Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a monumental achievement in the history of cinema, as he applied a variety of directorial techniques he honed on small-budgeted movies and applied them to the beloved fantasy series from author J.R.R. Tolkien. While Jackson understandably utilized a variety of his skills to bring the project to life, Jackson himself has confirmed that the entire impetus for pitching an adaptation of the series was based on how his production team on 1996’s The Frighteners had to purchase dozens of computers to develop the movie’s visual effects, sparking inspiration in Jackson about how he could make use of the equipment. There were other factors along the way that helped motivate Jackson, but that initial spark is all due to The Frighteners.
Videos by ComicBook.com
“One of the things that happened with The Frighteners was our own visual effects company down here in New Zealand, called Wētā, expanded from having one single computer to about 35 computers, I think, is what we ended up with at the height of the effects on The Frighteners, and there’s about 500 CG shots in the film,” Jackson detailed on a featurette for The Frighteners 10th-anniversary DVD release. “It was during the post-production on The Frighteners that everyone was feeling very stressed, we were trying to get all these 500 CG shots done, and I was coming under a stress all on my own, because I was wondering, ‘Gosh, what am I gonna do with all these computers when the movie is finished?’”
He continued, “It was at that time, it was about November ’95 while we were just in the thick of post-production that the idea of doing a fantasy film came about, that I thought, ‘Well, what type of movie could I make that’s gonna need a big computer infrastructure?’ and the idea of doing The Lord of the Rings came into my mind then and the first phone calls about Lord of the Rings were made during the post-production on The Frighteners because I was starting to stress out about having all of these computers and not going to have a film to actually use them on.”
Thanks to boundary-pushing movies like Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, and Dead Alive, Jackson caught the attention of American studios thanks to the impressive things he accomplished with the minuscule budgets of these passion projects. While devout horror fans were somewhat aware of Jackson, it was much harder to track down his indie efforts, as VHS was the only substantial way that American audiences could witness his work, meaning his abilities were often overlooked. Interestingly, filmmaker Sam Raimi similarly delivered audiences compelling, independent horror features in the ’80s and ’90s with his The Evil Dead trilogy and Darkman before making the jump to Spider-Man in 2002, effectively changing the entire landscape of comic book cinema.
[RELATED – A New Lord of the Rings Trilogy Could Be in the Works (With One Condition)]
The Frighteners stars Michal J. Fox as a man who had a near-death experience, allowing him to see ghosts around him. He used these skills to serve as a paranormal investigator, charging homeowners a fee for his services, though he was actually coordinating with these ghosts to pull off the “paranormal hauntings” these homeowners had been subjected to. This element of the premise is what caused the more comedic moments in the movie, but when an otherworldly, cloaked figure starts eradicating ghosts as well as living people, Fox’s character and his ghostly allies aim to uncover the specter who is responsible for the chaos.
Adding another interesting connection between the two films is that the cloaked figure in The Frighteners has a striking similarity to the Ringwraiths in Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, serving as a direct nod to the movie that offered him the resources to bring to life the iconic trilogy.
What do you think of The Frighteners? Contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!
