When dealing with horrific holiday movies, the successful ones usually tweak fears that you would never attribute to that holiday, and never let you forget them. Sometimes these fears are gruesome and heart-attack-thrilling, such as Silent Night, Deadly Night and Black Christmas. Some are just moderately chilling, like My Bloody Valentine. Others are just campy, fun and twisted, like the Leprechaun series.
Halloween, however, is a tough holiday to crack. It’s already set up as a thrilling holiday, as children run around their neighborhoods dressed as demons, underhandedly threatening harm to homes if not given a sacrifice of sugar in place of blood(which is why your house still gets egged when you give out pennies and fruits. Just sayin.)
When dealing with Halloween, you’re also pitting yourself against one of the fab 4 of last century’s late movie monsters: Michael Meyers. How can the holiday of Halloween ever be touched again?
Frank Sabatella, director of Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet, took on this challenge, and is in the process of finalizing his latest short film, Night of the Pumpkin. Not much is known of the premise of the film, but by first glance it seems that Sabatella does not plan on taking on John Carpenter. Instead, we are teased with what seems to be Halloween’s version of Jack Frost, as we are introduced to a blood-thirsty jack-o-lantern on a rampage in a thrilling, humorous, and fully entertaining short featuring another Blood Night alum, Samantha Hahn, and FX artist Jeremy Selenfriend, that may very well beg for a feature-length.
Stay tuned for more updates as this film nears its release.
*UPDATE*
The short is completed, just in time for Halloween so that we never carve another jack-o-lantern again.
The crew at Sideshow Pictures is hard at work delivering another horror short for Halloween for 2012. Check out The House that Cried Blood and help make another horror story possible.