Crossover Movie Poster: Stitches

A clown called Stitches is accidentally killed at a ten-year-old named Tom’s birthday party. Six years later, he returns from the grave seeking revenge. The now-teenage Tom takes a medication called Hypnocil to deal with his visions of Stitches. Hypnocil is from the movies A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and Freddy vs. Jason. Since Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees are in the CU, so is Stitches.

This crossover is only one of hundreds found in my forthcoming book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3! As with the first two volumes, this tome is an AUTHORIZED companion to Win Scott Eckert's books Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover of the Week

1991

NOT JUST A JOB

            A man Freddy Krueger has chosen as his new human protégé gets a book from the Springwood library that features a chapter on Krueger, as well as “the infamous John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, and Henry Lee Lucas, as well as less well-known deviants such as Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and the Sawyer family of Texas.”

            Short story by Nancy A. Collins in Nightmares on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger’s Seven Sweetest Dreams, Martin H. Greenberg, ed., St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Gacy, Bundy, and Lucas are all historical serial killers. Michael Myers is from the Halloween series of movies, Voorhees is from the Friday the 13^th films, and the Sawyer family is from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series of films, furthering the connection between these series.

Crossover of the Week

2005

BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON

            Aspiring slasher Leslie Vernon seeks to follow in the footsteps of the great slashers that came before him. Footage is shown of Camp Crystal Lake, the town of Springwood, Ohio, and Haddonfield, Illinois as places that have suffered slasher attacks. Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and Chucky are mentioned by name as existing. A Lament Configuration can be seen in the house of Leslie’s friends Eugene and Jamie. Leslie has a bottle of Stay Awake medicine on his mantlepiece.

            2006 horror film. The references connect Vernon to most of the important slasher series: Friday the 13^th (Jason Voorhees and Crystal Lake), A Nightmare on Elm Street (Freddy Krueger, Springwood, and Stay Awake), Halloween (Michael Myers and Haddonfield), and Child’s Play (Chucky.) The Lament Configuration is from the Hellraiser movies, based on Clive Barker’s story “The Hellbound Heart.” Of interest, one deleted scene has Leslie mentioning that he spent some time in Texas, helping a fellow slasher who was trying to “reinvent his thing,” a reference to Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, and a nod to both the originals and the 2003 remake. Some references in the film do seem to imply that slashers lack supernatural powers, but this can be seen as Leslie simply using showmanship and stage magic to make up for abilities he lacks; this is backed up by a reference to Leslie Vernon in the ghost-slasher film Hatchet II.

Crossover Cover: School Daze

A parapsychologist interviewing Karen Barclay in the aftermath of her encounter with the killer doll Chucky mentions the town of Springwood, OH and its dream-killer. Springwood, Ohio is the hometown of dream-murderer Freddy Krueger, further proving that the Child’s Play movies (and comics) occur in the same world as the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

Crossover Covers: My First Maniac

This miniseries is a prequel to Tim Seeley's comic Hack/Slash, which stars slasher hunters Cassie Hack and Vlad. While researching slashers on the internet, Cassie reads about "a man who kills in dreams in Ohio...a masked maniac who terrorizes a small town on Halloween...a camp plagued for thirty years by a psycho who won't die." Among the other monsters she researches are "rabid dogs" and Hell Spawn, the info on which is accompanied by a picture of Spawn. The man who kills in dreams is Freddy Krueger, from the Nightmare on Elm Street film series. The masked maniac is Michael Myers from the Halloween movies. The psycho who won't die is Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th fame. The rabid dog is the titular canine from Stephen King's novel Cujo. Spawn is a comic book character created by Todd McFarlane; this crossover brings a version of him into the CU, but does not incorporate all of the Image Comics Universe's continuity.

Crossover Cover: Red, White and Blood

The third, and to date final, Nathaniel Cade novel. In this one, Cade and Zach attempt to prevent the parasitic creature known as the Boogeyman from murdering the president. Among the items in Cade’s trophy room are the leg of a cockroach roughly the same size as a human arm, hung on the wall with a plaque reading Operative Samsa, W. Berlin, 1948; a gallon jar filled with formaldehyde holding an insect claw labeled Delambre Remains, 1958; and the dried-out husk of a six-foot-tall praying mantis marked Judas Breed, Adult Stage, New York, 1997. The cockroach arm comes from Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of Franz Kafka's story "The Metamorphosis." The Delambre remains are a reference to the 1958 film The Fly, based on George Langelaan's short story of the same name. The Judas Breed is from Guillermo del Toro's 1997 film Mimic, which was very loosely based on Donald A. Wollheim's story. Tim Lebbon's Hellboy novel Unnatural Selection implied that Hellboy was involved in the events of Mimic. Perhaps he and Cade worked together to resolve the situation. The Whateley farm appears in a flashback, which also mentions Aleister Crowley’s conjuring of a moonchild, the bloody proof of which is all over Whitechapel. The Whateley farm is from Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror," while the moonchild is a reference to Aleister Crowley's novel of the same name. One of the characters in The Moonchild, Simon Iff, also appears in a series of detective stories by Crowley. The Whitechapel reference implies that this moonchild is Jack the Ripper. Since the origins of the Redjac entity have never been explained, this take on the Ripper could be considered valid for the CU.  Among the places where the Boogeyman is reported or confirmed to have been encountered are Fairvale, CA; Camp Crystal Lake, NJ; and Springwood, IL. Fairvale is from Robert Bloch's novel Psycho and Alfred Hitchcock's film adaptation. Camp Crystal Lake is from the Friday the 13th film series. Springwood is from the A Nightmare on Elm Street films. The implication is that the Boogeyman influenced Norman Bates, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger, at least in their initial killings.