Michael Dougherty has marked Halloween by giving Sam, the small burlap-faced enforcer of Halloween etiquette from Trick ‘r Treat, his own grindhouse trailer. Season’s Greetings 2: Mischief Night is a mock teaser made for the thirtieth anniversary of Season’s Greetings, the four-minute animated short Dougherty made as an NYU student in 1996, in which Sam first turned up long before he had a film to terrorise.
The trailer is directed by Dougherty and animated by Cyrus T. Hayley at Dragline Pictures, in the scratchy, over-the-top style of a seventies exploitation preview. It promises mayhem from “one trick-or-treater who loved Halloween to death”, and shows missing posters of a young boy going up around town before Sam makes his entrance and the title card appears. It also promotes Sam: The Soul of Halloween, the new site where Dougherty has been inviting artists to interpret the character all month.
Do not get excited, though. This is not Trick ‘r Treat 2, and nothing suggests it’s a real sequel to the short either. Dougherty has said he wants any sequel to the film to keep the non-linear structure and the odd mix of horror and comedy, and to be made under the right conditions, which is a polite way of describing a project that was officially announced in 2013 and has been standing in the corner ever since. In the meantime there’s a new comic, Witching Hours, and Regal’s Halloween screenings of the film come with a 4K restoration of the original short.
Here at SFcrowsnest magazine we’ll take our fun-sized horrors where we can get them. Sam spends his films making sure everyone obeys the rules of Halloween. It seems one of the rules is that fans have to wait.
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