Sold Out

That's what Trick R Treat was in every store I went to today. By 5 o'clock, I couldn't find a single copy of the Blu Ray of Trick R Treat anywhere in town. A handful of dvd copies? Yes, but that's not what I'm looking for. If I'm going to watch this movie, I want to do it right.

Apparently, all of Greensboro geekdom agreed, because this little-seen, highly-spoken-of anthology horror film vanished from shelves. I'm hoping this gives Warner Brothers some idea of how silly it was to sit on Trick R Treat for two years, and doubly foolish it was not to open it wide in theatres this month. There's a rabid audience out there waiting for new horror, particularly with this kind of good word-of-mouth; people who don't need another Saw movie and want to be scared with a movie about Halloween! We don't get this often, so when it's good (like, say, Drag Me to Hell), it hurts all the more to fall on deaf ears.

Seriously, I haven't even seen the film (only the nine minutes available on the Shit Coffin BD), and I've already booked it a slot in Horror Fest. It's three of my favorite things in one movie: 1) Halloween themed? check. 2) Anthology? check 3) creepy and sometimes funny? from what I've seen, check.

Can I go see it on the big screen with others and enjoy a collective experience? Nope. I can do the next best thing, which is show it to my friends and enjoy a smaller experience, but for the theatrical kicks, Zombieland is the only way to go. I'm not about to help Saw get more money in order to pump out more sequels (in 3-D!) so I'll take a comparably highly rated zom-com (which, to be fair, is doing well in the box office) which is more comedy and less horror in its stead.

I'm not going to lie to you guys. As much as I like laughing at bad horror movies, I really dig it when one manages to be creepy, and we just don't get many good anthology films anymore. Creepshow, Tales from the Crypt, Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, From Beyond the Grave, Black Sabbath, Asylum, The House that Dripped Blood, Trilogy of Terror, Cat's Eye, Vault of Horror... what do they have in common? They're all at least 20 years old, and many much older.

There have been a handful of anthology films since 1990, but it's slim pickings: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, Tales from the Hood, Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror, Three Extremes, uh... Campfire Tales. I'm not going to lie, only Three Extremes is really any good out of that list. The others are funny-stupid or just stupid.

So back to Trick R Treat. I'm glad it sold out, because it means that, for once, horror fans are speaking with their wallets about the underappreciated non-sequel / non-remake corner of the genre. I expect something similar will happen next week with Drag Me to Hell. What bums me out is that I really wanted to watch that movie and review it for you, and the Cap'n is betting I won't actually find a copy until I'm out of town this weekend. Pity.