From in-depth analysis to casual appreciation, there’s no wrong way to engage with art. However, some fans go the extra mile when demonstrating their love for certain franchises and characters by incorporating them into fanfiction. While these unauthorized stories are usually limited to the written word, a surprising number of die-hard fans are willing to face the technical and financial hurdles of film production in order to bring their original visions to life. Studios and mainstream audiences may look down on these projects, but they’re often the only thing standing between a beloved franchise and complete abandonment. That’s why I’d like to discuss the importance of horror fan films.
Fan films have been around since the dawn of cinema (even Murnau‘s Nosferatu can technically be considered an unauthorized fan adaptation of Bram Stoker‘s Dracula), but the questionable legality of these productions and limited access to proper equipment meant that they were once very rare. Most early examples of what we’d now call a fan film are either cheesy home recordings not meant for public consumption or passion projects funded by already-established artists.
Andy Warhol famously produced a fan film known as Batman Dracula, which pitted the world’s greatest detective against Stoker’s Count back in 1964. Receiving no support from DC comics, the completed film was ultimately shelved after a handful of screenings at art exhibits, with many considering it lost media until a few minutes of footage resurfaced in 2006. This was the fate of most fan productions at the time, though some amateur filmmakers managed to work around these rights issues.
For many years, George Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead was the go-to subject for fan-made remakes, sequels and re-edits, as legal concerns are of little consequence when your source material was accidentally placed in the public domain. It can even be argued that every single zombie flick following the same undead rules as Night are technically fan-made homages paying tribute to Romero’s classic. While there’s no shortage of affectionate reinterpretations of the film, some of which were beloved by Romero himself, there are also a few unorthodox projects like James Riffel‘s NOTDOT that border on artistic vandalism.
Nothing like Bill Moseley to legitimize your fan film!
It’s a rare occurrence, but fan films have also been known to influence the future of big horror franchises. Bill Moseley is said to have scored his iconic role as Chop-Top in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 after impressing Tobe Hooper with the fan-made The Texas Chainsaw Manicure. Moseley would also star in William Hooper‘s lost/incomplete fan film All American Massacre, which supposedly featured Chop-Top recounting his life story to a news crew in a psychiatric hospital. In the Hellraiser films, Gary J. Tunnicliffe‘s phenomenal work on the unofficial Hellraiser: No More Souls would net him the director’s chair on Hellraiser: Judgment nearly 14 years later, setting a precedent for fan films as a tool for career advancement.
Of course, the whole appeal of fan films is that they’re made by fans for fans, and this community is only possible due to the rise of affordable home media devices and fan conventions. Having been provided with the means to produce these movies on a budget and like-minded audiences to share them with, amateur filmmakers were soon creating all sorts of unlicensed adaptations of popular media. While most of these productions involved notable Sci-Fi and comic-book characters, there were also a few horror-inspired crossovers like Sandy Collora‘s infamous Batman: Dead End.
A surprisingly spooky and well-directed yarn, Dead End sees Batman facing off against both Aliens and Predators in what some have claimed to be the most comic-accurate live-action interpretation of the character. While this bonkers crossover has some basis in comic-book lore, rights issues meant that this story could never have existed as an officially licensed film. This makes Dead End a perfect example of how fan films can go beyond studio limitations.
This “anything goes” mentality would really explode with the rise of internet culture. No longer limited to convention centers and niche festivals, fan films could reach a much wider audience and even be financed via the world wide web. Back in 2012, notorious producer Adi Shankar launched the “Bootleg Universe” as a way of exploring the limitless possibilities of these unauthorized productions. My personal favorite of these edgy fan films is Joe Lynch‘s Truth in Journalism, which re-interprets Marvel’s Venom as a sociopathic reporter in a found footage homage to Man Bites Dog.
When are we getting Batman vs Jason?
More recently, resources like Horror Fan Films have helped to keep track of new releases, and it appears that the community is only growing. From Chris R. Notarile‘s Krueger: Tales from Elm Street (a prequel web series about Freddy’s macabre origins) to Rick Gawel‘s Michael Myers: Absolute Evil (a feature-length mockumentary investigating the Halloween films from a True Crime perspective), the past decade has given us fan-made gems that subvert and explore big franchises in ways that probably wouldn’t fly under the traditional studio system.
In fact, some horror franchises have been kept alive by dedicated fan productions. With legal issues preventing new Friday the 13th sequels, Jason Voorhees’ only on-screen appearances since the 2009 remake have been in increasingly ambitious fan films. Vincente DiSanti‘s Never Hike Alone series is now considered the gold standard for fan-made media and Timothy Whitfield‘s Friday the 13th: The Obsession managed to insert a bit of meta-commentary into a movie series that desperately needed it. While producers still can’t figure out what to do with him, Jason’s spirit has been kept alive by these lovable bootleg projects.
Naturally, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows when it comes to fan films. Not only are these movies routinely plagued by inadequate budgets, cease-and-desist orders and a general lack of technical know-how, but even the best of them can still be criticized for wasting time and money that might have been better spent on completely original projects. While there’s a counterargument suggesting that the exposure granted by using established intellectual properties makes fan films a great way of showing off a filmmaker’s talents, very few fan film creators end up profiting from their projects. Ultimately, these movies work best as an expression of love for their source material, not as products. Weird little productions like Ryan Grulich‘s Georgie aren’t meant to make a profit, but to celebrate a community of like-minded fans.
Love ’em or hate ’em, fan films are an integral part of modern fandom culture, and no matter how hard corporations might try to prevent them from happening, they’ll always be there to explore ideas that big studios can’t. In an age when media conglomerates have become insanely protective of their intellectual properties, sometimes to the detriment of their own iconic characters, I think there’s something really special about non-profit productions made by amateurs who just want to have a scary good time.
Fan Films are as unkillable as slasher villains.