03-004 The Haunted, The Conjuring 3.5?

03-004
The Haunted, The Conjuring 3.5?

The real life demonologist couple Ed and Lorraine Warren are the core of the horror movie franchise The Conjuring Universe. The Warrens have investigated in more than a thousand of paranormal cases throughout their career. Any of their cases can be elaborated into a movie. Develop a franchise basing on real cases means there would never be running out of ideas in expanding The Conjuring-verse.

Apart from basing on real cases, The Conjuring Universe also has something unique.

First, the franchise is very young. Compare to other movie franchises like Alien, A nightmare in the Elm Street, or James Bond, The Conjuring Universe is less than a decade old. With the first movie only came out in 2013, all movies were filmed using almost the latest technology. Apart from the first 2 movies, The Conjuring and Annabelle, which were still using 35mm negative in filming, all the following movies switched completely to digital camera. Also, CG was already quite advance in 2013. One may find difficult to convince oneself that the 1979 Alien actually came after the 2017 Alien: Covenant. But putting the 2013 The Conjuring after the 2018 The Nun wouldn’t cause much trouble. 

Second, the franchise is also under tight control. The directors and story writers are always the same group of people. Same production companies always reappear, “New Line”, “The Safran” and “Atomic Monster”. A tight control can minimize contradictions between movies.

All these make the franchise looks awesome from appearance. But this also means less fun. New Line did added some salt to it. 5 short films were officially embraced through a competition. And with the release of the limited comics series The Conjuring: The Lover,  the franchise has stretched its hand to the printing media. But apart from those, it seems there are nothing else.

As the Warrens are real people and their cases are claimed to be real, one can make movies based on their cases without conflicting any copyright. Just to make it clear, the Annabelle story is a creation by The Conjuring team and is copyrighted. But the Annabelle doll is a real figure. You cannot copy the Annabelle storyline. But you can create your own movie featuring the Annabelle doll, alongside with your own storyline.

And indeed, many Warrens’ cases were adapted on the screen decades ago.

Movies That Are (Technically) Part of the Conjuring Universe -

https://halloweenyearround.wordpress.com/2020/08/10/movies-that-are-technically-part-of-the-conjuring-universe/

So, let us move away from The Conjuring Universe and explore somewhere else.

The Haunted, an adaptation of the “Smurl haunting”

The one that I want to talk about first is the 1991 The Haunted, a low-budget American “made-for-TV film”. It is difficult to find a copy of the movie but fortunately, the movie is available on YouTube. Let us watch it first.

This article gives a detailed analysis on this movie.

The Lost Conjuring Movie: 1991’s The Haunted -

https://www.comingsoon.net/movies/features/879577-the-lost-conjuring-movie-1991s-the-haunted

How do you feel about it? Atmosphere is very difference from those of the Conjuring-verse movies, for sure. And the 4:3 aspect ratio keeps reminding me that the movie has never made its way to the big screen.

The timeline of this movie is set in year 1986, 5 years after The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. You really can’t consider this movie as a part of The Conjuring Universe and call it “The Conjuring 3.5”. But still, Ed and Lorraine appeared in it. It is a “Warren movie” in no doubt!

Remember that the Wikipedia has only listed out 9 notable investigations of the Warrens? The Conjuring Universe has already dramatized 5 of them. And this TV movie dramatized the 6^th, the “Smurl haunting”.

How about the remaining 3 cases? Stay tuned. I will talk about them.

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