In the last few years, more and more TV shows have been made based on horror movies: The Exorcist just began on Fox, The Omen crashed and burned on A&E, and MTV recently aired the second season of Scream this past summer. Which got me to thinking which horror movie I’d most like to see on TV myself, and you know what that means: HALLOWEEN POLL TIME.
So. I will give you six horror movies and how I envision them as TV shows. Choose the one that sounds best and comment to let me know. Also, your choice doesn’t have to be based on how I envision it; if, for example, I said I wanted to see Halloween as an anthology show where Michael Myers kills different babysitters over a 30-year period, and you were like, “That would be lame, but I’d love to see Halloween resurrect Laurie Strode and see her face off with him on a week-to-week basis,” then you can still totally pick Halloween.
Ready? Okay, here we go. Your contenders:
A. Suspiria
Tone: YA mystery with a heavy dose of surreal witchy weirdness
Plot: Basically a tweaked remake where new student Suzy and friends investigate strange happenings at her ballet academy (including a murder in the pilot, obvs) and eventually discovers witches are running the school. To keep the show past a one-season premise, I’m picturing a lot of alliances with good witches and evil witches among both the faculty and the students, and possibly a rival school at some point.
Network: CW
B. Saw
Tone: Gory, grimdark procedural
Plot: Loose remake which focuses on FBI agents investigating Jigsaw, a serial killer who creates weekly gruesome traps for his victims whilst trying to teach them the value of life. Triple bonus points if both agents investigating him are competent AF women.
Network: FX
C. Salem’s Lot
Tone: Supernatural small town horror shenanigans
Plot: Start with initial concept: writer returns home to find that the town has recently become invested with vampires, and then go wild from there. Keep old characters but add new ones too, preferably with more women. And somewhere along the way include the staircase scene. I love Stephen King, but I don’t find his books particularly frightening–but holy shit, that scene got me. It MUST be included.
Network: AMC
D. Let the Right One In (or Let Me In — I will accept either)
Tone: Creepy coming-of-age story with violence and Feels
Plot: Sequel. The further adventures of Eli and Oskar, probably settling in a new town, making friends, being investigated, killing things, the usual. There would also, I suspect, be more vampires in this town, who may or may not be friendly.
Network: Netflix
E. Re-Animator
Tone: Macabre buddy comedy with zombie hijinks
Plot: Loose remake with a couple of med students bringing their dead professor back to life. Go from there to all kinds of wacky morbid shenanigans. Definitely a Jeffrey Combs cameo in there somewhere, at the very least–hey, he could be the dead professor!–but again, I’d love a gender flip. Dr. Hermoine West, c’mon, people! (Also, preferably some kind of winky reference to The Scene without actually having The Scene, thanks.)
Network: FX
F. Nightmare on Elm Street
Tone: YA mystery with surreal nightmare weirdness
Plot: Slow burn mystery with high school students having freaky ass nightmares of the same burned up dude. Eventually, the kids start dying. In my head, Freddy Krueger could really only be a one-season villain, though. After that, we’d probably need new villains, although they should really all be nightmare or sleep related. Night hags, anyone?
Network: MTV
Okay, that’s it for today. Comment to vote, and I’ll keep the poll open for about a week.
My Geek Blasphemy 
This was a close call because I do like Let the Right One In, but I’m gonna have to go with Salem’s Lot. THE STAIRCASE SCENE.
Right? That scene messed me up. If I’m ever asked to go down into a basement (or really anywhere) where I can’t see the stairs, I’m just not going. I don’t care how important it is. NOT COOL, VAMPIRES.
I generally don’t find SK’s works that scary, but each of his books has that one scene that makes me say, ‘Not cool, Stephen. Not cool, man.’
. . . now I kind of want to hear this list. 🙂
Speaking of “A”… Did you watch The Secret Circle? I was annoyed it got canceled… i really enjoyed it, even if Cassie was a little too goody-two-shoes for me. The mood and tension in that show were fantastic.
I started it, but fell out after a few episodes (it was Mekaela’s fault, per usual). I figured I’d go back eventually, but never did, and then it got cancelled. At some less chaotic point in my life, I’d like to go back and give it a second go, primarily for Shelly Hennig and Phoebe Tonkin (the girls who aren’t Cassie–I can’t remember their names in the show and am too lazy to look it up right now.)
Salem’s Lot – staircase scene, plus I think of the fun of watching the infestation expand to neighboring towns.
Agreed, that could be neat to watch.
Nightmare on Elm St. By the people who do Teen Wolf’s dream sequences 🙂
EXACTLY. 🙂
What’s the staircase scene? I know about the window scene, but I can’t seem to recall an important staircase in Salem’s Lot….
Heh, now I’m blanking on the window scene . . .
Actually, this might be because I’ve never actually watched the Tobe Hooper version of Salem’s Lot and was thinking primarily of the book. In the book, a character starts going down a staircase into a basement, only he can’t see that the stairs have been cut out. Thus, he dies when he lands on a bunch of upward-facing knives, a scene that freaked me out to no end when I initially read it. It only now occurs to me that this scene might not have made it into the original miniseries. (I’m pretty sure it happens in the 2004 miniseries, though I don’t remember it being nearly as creepy.)
Just google “Salem’s Lot staircase scene” and the window scene is one of the main things that comes up, lol. Does this jog your memory? http://cdn1-www.comingsoon.net/assets/styd/assets/uploads/2016/02/Cobb3.png
But yeah, my experience is with the Tobe Hooper adaptation. Never read the book. Why were there a bunch of upturned knives under the hole in the staircase in the first place? Was that a booby-trap set up by the vampire?
It does not, but–hilariously–it reminds me of this scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie).
And yes, it was a booby-trap set up by vampires, proving once and for all that I am WAY more scared of elaborate boobytraps than bloodsucking monsters. This has been true ever since I was a small child. 🙂
Your Saw proposal kind of reminds me of The Following. Maybe because Jigsaw had his own cult-ish followers in the movies. However, since I don’t particularly like Saw or The Following, this one is somewhere around the bottom of my list.
I’m gonna go with Nightmare On Elm Street, although Suspiria and Salem’s Lot sounded fun as well, despite not actually having watched or read the latter. I should really get onto that.
They’re actually making a Let The Right One In TV show. The Teen Wolf showrunner is doing it. Being a fan of the book and the Swedish film, I’m somewhere between curious and concerned about this. I’d also be curious to know whether they’re pretty much just going to tell the same story over a longer period – which I think could work for the first season, anyway – or if it’ll basically just go off and do it’s own thing like Teen Wolf has done.
I saw something announcing that tv show. It was funny how the announcement claimed it was based on the book and then said that it was about a female vampire. *facepalm*
Honestly, I was sort of thinking of The Following too, just . . . better. (I guess that’s not fair. I only saw the pilot. But I REALLY didn’t like that pilot.)
I knew nothing about the Let the Right One In TV show before you mentioned it, and then like a day later I saw two or three different things about it. I still haven’t read the book, myself. For some reason, I just kind of assume the TV show will go off and do their own thing . . . but I do think the basic story (at least of the movie) would make for a pretty solid first season.
Gender-flipped Re-Animator. I am absolutely on board.
Me too!