Sometimes, you shouldn't leave it to the professionals. These horror fans took their favorite franchises into their own hands, making tributes to great horror series that — in some cases — are better than the real thing.
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00:00What's up everybody, Griffey here. Fan films have a tried and true history of...sucking.
00:05Here though are some examples where the fans got it right.
00:16I mean, this is what we all want in a fan film, right? Give us the two giant action
00:20figure boogeymen we love hacking and slashing each other. Who will win? Us, the audience.
00:26We'll win.
00:27This is Jason was fun, if not a little corny, but we did a lot of explaining why these killers
00:32would cross paths. This movie issues all that. Without any talking, they just start maiming
00:38each other, brutalizing each other, bloods flying everywhere. They take turns killing
00:42each other only to wake up and then go kill the other one back, right? It's kind of this
00:46circle of murder and mayhem. Why can't I just get a Royal Rumble of horror movie? I don't
00:51want a story, I just want more blades and blood.
00:54I'm asking you if you are the Springwood Slasher.
00:58Well, I prefer the term Springwood Butcher.
01:02What you love about A Nightmare on Elm Street is that the idea of the dream worlds lets
01:07you be unbound to the killer with just knives. So much creativity, so many wonderful practical
01:12effects moments that none of us Nightmare fans will ever forget. You may find it bizarre
01:17that of all A Nightmare on Elm Street fan films, my favorite doesn't involve a nightmare
01:21in any way. In The Confessions of Fred Krueger, we witness the interrogation and confession
01:26of the man who would become our favorite dream demon. No tricks, no dreamscapes, just a harsh
01:32fluorescent light on this man and how truly horrifying he was before he could attack us
01:38in our sleep. The performance is great. And that's always been the hardest part of Freddy
01:42is how do you do Freddy without Robert Englund? This movie does it. This performance is chilling.
01:48Sometimes restraints breed creativity. And by the end of the Nightmare on Elm Street
01:52franchise, we were there for the practical effects. That was the star of the movie. That's
01:57all we really wanted to see. And the stories reflected that poorly, right? This one taking
02:02all of that away and really getting back to the essence of who this monster is, why we
02:08are afraid of him and shouldn't just laugh with him as he flies around like the Wicked
02:12Witch of the West is a beautiful addition to this franchise. I think this is what fan
02:17films at their best do.
02:27When I was a boy, very few movies were cooler than Predator. Just an overflowing geyser
02:32of manly monster fighting energy. As an adult, there may be no more tortured movie monster
02:38than the Predator. In the first one, he's hunting Arnold. That's awesome. The second
02:42one he's hunting Danny Glover. That's awesome. By the time we get to the movie where they're
02:46like, can you imagine Adrian Brody is an elite special ops soldier? You're like, no, because
02:52he looks like he's never eaten food. Prey was a wonderful change of pace and showed
02:56us a world where the Predator could fight with warriors from any time or place. Predator
03:01Dark Ages is my favorite version of this concept. A group of knights are sent to track down
03:06a monster only to cross swords with the Predator. Metal, suits of metal. That is what we want
03:12to see. We want to see the greatest warriors in history fight this Predator. That's what
03:17this monster needs. He must have worthy adversaries. And when he squares up with a medieval knight
03:23who puts his helmet on, he's like, let's go, demon. That's all I want. Predator should
03:27be one of the easiest movies to deliver a good version of, and they constantly don't.
03:33This fan film did a wonderful job. Why can Hollywood not figure this out?
03:47You know what's cool? Michael Myers. You know what is not? The long lineage of broken timelines
03:52and mythology the Halloween franchises has squirted onto screens. We don't want all that.
03:57We just want him to kill people. That's it. And this movie goes there. No one is safe.
04:02I think the most important mission of a fan film is reminding us why we love the character
04:07in the first place. Watching Michael stalk his victims on an autumn night in Happy Halloween
04:12does just that. Beautiful images of this monster on the hunt without being bogged down by curses
04:17or thorns reminds us of the primal nature of this character.
04:22Critters is a fun horror sci-fi romp which spawned a franchise that let its mythology
04:34mutate out of control. By the time you get to part three of Critters, now they're in
04:38an apartment building, we have baby Leonardo DiCaprio, and we have long scenes, what feels
04:43like five minutes of Critters just eating chili and soap and farting bubbles. It's embarrassing.
04:48It's hard to watch. Seeing how off course this series had flown, it was amazing to find
04:52signs of life in the franchise with Critters Bounty Hunter. A very streamlined fan film
04:57about a shape-shifting bounty hunter stalking and battling a Krite through a house. We see
05:02the roll, we see the teeth, we even have the Critters say, oh f***, before it is stabbed
05:07to the wall and murdered. This is such a small and focused version of the story. We see the
05:12bounty hunter come in with the glowing green head, he hasn't taken a form yet. Like everything
05:17in this movie, it's meant to be mostly blank so we can write our love of the franchise
05:22onto the screen. We see one Krite, we see a ball, we see the attack. It's all very fast.
05:28We see Critters eggs. It is a simple, effective, well-made love letter to all of the ideas
05:34that have been trashed throughout this franchise. It's not rewriting history, it's not adding
05:39much, it's just reminding us how much good stuff there is in this franchise.
05:44Hello?
05:45Black Christmas is the movie that set the tone, standards, and most of the tropes we
05:54love about the slasher genre. Knowing that director Bob Clark made this Christmas movie
05:59and a Christmas story is insane to me. I like to imagine a world where TBS just shows The
06:04Moaner for 24 hours straight on one Christmas day. The key element that makes Black Christmas
06:09so scary is the complete mystery of who the killer is. This fan film totally gets what
06:16made this a classic. The calls, the not seeing. Seeing a man truly lose his mind in the attic.
06:22We are playing again with the elements of the first one. It has the legacy sequel elements
06:27of the granddaughter of the girl who escapes the first attack, some of those things. There's
06:31a lot of time with the girls talking about what they would feel had they been in that
06:36first movie, but that becomes a chance for us to reflect on that as well. If this were
06:41the premise for an actual legacy sequel, I would be ecstatic to watch it. They really
06:46earn your trust early in this film.
06:53Oh, Georgie?
06:57Georgie meeting Pennywise is one of my favorite scenes in a horror story. The clown in the
07:02sewer luring this little boy to his demise is a tragedy that ripples out through the
07:06whole story of it. I love that the fan film Georgie uses this moment to see what happens
07:12to the parents in this world. Pennywise returns in the form of Georgie, but not the cute little
07:18boy we all know from the iconic opening of the movie. Now he's an adult. Now he's bald.
07:24Now he looks like he's in a Blue Man Group cover band. And it is grotesque. It adds this
07:30extra nefarious layer to Pennywise. Is he even there to eat her? Is he just there to
07:34haunt her? Does he do this with every parent of every kid he's ever taken? As a parent,
07:40when I saw this short film, I was rocked. I was trying to turn this thing off. It had
07:45me crawling in my skin.
07:47So what becomes of the harvester with no more souls to harvest? What becomes of the hunters
07:54with nothing left to hunt?
07:56There was a time you would have heard me asking for Hellraiser, no more sequels. Hellraiser
08:01is my favorite horror film, but watching some of the entries in this franchise were an assault
08:06on the flesh and mind. This fan film, made by Gary Tunnicliffe, who had done makeup for
08:11the Hellraiser franchise, is a perfect love letter to Penhead. What does Penhead do when
08:16no more nipples need tweaked because all of humanity died in a nuclear apocalypse? I don't
08:21know, but I do love listening to Penhead wrestle with this crisis. Also, Gary didn't just
08:26make this short, he played Penhead. I think he did a pretty good job. It's kind of crazy
08:31to think he just stepped into that role, pulled his nipples off, and crushed it. I actually
08:37think he's better than two of the other Penheads we got in Judgment and Revelation. This is
08:43the dream for every fan film. You're a part of a big franchise. You're the makeup guy.
08:48Then you go and make your own, and you show that you can take the reins. You can pull
08:52the chains that are attached to the Hellraiser franchise. He went on to direct Hellraiser
08:57Judgment, which had me hoping for that nuclear finale. But no more souls will always rule.
09:02He has a moment where Penhead asks, do I just wait for 65 million more years of evolution
09:08to bring me new perverted mammals with which to torture? I had to sit and think, that is
09:13an insane question. Penhead has that kind of reach and longevity if he wants it. It
09:19adds new layers to this character without disrespecting him, which is something the
09:24Hellraiser franchise has not done well.
09:34It's hard to pinpoint where Friday the 13th went wrong as a franchise, because I personally
09:39don't think they did that often. There's part five, right, where it's the EMT and there's
09:43no Jason. But that happens before in the franchise. The first one is just Mama Voorhees. The problem
09:49is how we start adding extra layers that interfere. They're not bad movies. They're just full
09:54of weird choices that get in the way of enjoying this killer use his weapons. And then this
10:00movie gets back to basics. This movie has essentially nothing happen for 10 to 15 minutes.
10:06It's just a guy who's really excited to go hiking and tell you about it. And then out
10:10of nowhere, like a shark, Jason appears and hunts this man down. And he's running for
10:15his life. Putting this hiker in the middle of nowhere with Jason Voorhees is as scary
10:22as this franchise has ever gotten. It's simple. It's clean. It's sadly breastless. But the
10:28lack of extra layers let us focus on the horror of finding ourselves alone in the woods with
10:33this behemoth. It gets a little sloppy at the end when we start introducing more characters,
10:38including Tommy Jarvis. But hey, it's not a Friday the 13th film without the threat
10:42of a sequel.
10:44So that's it. If I missed a great fan film, let me know in the comments. I'll be sure
10:47to check it out. But if it sucks, you can't be mad at me when I make fun of you on the
10:51internet.