNet to some of our younger readers, as Comcast’s horror-focused network was something of a unique creature even back when it was new. Originally a cable TV channel launched in Halloween 2010, FearNet would almost immediately complement its analog programming with an accompanying website that streamed trailers, shorts, and even feature-length films.
This was years before the rise of streaming services as we know them today, which is why I’d argue that modern horror-centric networks like Screambox and Shudder actually owe a lot to FearNet’s pioneering use of viral marketing campaigns meant to engage with online genre fans. Of course, one of their most memorable campaigns had the company partner with Michael Dougherty in order to turn Trick ‘r Treat into the channel’s main attraction during spooky season.
Starting in October of 2011, FearNet would begin to air Trick ‘r Treat on loop, accompanied by pop-up trivia for a 24-hour period every Halloween. This seasonal marathon would ultimately help to cement the film as a holiday tradition that horror fans could look forward to every single year.
As a part of this deal, FearNet hired Dougherty to produce a series of atmospheric shorts that they could air throughout the year in anticipation of the Halloween event. Many of these shorts were written and directed by Dougherty himself, which is why I consider them to be an official part of the Trick ‘r Treat canon, though a few of them were helmed by other genre veterans like Dougherty’s frequent collaborator, Zach Shields.
From tongue-in-cheek videos about delusional dads celebrating Father’s Day with mannequins to Easter dinners from hell, not to mention the final batch of interconnected yarns reminding viewers to adhere to the rules of Halloween, these shorts ended up becoming just as beloved as the 24-Hour Trick ‘r Treat marathon itself. It may seem like an alien concept to folks who never experienced what entertainment was like before the rise of algorithm-based online advertising, but I swear that these promotional shorts felt more like tiny passion projects than corporate-mandated ads. Just take a look at this behind-the-scenes video if you don’t believe me:
And while horror fans were (and still are) disappointed with Lionsgate’s reluctance to greenlight a proper sequel to Dougherty’s film, it was still cool to see the character live on in other media as the marathon introduced this world to more horror fans with each passing year – at least until the untimely demise of FearNet in 2014.
My personal favorite of these yarns is probably Making Friends, where a lonely boy creates a Frankenstein-like companion as Sam encourages him from the sidelines, though I’m also partial to the melancholy vibes of The Day After, a rare piece of Halloween-related media that accurately captures the grief that comes with saying goodbye to the costumes and decorations for another year. And on a side note, the shorts also introduced me to the incredibly underrated Oregon-based dark electronic band Chromatics, with their Dagger Moon single becoming something of a spooky earworm that I looked forward to hearing in these shorts every year.
Despite the impeccable atmosphere and the sheer novelty of seeing Sam in live action again, I recognize that these shorts were mostly simple mood pieces. That being said, I appreciate how much work went into making them feel like a legitimate part of the Trick ‘r Treat universe. There are plenty of ideas here that could easily inspire full segments of a hypothetical Trick ‘r Treat sequel, and none of these micro-productions felt like made-for-TV bastardizations of the source material.
In a just world, we’d be on our fourth or fifth Trick ‘r Treat sequel at this point, but even if we never see a proper cinematic follow-up to Dougherty’s autumnal opus, FearNet’s Trick ‘r Treat shorts will always be there to remind us that not even development hell can kill the spirit of Halloween. And with Dougherty promising even more Sam-centric stories this year (including a 4K Remaster of Season’s Greetings), there’s never been a better time to be a fan of Trick ‘r Treat.
Now if you excuse me, I’m going to cozy up to my Sam plush and rewatch all of these shorts for the thousandth time.
