Trick 'r Treat: Tales of Mayhem, Mystery, and Mischief

by John Griffin, Bryan Singer (Foreword), Michael Dougherty (Introduction)

Artist and screenwriter Michael Dougherty's first book combines creepy drama, horror, and thriller with a splash of his twisted humor. Designed to illustrate Legendary Pictures' feature film of Dougherty's directorial debut Trick 'r Treat . Get the book and explore the weird world of Trick 'r Treat!
Trick 'r Treat tells the story behind this personal and spooky movie, from Dougherty's initial inspiration through the development process, the painstaking production design and the roots of Halloween traditions. It celebrates the yearly ritual that we all participate in but only dimly understand, explaining why we do all the activities associated with the holiday.

Genres: Horror, Halloween, Film, Sequential Art, Holiday, Art, Media Tie In

110 pages, Paperback

First published September 29, 2007

Reviews

[Parka · Rating 5 out of 5]

(More pictures at parkablogs.com)

The moment I saw the cover and the publisher, Insight Editions, I had very good feeling about the book. Why? Because Insight Editions had previously published one of the very best art books, The Art of Monster House, which I liked very much.

This book is also frightening good. Wait a minute, Monster House is also a horror movie. What a coincidence.

This is a scrapbook style art book for the live action movie, Trick 'r Treat. The movie is written and directed by Michael Dougherty, who also contributed to some of the art in the book.

First part of the book is about the making of the movie. It's a behind the scenes look at how the movie was produced and shot. Included are details like how Michael Dougherty came up with the script, drew the art and pitched the movie. There are challenges with costume designs because they had to avoid trademarked characters. Also very interesting are how they set up scenes visually and create special effects like the exploding a bag of pumpkin-like goo.

The second part are the five short stories in the movies. In between these stories are accompanying quotes from movies and captions from the staff. There are also pages devoted to several aspect of Halloween, for example the origins of Jack o' Lanterns, the significance of 31 October, what's with the black cat and many other interesting stuff.

Throughout the book is filled with lots of goodies. They include little booklets, stickers, postcards, pumpkin paper cutouts, a Halloween mask and a poster at the back. It's scrapbook goodness. So much that I really had a hard time doing the flipping-page video.

The hardcover book comes in a soft cardboard casing. The glossy pages are of amazing paper stock. The high resolution photos and artwork are reproduced brilliantly. I must also add that the page design and layout are fantastic. The author John Griffin has done a fantastic job with the book. This book is a visual delight.

Once in a while, there will be a book so good it will appeal to everyone. This is that book.

It's highly recommended to all, except those who don't like movies or art.

This review was first published on parkablogs.com. There are more pictures and videos on my blog.

[Jeremy Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

This insanely awesome (and hard to come by) coffee table book gives a behind the scenes account of everything that went into creating Sam and the beloved movie, Trick 'r Treat. I especially love all the attached artifacts this book comes with which include postcards, comics, a poster and much more. There is also a part of the book that expands the stories from the movie by presenting them in written form which adds much more detail.

[Zac Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Standard coffee table book idk

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The art in this is so incredible I am so happy to own a copy.
Sam <3

[Ed Dexter · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you liked the movie, you need this book! In addition to great scenes from the movie and storyboards, you get lots of little extras packed in like mini-postcards, pumpkin stencils, a Sam paper mask, mini-comic and mini-poster!

There's also lots of behind the scenes info about making the movie and how Sam came to be. And a page here and there about Halloween related things like black cats and jack-o-lanterns.

I would actually give this 4.5 stars for the way the mini-poster is packed. It's in a very snug envelope on the inside back cover and was very difficult to remove without damaging the envelope, but that's a very minor complaint on a spectacular book!

[Livingdeadpunk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazingly gorgeous book for a really rad movie. All the extras and little books within the book, the masks, etc., are amazingly cool. It's not exactly super insightful or wildly informative to read and gets slightly repetitive at times, but some of the stories about the filming are interesting and you won't even care about reading it when you can just flip through and marvel at how lovely the whole package is. Definitely worth having.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not what I expected. I was Hoping for short little stories on How the Character came about. Or orignal comic strip draw out.

The Myth about how candy poisoned or razor blades in apple was explained and how it all started, pretty funny.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Awesome packaging. Made me want to see the movie.

[Đenis · Rating 3 out of 5]

...no nevim, 4 dily provazane smrti a destrukci na Helloweena... Takove ty minipribehy, co se asi vypraveji detem pred spanim na vystraseni v USA...