Helloween: A Brief History of the Unmade Horror Crossover White Whale
Halloween: Resurrection was not well received either commercially or critically, but that did not stop Moustapha Akkad and Dimension Films from moving forward on a sequel. What that sequel would be, however, was anyone’s guess. As is the case for almost every period in Halloween history, there were several pitches, different ideas thrown around, even different scripts that were commissioned. Just one year after Resurrection hit the screen, Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhess returned to theaters (it would mark Freddy’s first film in almost a decade, and if it weren’t for Jason X, would have marked his first in a decade as well) for the enormously successful Freddy vs. Jason.
That crossover, which was finally realized after a decade of development Hell, seemed to revitalize the supposedly dying slasher genre. It also kicked off a minor crossover boom. Both Alien vs. Predator and Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys followed in 2004, both projects that had been gestating almost as long as Freddy vs. Jason had. Dimension noticed that they also had two titans of modern horror in their wheelhouse: Michael Myers, of course, and Pinhead of the Hellraiser films.
The pairing seems random, at first, and too varied. Michael and Pinhead could not be more different boogeymen. Michael is an abstract, ominous face in the shadows, a silent, stalking figure. Pinhead is eloquent, a well-read and sometimes even polite monster who will absolutely delight in tearing you into little pieces, but will be just as grateful for the conversation and the company. But that is also a huge part of the appeal of Freddy vs. Jason.
I think the fact that the two characters are so different, and come from entirely different worlds, is absolutely part of the appeal of this idea. Of all the crossover ideas that have been thrown about over the years, I think it is the one that most could have tapped into what Freddy vs. Jason accomplished. The true appeal of this idea was the talent behind it. The crossover, which became widely known as Hell-o-ween even though it was never given an official title, was going to be written by Clive Barker and directed by John Carpenter.
I know that pairing sounds too good to be true, but I can promise you that it was. Both admitted on camera that they would have done it and that they liked the idea of doing it. This would not have just been huge for a crossover movie, it would have been monumental for both franchises. Had it happened, it would have marked the first Hellraiser written by Clive Barker since he wrote and directed the original, and the first Halloween directed by Carpenter since the first one as well. Moustapha Akkad, who had never been a big fan of the idea, took it to an online poll on the official Halloween website to determine whether fans wanted to see it, and that’s when the project unfortunately died a swift death.
Unfortunately, the Internet has always been the Internet. Reading the comments on the poll results on that initial website post, it is clear that it had as much to do with disinterest in the crossover idea as it had to do with how the masters of ’70s and ’80s horror were discussed in the early 2000s. Having been on the web as a teen at that time, I vividly remember the fact that every single day there would be people remarking that those iconic directors were hacks who had either lost whatever talent they once had or had never had it at all.
People talk about “haters” now, but back then it was kind of seen as weird to be on a message board and discuss film in any other terms. George Romero and Tobe Hooper, both of whose films had gone lower budget and limited release at that point, saw the worst of it. But at this point in time, Barker was considered to have long abandoned horror for fantasy, and Carpenter’s last film had been Ghosts of Mars, which had not gone over well with either fans or critics. There were a horrifying amount of people insisting that the involvement of these two was the very problem with the crossover in the first place.
Barker and Carpenter were not the only people to be involved with the project, however. Dave Parker, director of The Dead Hate the Living, The Hills Run Red and Puppet Master: Doktor Death had been the first one to pitch it. His script, among many other unique ideas, would have evolved Michael into Samhain itself, the Lord of the Dead and living embodiment of Halloween. In that version, it would be revealed that Samhain escaped Hell and took over Michael’s body on the fateful night he went trick-or-treating in 1963. That’s a retcon that would no doubt have been controversial, to name a specific entity that possessed young Michael to turn him into what he is, but no more so than anything Curse of Michael Myers had done. That story would have seen a group of people attempting to destroy the Myers house, only to find the puzzle box within its walls.
The puzzle box would bring forth Pinhead and the presence of people inside the house would bring forth Michael. Pinhead would immediately feel the presence of Samhain, an escapee from Hell, inside Michael, leading to a fight on the earthly plane before the third act took them to Hell. Unfortunately, this was pitched in 1998, before the success of Freddy vs. Jason. The previous Hellraiser had notoriously not been a hit, and the Halloween franchise had only just bounced back at the box office that year with the release of H20. The studio exec told Parker they weren’t interested in that kind of movie at that time, which isn’t remotely surprising. It is a little surprising that they wouldn’t loop back to it a few years later, though, when they were actively looking to get it off the ground.
Josh Stolberg of the Saw franchise and The Collector fame, also wrote a draft of the script, alongside Bobby Florsheim, which would have centered on a support group for all manner of horror movie survivors, giving nods to other franchise in addition to the two that it naturally focused on. This version would also likely have been controversial, as it would have brought back original Hellraiser heroine Kirsty Cotton only to kill her off. Ironically, Hellraiser: Hellseeker did something surprisingly similar that very same year, bringing back Kirsty and making it look like they had killed her off only for it to be a fake out that revealed she was actually still alive.
This version would have traded one life for another, though, by revealing Jamie Lloyd to be alive even though she had been killed in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. One of the most intriguing things about this idea is that it would have given Kirsty and Jamie a relationship similar to the one Kirsty had with Tiffany in Hellraiser II. Pinhead is no doubt angry that someone else has killed Kirsty after all this time, which leads to the fight between the two titans. The fight was described by Stolberg as being a brutal battle with Hell coming down around them and Michael pulling the pins out of the Cenobite’s head, which is interesting to note because it sounds almost identical to the fight between Pinhead and Satan in Barker’s 2014 novel, The Scarlet Gospels, meant at the time to be his final word on Pinhead and all things Hellraiser.
These ideas are fun to read about because, twenty years later, we still have absolutely no idea what Barker’s vision for bringing Michael Myers and Pinhead together would have looked like. In fact, the only thing we have to go on to know for sure that he had even begun to write it or workshop ideas was a remark in which he complained that Akkad and Dimension were too precious with Michael, and that they treated him like Shakespeare.
With the crossover killed by a poll with no hope of revival, gears shifted to another traditional sequel. Rumored to be titled Halloween: Asylum, this would have brought Michael back to Smith’s Grove. But even though it seemed to gestate for quite a while, not much is known about it. The truth is, Asylum was just one of many script ideas that were thrown around at that time, and none of them ever came too close to happening.
In October of 2003, two months after the release of Freddy vs. Jason, something else happened that completely changed the landscape of horror in the 2000s. New Line Cinema released their remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, written by Scott Kosar and directed by Marcus Nispel. The Chainsaw franchise had struggled even worse than Halloween had, and then some. The sequels, three of them in the thirty years since the original, had all been box office flops, none had done well critically, and none had overwhelmingly resonated with fans. That has changed somewhat as time has gone on and those sequels, especially the second, have developed a more positive reception, but at the time, the series had essentially been seen as a string of losses.
That was far from the case with the remake, which turned out to be a huge hit, to the point that it led to a string of remakes throughout the decade. Following Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003, we had Dawn of the Dead, House of Wax, The Amityville Horror, The Fog, The Omen, The Hills Have Eyes, The Wicker Man, When a Stranger Calls, Black X-Mas, The Hitcher, all following over the next three years. When taking those titles into account, and the obvious zeitgeist of the time, a Halloween remake suddenly seems like a no-brainer. It was the convention of mid-2000s horror, it was at that point simply what was done.
I remember being stunned by the very idea that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre could be remade when I first heard about it, but the remakes came out in such rapid succession that as a teen I became used to it shockingly quick. Of course, people still damned any remake online upon first hearing of it simply by gut reaction, just as they do now. But the box office suggested audiences were clearly open to them, and no title was sacred, both ending all possibilities of a crossover and making a Halloween remake an inevitability in a shockingly short amount of time.
