Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Featurette Brings “The Red Spot” and “The Big Toe” to Life

The Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series of books delivered readers dozens of terrifying tales from writer Alvin Schwartz, which were made all the more horrifying by illustrator Stephen Gammell’s ghastly artwork. Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has long been working on bringing the series to life, with that dream finally coming to fruition with a film from director Andre Ovredal in August. When it came to how the project would bring the stories to life, del toro and Ovredal had a passionate fan base that they had to appease, with the above featurette giving audiences a better idea of how authentic the live-action endeavor is to the books.

The movie’s synopsis reads, “It’s 1968 in America. Change is blowing in the wind…but seemingly far removed from the unrest in the cities is the small town of Mill Valley where for generations, the shadow of the Bellows family has loomed large. It is in their mansion on the edge of town that Sarah, a young girl with horrible secrets, turned her tortured life into a series of scary stories, written in a book that has transcended time—stories that have a way of becoming all too real for a group of teenagers who discover Sarah’s terrifying home.”

Given the number of iconic stories, figuring out which stories to incorporate into the film was a complicated process. Del Toro previously detailed how the filmmakers went about selecting the most effective stories to adapt for the moviegoing audience.

“We did an American Idol with the stories in the writers’ room,” del Toro shared about the endeavor at an event debuting the film’s first teaser. “We were saying, ‘Which are your favorite?’ We distilled it to the five or six that we like the most. Some of them are told in their entirety, some others are referenced. Those that know the books will see more than people that haven’t read the book.… But we basically distilled it to the ones that everybody seems to remember the most. The books obviously have many many more stories, so this could go on and on. But we said, ‘Let’s do greatest hits.’”

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark lands in theaters on August 9th.

Does this new featurette have you more excited for the film? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!