In 1996, Michael Dougherty made the animated short film Season’s Greetings, in which an adorable little character caused mischief on Halloween night. More than a decade later, Dougherty captured the spirit of the short in the full-length anthology Trick ‘r Treat, which quietly debuted on home video. A lot has changed since the movie’s release, though, and after the movie’s humble origins, the film and the beloved Sam have become a staple of the Halloween season. Not only is Trick ‘r Treat an annual watch in countless homes, but Sam and the rest of the movie’s iconography have inspired countless collectibles.
Dougherty has returned to the world of Trick ‘r Treat for the new comic Trick ‘r Treat: Witching Hours, which features four all-new stories that honor the movie’s blend of whimsy and the macabre. Speaking with Bloody Disgusting about the new release, Dougherty reflected on the spirit of the franchise, “It doesn’t just happen to take place on the holiday, but it really celebrates the traditions, the folklore and the mythology of it, which is something that I’ve been fascinated with ever since I was a kid.”
He continued, “When I think we’re all initially introduced to the holiday, it’s for the obvious reasons: ‘Oh, you have to dress up in costumes and get candy.’ For a lot of people, that’s enough. Then, as you get older, that changes and there’s sort of a party element to it and romantic pursuits, et cetera, on Halloween night, all that. But I became fascinated with the folklore behind it and discovering that it wasn’t just another consumerist holiday, that it actually went back to some pretty, genuinely creepy, mystical origins.”
While Witching Hours will hold us over for the time being, a Trick ‘r Treat sequel was announced back in 2013, though the project has yet to earn substantial momentum. It’s not Halloween without an update on the sequel, with Dougherty delivering the requisite reaction.
“I feel like there’s no right or wrong answer … The only wrong answer would be to say, ‘Oh, it’s dead and it’s not happening,’ but I don’t feel like that’s appropriate or true,” the filmmaker confessed. “I hate to be vague. I hate to sound like I’m dodging. It’s just that right now we have an amazing script, and I went above and beyond and I storyboarded literally the entire movie. Like, every scene in that script has been boarded to within an inch of its life. So even two people sitting in a booth talking to each other was storyboarded.”
He continued, “Because normally you just board your set pieces, your more action-driven or your scare moments, anything involving visual effects and monsters, usually that’s what you focus your storyboarding efforts on. But I was enjoying that process so much with my storyboard artist, I was like, ‘Screw it, let’s just do the whole movie. Why not?’ And so I have this massive PDF, I think it’s 735 pages long of literally every scene storyboarded, and it almost reads like a graphic novel unto itself, funny enough. So we have that.”
The new Witching Hours book is an official extension of the Trick ‘r Treat world, but this isn’t the first attempt at a spin-off. In fact, Dougherty revealed that he came close to moving forward on a Prime Video series that would have been the animated adventures of Sam.
“There was a minute where we were talking to Amazon about doing a Halloween special. It was almost a weekly Halloween special/series where basically we would make a six-part animated Halloween special,” Dougherty revealed. “So every week in October, you would get one or two episodes of this. And fully embracing the origins of Sam, who yes, started as an animated character long before he was live-action, and we got very, very close with Amazon, but we couldn’t quite work out a deal, but it was exciting there for a second.”
You can enjoy Bloody Disgusting‘s conversation with Dougherty in full below.
Trick ‘r Treat: Witching Hours hits shelves on October 13, and is now available for preorder. In the meantime, Michael Dougherty is bringing Halloween icon Sam back to life this month in various different mediums!
Bloody Disgusting: I know last year you did a Four Favorites for Letterboxd and I was trying to find “Michael Dougherty’s favorite Halloween movies” and the only thing I could find goes back to 2011, when you listed some Halloweens, The Exorcist, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Changeling, some Universal Monsters, The Shining, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Disney’s Halloween Treat, Fantasia, and Psycho. I wondered, are there Halloween staples that the season doesn’t really start until you watch those movies, or, also, if there’s a movie that, no matter how much you love it, you have to save it for Halloween night?
Michael Dougherty: Really great question. I will say that the season doesn’t begin until I watch [John] Carpenter’s Halloween. It’s so easy, it’s almost cliche at this point to say that, but it’s true. And for me, it happened two nights ago. Today being the first day of autumn, if I’m not mistaken, I started a little bit early, but it felt like the weather had changed enough and gotten cold enough that it felt right. But the way I tend to watch favorites these days, though, it’s more in the background.
I watch favorite movies, favorite Halloween movies, especially on a loop in the background the same way that people listen to favorite albums. It’s hard for me to sit and watch a lot of my favorite movies all the way through, because I’ve just watched them so many times at this point. But I put them on in the background and just enjoy them for the ambiance.
So then that means October 31, is it just whatever happens to be on, whatever you grab off the shelf?
I mean, it sounds weird, but I tend to bookend the season with Halloween. It’s just such an old favorite and it relaxes me, I think because the pacing of the film is so deliberate, even slow compared to what we’re accustomed to these days. It’s funny, because when I was a kid, before I’d actually seen Halloween, I used to check the LP out of the library, out of our local public library, and I would just listen to the music.
Now the movie itself has become that. So, again, it’s like a favorite album, and so I really enjoy using it to start the season. And then, at the end of the night, when I’m exhausted from whatever Halloween festivities I’ve participated in — whether it’s parties or scaring trick-or-treaters or whatever — usually at least one of the Halloween movies, if not the original. I have a soft spot for [Halloween] H20 and Halloween 4 personally, or Halloween III. I would say usually one of those caps the season for me.
Well, we’re talking about the Halloween franchise. There’s lots of movies out there and lots of comics out there that take place on Halloween, sometimes lean more heavily into the holiday, other times just happens to be that time and place. Both the movie and now with this comic book, what do you think makes Trick ‘r Treat so unique and so special in the world of all the Halloween horror out there?
If I had to guess, I think it’s what I intended it to be, which is to be a horror Halloween movie that truly embraces everything that the holiday is really about, that it doesn’t just happen to take place on the holiday, but it really celebrates the traditions, the folklore and the mythology of it, which is something that I’ve been fascinated with ever since I was a kid.
When I think we’re all initially introduced to the holiday, it’s for the obvious reasons. “Oh, you have to dress up in costumes and get candy.” For a lot of people, that’s enough. Then as you get older, that changes and there’s a party element to it and romantic pursuits, et cetera, on Halloween night, all that.
But I became fascinated with the folklore behind it and discovering that it wasn’t just another consumerist holiday, that it actually went back to some pretty, genuinely creepy, mystical origins. The idea that all these seemingly just fun traditions that we embrace, the costumes and the candy especially, have a purpose. There’s an intention that they were designed to protect you from spirits that wander over from the afterlife.
And the idea that that continued over centuries and still exists, and so every time you dress up your kids and you send them out into the night to go trick-or-treating and collect candy, you’re actually participating in this weird, almost occult ritual. That fascinated me. So the goal was to make a movie that really embraced all that and didn’t shy away from it, and I think we were successful.
I think so. That’s just one man’s opinion, but I certainly think so.
And, by the way, it really goes back to Sam, which a lot of people don’t know this, but Sam predates Trick ‘r Treat. Sam started in this animated short film that I had made called Season’s Greetings. I did this while I was a film student at NYU. This is actually his 30th anniversary, funny enough. And the goal for Sam, even back then — because I recently dug up my original notes that outlined the intention of that short film, and right there, it’s line two, it says, “My intention is to capture the spirit of Halloween.” And that was always the goal for the creation of Sam.
I think that persisted into Trick ‘r Treat, which came 10 years later.
What were the origins of Witching Hours? Were these stories that you had in mind [for] a sequel movie and you were able to evolve those into a comic? Or, once you had the idea of a comic, did you just start from scratch about stories that could only be told in this medium?
No, they weren’t leftovers from attempts at the sequel, they were completely original. Honestly, I just gathered some of my closest collaborators, Zach Shields and Todd Casey, who I worked on Krampus with, and Breehn Burns, who was one of my main concept artists on the first Trick ‘r Treat film. And then Curtis Waugh, who has been my assistant for years, and just brainstormed.
The fun of a comic book is, you weren’t quite as constrained with budget and schedule the same way that you are with movies, so it became a fun pie-in-the-sky exercise to come up with just the wildest, most insane ideas we possibly could, but that still felt true and faithful to the tone and style of Trick ‘r Treat. But, also knowing that there was a previous graphic novel that we had done, gosh, almost, I think, 10-11 years [ago] now, and wanted to evolve it even past that.
It was really fun. Some of the stories I think could work in a sequel, some might be a little bit more cost-prohibitive, like there’s one where we ship Sam off into space, which I know sounds ridiculous — and it started as a joke, to be honest, because I’m on the record in past interviews of saying a lot of our favorite horror icons and franchises, for whatever reason, all decided to ship them off into space. So Pinhead in one of the Hellraiser movies, part four, I believe, ends up in outer space. Jason [Voorhees], notoriously Leprechaun — so it kind of became, it was like a joke that I cracked. And then I was talking with Curtis, my assistant, I was like, “Wait a second, that’s not that crazy. What if we just embrace the absurdity of this and just run with it?” And we did, and it was really fun.
You spoke already about how, with the original movie, you had specific traditions in mind to put a darker spin on some of those traditions. What are the traditions that inspired the stories of this new book, without breaking down the complete plots of the new book?
I mean, all of them, honestly. All the stories take different traditions and run with them. So the idea, especially of the dead coming back to visit the living on Halloween night, we do that in some different ways. There’s one story that takes place in New York City, which I’m really excited about, called, “Did You Miss Me?” and it actually follows a ghost as he rematerializes in New York on Halloween night, which — I don’t know how many of the viewers have been to New York City on Halloween night, but it’s insane. The whole city just goes batsh-t crazy and everybody’s in costume, it’s just one big giant party.
There’s no escaping it, which is the best part.
What happens to that ghost when he finally realized he’s dead and that he’s come back in order to close a chapter on his previous life and hunt down — not hunt down, but find the woman, his beloved wife and find closure in their relationship, but then things go awry, but he also discovers there’s a supernatural underworld that only he can see because he is a ghost within the city. There’s another story that takes place in a retirement home and it involves some elderly folks who are a little bit closer to the grave than they are to the cradle, realizing that this might be their last Halloween and what that means and what happens when Sam enters the picture and grants that wish of what it might be like to be a kid again one more time on Halloween night, and things take a turn there, too.
So all the stories sort of take a different tradition, a different ritual, a different piece of Halloween folklore and add that special sprinkling of Sam magic, as it were.
What was the collaborative process like on this? You obviously worked with writers who you’ve worked with before, but you also enlisted a bunch of really awesome comic book artists. How did this whole project shape up?
It really happened organically. Again, on the writing side, I brought in my most trusted creative collaborators who I’ve known for years, all of them. I mean, Breehn, I think I’ve known for almost 20 years now and we collaborate together all the time. Zach and Todd, I’ve known them for 10-15 years altogether, and so there’s just a natural rhythm.
It’s like putting a band together. Not that I’ve done that, but I assume it’s very similar. You get together and you riff and you just throw ideas against the wall and at each other and you figure out what sticks, so the stories came together very easily. And then the fun part about the artwork, well, for one, Breehn is an amazing artist. He can take an idea that we craft together on the writing side and just create the most spectacular visuals, and I tend to have very few notes, if any. He actually illustrated his own story, which is beautiful. It’s very textured, but that was super easy. Just pass the baton to him on the art.
Then on the other stories, we auditioned different artists, and this is where Legendary Comics came into the picture and really helped facilitate finding other comic book artists. We wanted to make sure that every story had its own feel. Funny enough, one of the inspirations for these books is the Hellraiser comic books from the ’90s, which I’m not sure how many people are aware of that, but they’re phenomenal. They blew my mind when I was a kid, because they cracked open what a comic book could be. They didn’t look like Marvel or DC. They went out and got classic artists, watercolor artists, acrylic, oil, and each book was like walking through a museum, an art museum in a way. Every story had its own feel, not just tonally in the writing, but also visually.
I took a page from that and we found artists from different backgrounds and all over the world, which was really fun because you’re working completely remotely and they’re sending sketches and you’re shaping it. It was like making a movie in slow motion, in a way.
Speaking to the medium of comic art, what do you think is the biggest advantage of telling a Trick ‘r Treat story in this medium? And then what is the biggest challenge that you don’t face when making a movie?
Oh, interesting. I would say the biggest advantage is what I mentioned before, that you aren’t bound by budget and schedule as much. Obviously, there’s a budget for comic books, but you’re given free reign as long as you stay within this, say, 30-page limit. What happens within those panels and within those pages isn’t constrained by a shooting schedule and say a $15-million budget. Because there are definitely some stories and moments that we couldn’t afford to do in a Trick ‘r Treat film unless we were given, like, a Marvel-sized budget, especially in “Harvest Moons,” which is the story where Sam goes to space. I mean, that one turns into just something massive in a really fun way.
It’s nice to be unshackled like that and to really color outside the lines and think outside the box, because I love Trick ‘r Treat, the first film and also the screenplay for part two gets a little bit bigger, but just to be able to go hog wild with Sam and the amount of monsters that you can cram into a full page spread is really fun.
Only since you mentioned it, I do just have to get it out of the way. I’m legally obligated to get an annual live-action movie update so we can put it out there and people will leave you alone for the next six weeks, I hope.
No, I feel like it has become its own Halloween tradition, right? So there’s trick-or-treating, there’s costumes, there’s Halloween parties, there’s decorations, and then there’s asking Mike Dougherty about the status of Trick ‘r Treat 2, and then me giving some vague cryptic answer that still holds out some hope. Then there’s a flurry of online articles and social media posts.
I don’t know what kind of answer I can or should give. I feel like there’s no right or wrong answer. The only wrong answer would be to say like, “Oh, it’s dead and it’s not happening,” but I don’t feel like that’s appropriate or true. I hate to be vague. I hate to sound like I’m dodging. It’s just that, right now, we have an amazing script. I went above and beyond and I storyboarded literally the entire movie. Every scene in that script has been boarded to within an inch of its life. Even two people sitting in a booth talking to each other was storyboarded, because normally, you just board your set pieces, your more action-driven or your scare moments, anything involving visual effects and monsters, usually that’s what you focus your storyboarding efforts on.
But I was enjoying that process so much with my storyboard artist. I was like, “Screw it, let’s just do the whole movie, why not?” So I have this massive PDF, I think it’s 735 pages long of literally every scene storyboarded. It almost reads like a graphic novel unto itself, funny enough. So we have that.
And I have, I think, 30 pieces of full color concept art done by Breehn Burns. It’s a really fun package to sit and flip through.
But beyond that, I just don’t really have much of an update. All the materials are there. I’m ready to go. I’m very proud of what my collaborators and I have pulled together for a potential sequel. So it’s there and I’m ready.
Well, I wanted to get that out of the way, if only to ask, this process of making this all-new graphic novel full of these all-new stories, if there was a world where you said, “You know what? The live-action thing, this is gonna be so complicated, there’s so many different obstacles that might be in the way,” that you just turn this script, this storyboard into a graphic novel and put that into the world?
Maybe I could write that into my will, if I ever die, but I’m still holding out hope, I guess. I’ve thought about that. Like, “Yeah, maybe I can just slide the script over to the comic division at Legendary and we just turn it into a massive graphic novel at some point.” But yeah, I was almost inspired by what Michael Mann did and he put out the book for Heat 2, right? And now that’s being made into a film. So, listen, that’s a maybe, but I’d still rather try to get just the movie made first.
Well, and expanding on the world of Sam and Trick ‘r Treat, Sam started in animation, then there was a full-length anthology and now comics. Has this started a brainstorming process of other mediums that the character or the concept could go into? Live-action YouTube shorts or a TV show, like Creepshow on Shudder. Is there a bigger Trick ‘r Treat world out there?
I mean, I think so. I have mentioned that to my collaborators in the past. There was a minute where we were talking to Amazon about doing a Halloween special. It was almost a weekly Halloween special/series where basically we would make a six-part animated Halloween special. So every week in October, you would get one or two episodes of this, and fully embracing the origins of Sam, who yes, started as an animated character long before he was live-action.
We got very, very close with Amazon, but we couldn’t quite work out a deal, but it was exciting there for a second. So yeah, that’s a possibility. And it’s fun watching the brand populate other mediums. I really enjoy that. I think it’s part of the creative process, for me, is that it’s not just about a movie. It’s about, “Okay, well, what are the toys? What are the games?” A couple of years back, we worked with Call of Duty and Sam ended up as a guest star alongside Michael Myers and Ghostface and Art the Clown for one of their Halloween events. That was a lot of fun.
I love seeing what my little guy can do on his own organically and populate other mediums. He’s at Six Flags Fright Fest this year, he’s had two mazes at Halloween Horror Nights. I think there’s a very healthy — there’s still a lot of life left in Sam and other mediums for him to explore.
[Related] Michael Dougherty Is Bringing Sam Back to Life This October!
Lastly here, since you mentioned the life that Sam has generated, you can’t go to a Spirit Halloween or you can’t go anywhere with horror stuff without seeing a hundred different types of Sam. For you, I wondered if there has been a favorite piece of Sam merch that you have come across, and also if there has been a weirdest piece of Sam merch that you’ve either heard of or had to be like, “No, that doesn’t make any sense. We need to scrap that”?
I don’t know if there’s been a weirdest moment. Well, I will say this, I don’t think there’s a weirdest piece of merchandise, but over the past few years, it’s gotten more fun, but also weirder for me personally, because my house in L.A., I decorate to the nines every Halloween, there’s a full cemetery that goes up and my friends come over on Halloween night and we just scare the bejesus out of trick-or-treaters, in a fun way, in a family-friendly way.
My whole neighborhood really gets into it, so a lot of houses are decorated. I remember taking my dogs for a walk and doing a double take because Sam was on somebody else’s front porch. It was the Spirit Halloween animatronic. And then I went around the corner and somebody else had a Sam hanging from their tree, a different Spirit Halloween decoration.
And then on Halloween night, five kids showed up at my doorstep dressed as the character. You have to keep in mind, they don’t know who I am. I don’t broadcast that. I’ve never met these neighbors, they’re just in the neighborhood, but the fact that they had Sam decorations on their porch or hanging from the tree or there’s the kids showing up at my own doorstep, that was definitely a moment for me where I realized the genie is fully out of the bottle. It was very flattering.
Spirit Halloween has been a wonderful partner, and I’m hoping that it continues to get weirder and more wonderful like that. Also, I enjoy going to the horror conventions and I’ll see t-shirts or people cosplaying as him or people with Sam backpacks peeking back out at me, and so it’s like realizing your kid has escaped into the night.
I think the Halloween Horror Nights maze from back in 2018 is still the high bar for me of Halloween Horror Nights mazes in general. That was such an incredible experience.
I’m still in touch with [Creative Director] John Murdy over at Horror Nights and, I can’t reveal anything officially, but we’re talking.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
