There was a studio who specialized in making horror movies that was soon green-lit to make a sequel to the classic masterpiece The Nightmare Before Christmas. Tim Burton, Henry Selick and Danny Elfman were not entirely involved, except as consultants. This worried me a lot when I was called on to be a script producer.
They had borrowed the sets and puppets, even adding their own modifications where it was needed. What bothered me were some occasional splatters of blood in some areas of Halloween Town, but I didn't let it bother me. It was probably nothing.
I have to say though, the script (with the lack of stage direction, I noticed) bothered me a lot. Especially since the title of the film had the weirdest subtitle attached.
The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Smile Doll.
The Smile Doll? That not only didn't make sense, but it also wasn't even grammatically correct. 'The Doll Smile' would have been better. Not so much, maybe, but it made more sense. But why not "The Smiling Doll"?
I'm nitpicking here, and that's not why we're here.
The stop-motion animators had finished the animation of a few scenes for the film, and the voice actors had already recorded their lines, so they were ready to show us one of the cuts. Since I was one of the few left from the day's work, I decided to stay back and watch the cut in the editing room. The director, editors and screen writer were present as they set up the screen to show us the scenes. For whatever reason, I didn't like the feeling of this one little bit.
Regardless, I sat down with the rest of the crew that was present for the test screening, and faced the screen intently.
When the screen faded away from black, Jack Skellington was on screen, talking a stroll around Halloween Town. He's smiling, just enjoying the day. So far so good, I wondered where this was going and what could be happening.
The Mayor then comes on screen, and tells Jack that there's something wrong at the lab, that Dr. Finkelstein wants to see him at once. Trying to calm down the nervous politician, Jack asks what happened and if it had something to do with Sally. The Mayor confirms it, and it's all Jack needs to hear before he bolts. A few of us couldn't help but go "Awww" at his devotion to his lady love.
The screen went black, and then cut to the next scene, which was Jack now coming into Dr. Finkelstein's labratory. The said mad scientist was sprawled on the floor, having been pushed out of his wheelchair, grumbling to himself. Jack approaches him and asked if he was okay, as well as what had happened. Dr. Finkelstein explains that he was trying a new experiment and asked Sally to be his guinea pig. However, a combination of miscalculated measurements, using the wrong formula and materials ended up in a disaster.
Once again the screen cuts to Sally's room as Jack enters it. Sally is at her sewing machine, her back is to us as she sits at an angle, working on something that we can't see. Jack calls out to her and asks if she's all right. Sally doesn't respond, but she does sit up straighter, though she doesn't turn around. She says that she's just fine.
But as I was watching, I felt a strange chill when she spoke up, which didn't make sense. It didn't sound like Sally at all. She sounded like a villain who was speaking in that kind of sweet, quiet, emotionless voice. I began to wonder what had happened during the experiment, wondering if it had led to a dramatic change in her.
Jack hesitates, probably feeling the same way the rest of us were, and approached her closer. He asks her what happened in the lab, to which she replies that she just had a bit of a makeover to make her look scarier.
Her voice was unsettling to me, and I could feel the trembles of the rest of the crew watching the test screening. I wondered what could possibly have been done to make this possible.
A few frames later, Sally stood up from her sewing machine, still at a deliberate angle so that we couldn't see her face. I could see now that this was turning into some kind of a kid-friendly horror sequel, which I suppose worked for the formula of The Nightmare Before Christmas, but I wasn't sure what to expect. Most of the dialogue, however, didn't seem to come from the script that I head read. Unless they gave me an original draft, I didn't know what was going on.
Jack by then is done playing games, and asks her, but gently, what happened to her, clearly wanting a straight answer from her.
Sally began to turn around to face him, slowly, as if for a big reveal. When she does, we cut back to Jack, who now sees Sally (though we cannot), and his eye sockets go wide and he lets out a gasp of horror. We don't see Sally, but we do hear her speak in possibly the most chilling, horrifying manner that yet again sounds nothing like her. Even though she says it off camera, it feels none the less that she's not sincere.
"You should be careful, Jack... I don't want to have to do this to you, either... But I will have no choice. Go to sleep...and you'll find out."
Once again, the screen faded to black. I didn't know what it was, but the inflection, the tone, everything about the way she had said those three particular words sent a shiver up my spine. Not in a good way either. I was beginning to wonder who was responsible for this, turning a beloved masterpiece like this into something so twisted. Then again, what she was saying was completely vague, but I had a strange feeling that she meant she was going to kill him.
Something was wrong with her. I looked amidst the rest of the crew watching this, even they looked uncomfortable, but overall, very confused. No wonder, I had no idea what was going on myself.
The screen flickered, but then it focused, with the image now tinted orange, with a bit of red, and some black in a few areas.
However, within the image, was a table, and with someone sitting at it. I recognized the shape of the figure, as well as the presented features here and there. The hair, the head, the arms and dress, it was undoubtedly Sally. She sat, with her hands folded together, her head tilted ever so slightly as she stared at us. Smiling.
But her face was not the same. It was terrifying.
Firstly were her eyes. Her original puppet design did give her wide eyes, to be sure, but it seemed that her eyelids, save for her eyelashes, were held back completely, as if ripped away, to have her eyes as wide as possible. Both of which were black voids, almost like eye sockets, but with orange pupils. One was rounder, with a black ring along the inside. The other eye was almost an oval shape, gleaming brightly.
Her mouth, however, seemed to have gone through a major transformation. The stitches along the corners of her mouth were gone, having somehow disappeared or burst. Her human-shaped lips remained, but were stretched along with the rest of her mouth, dripping with blood. Inside her mouth, fully exposed, were enormous teeth, shaped along with the mouth into the smile. Sally's original puppet always did have very prominent teeth, but these were not the same teeth. They were huge, dripping with blood, and did not look natural at all.
She didn't move. She didn't say anything. She just stared at at the camera with that creepy, unnatural smile. Just smiling.
Once again, the screen faded. Then sounds were heard. Screaming. Multiple screaming, likely coming from the characters, but no image came through. The editor apologized, saying they had filmed the scene, but that it didn't come through. Just the audio. More screams filled the air from the screen, and they weren't the kind of screams you'd hear on Halloween. These were screams of pure horror, as if something terrible was happening. I didn't know what they were screaming about, no one did. But I knew it was nothing pleasant.
The screen then came into focus again, this time featuring a bedroom, which was the same bedroom from the opening of the original, with the monster hiding under the bed. Except the focus was on a dresser with a mirror. We could see a reflection in the mirror of the same bed, with the glowing red eyes peering out from under it. I felt relieved, glad to see that the film was taking another step back into the original formula. But it wasn't that way for long.
The orange-red-black tint came back again, overtaking the image. This time, the eyes under the bed were upturned into a sad, terrified way.
What reflected in the mirror was Sally. Smiling.
The screen faded, then came back again. It was the same image as before, revealing Sally once again. This time, she spoke to us in the voice we recognized as her own, but was still chillingly creepy.
"Go to sleep!"
We were all scared out of our wits. Was this a big joke? Why would they create something like this? Why would they completely botch Sally's character this way, and just give her a creepy face and voice?
I didn't understand it. Her original voice actress, Catherine O'Hara, who was reprising her role from the first movie, explained that she didn't remember saying "Go to sleep", which was odd. We didn't know what was going on, even the director and editors had no clue why this was happening.
But I do know now. All I can say is this.
DON'T GO TO
"...I can't believe they wrote something like this," Sally groaned and tossed aside the script for the next fanfiction. "What is this, anyway?"
Looking at the reference files for a moment, Jack turned to Sally. "It seems they're adapting a story from this website called Creepypasta. Which are scary stories, images, and creatures they make up on the internet. The one based here is called The Smile Dog."
Sally frowned, and then took the papers. One of them was a text file, explaining the story of the Smile Dog and who had created it. There were then two images provided. The original image of The Smile Dog, and then the current, edited version that was often used today and associated with the "Go to sleep" tagline.
The original image was a little bit fuzzy and pixelated, as if taking from a distance zoomed in on a digital camera, or blown up to bigger dimensions. It consisted of a dog, Husky to be exact, smiling, or rather, sneering creepily at the viewer. Despite how slightly realistic it looked, it was clearly photoshopped to make it look as though the dog was actually able to muster the correct facial contortions to sneer, which a dog couldn't do. It did serve to be fairly creepy, especially in contrast to the second version. A text below the image stated that it was digitally enhanced, which explained the edition of the teeth to the mouth. According to the story, the original image was to create mental illness upon seeing it.
A little unsettled, but still shaking her head, Sally set it aside and then looked at the edited version. This version was scary to look at, no doubt, but when you sat down to think about it and study it, you could clearly tell it was heavily photoshopped. It just about deviated away from the original image, creating a whole new image, but with the same idea, and still called The Smile Dog. This was the one with the teeth and big gaping, smiling mouth full of blood dripping teeth, the one that was featured in the story. For whatever reason, this was the one used in reference to the Creepypasta today, despite it looking more fake than the original.
Sally then looked at the cover art for the fanfiction, finding herself drawn to look like her original puppet, in the same pose described in the story, the same colouration tinting, and then with bits and pieces of the edited version of The Smile Dog, especially the mouth, edited in a little too haphazardly, that it was clearly fake and didn't match up to her face very well. Even so, it did still look a little creepy, though fake when you were done looking at it.
"Honestly, why would they associate me, the movie, and our town with this?" Sally sighed, shaking her head as she placed the printed image down. "It doesn't make sense."
'Sometimes the fans can get a little wild with their imagination," Jack shrugged, shaking his skull.
"I don't get it, The Smile Dog is really over the top," Sally admitted. "I preferred the Slender Man. He was more subtle and mysterious. This? It's clearly fake and just plain silly."
"You're telling me, I always did appreciate the Slender Man!" Jack agreed.
"Well, I'm not doing it. I'm done here," Sally got up from the table. "I'm going to watch My Little Pony."
Grinning, Jack got up to join her. "I'll make the popcorn!"
Yeah...I had to end this on a silly note.
Anyways, I read an MLP fanfic on the FIMFiction website, called "Happy Rainbow" (which I now can't find for some reason), in which it was inspired by The Smile Dog from the Creepypasta website. You can tell already it has Rainbow Dash as the...yeah, creepy thing. The cover art was edited to give Rainbow Dash the mouth and eyes of The Smile Dog. Yeesh!
And strangely, I was inspired to write this. I don't know why I did.
Oh well, I didn't want to go too far either, to make it more ambiguous and that she didn't kill anybody. I just couldn't do it. I wanted to do it in the spirit of the terror, not quite the gore. I just couldn't.
So, in a way, call this a bonus since I'm just making a parody of a parody. XD A parody of when the fans take a series with no horror or gore but put some in anyway. Originally, I was going to make this a separate one-shot, but I thought I'd put it here instead.
I own nothing!