Dumped by its studio (Warner Bros) following an abandoned original release date of October 2007, this marvelously atmospheric old-school horror anthology from Bryan Singer collaborator Michael Dougherty (he wrote SUPERMAN RETURNS and X2 ; Singer is a producer here) faces a direct to DVD fate despite rapturous reactions from almost everyone lucky enough to see it on a big screen. Such is the fate of an original contemporary horror film that is not a remake, a sequel or a torture fest laced with CG-enhanced grue.

   Gorgeously shot in widescreen by Glen MacPherson with a rich and scary Douglas Pipes score, this is a rare horror picture that captures the feel and spirit of a great, frightening Halloween night. Only Carpenter’s original HALLOWEEN and Jeff Lieberman’s underrated SATAN’S LITTLE HELPER have managed to do the same with such impressive results. It’s rarer still in the way it manages to wear its influences on its sleeve (lovingly illustrated comic book titles a la CREEPSHOW ; visual references to AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON ; a key virginal character named Laurie ; an amusing use of THE THING’s “You gotta be fucking kidding me!” exclamation) while coming up with its own distinctive style and twists.

   The horror portmanteau format is a familiar one, but Dougherty dispenses with the expected framing / wraparound device in favor of a circular narrative structure that just happens to interweave four separate spooky episodes into one satisfying whole. Each of these individual tales (which sometimes spill into each other via certain characters and events) revels and excels in misdirecting the audience, and pulling off unexpected twists that are, by turns, satisfyingly sick and flippantly amusing.

   Needless to say, the scary stuff happening in Smalltownsville, USA unfolds on one long Halloween night. In the first outing, the excellent Dylan Baker riffs on his creepy paternal image from HAPPINESS as a warped school principal with a sideline in killing juvenile trick or treaters…and a young son who has his own issues. The second story focuses on the efforts made by pals to get 22 year old Anna Paquin to lose her cherry ; this virginity-shedding exercise turns out to be a skin-shredding werewolf initiation ritual rather than a sex-fest.

   In the third and creepiest story, a bunch of kids decide to invoke the old town legend of a school bus massacre and, after some prankery, fall victim to the risen dead in a wonderfully spooky visual homage to John Carpenter’s THE FOG.

   Finally, the closing tale starts out as a variation on TRILOGY OF TERROR’s legendary “Amelia” episode, with Brian Cox (in self-designed make-up modeled on John Carpenter!) as a grouchy, Halloween-hating loner menaced by a pint-sized, sack-masked silent, ankle-slicing trick or treater from Hell. Its punch line, however, (revealing what “Sam” is really after) is something else entirely.

   None of the stories in this anthology disappoint, with each successive episode possessing the creepy, chilly, funny feel of a scary story really well told. Bucking the trend for reveling in sadism and protracted suffering, Dougherty makes effectively sparing use of gore and practical effects, while never letting the rich sense of humor intrude on the scares. He also, refreshingly, doesn't’t hold back on the killing of children when the story demands, and has witty fun with genre archetypes like the creepy neighborhood old-timer, gawky bullied outsider and teenage virgin.

   The best elements of 80’s funhouse horror movies like LADY IN WHITE and THE MONSTER SQUAD are invoked in the best way by TRICK ‘R TREAT, a movie destined to be a genre classic in the future despite being thrown away by the studio that made it.