The Wild Branding History Of: Horror Films [FREE Until Halloween Night]
Explore the origin stories of distinctive brand assets in horror classics. No Spoilers!
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We know distinctive brand assets—logos, brand mascots, jingles, taglines, etc.—drive growth... in consumer brands. But I often think about how distinctiveness shows up outside of products and services.
Horror Classics vs. Christmas Classics
A few years ago, I analyzed how Christmas movies grow. I looked at the highest-grossing films (adjusted for inflation), opening weekend performance, and surveys of today’s most beloved holiday classics. A few patterns stood out:
Opening weekend predicted long-term success.
Critical acclaim barely mattered—Home Alone 2 has an abysmal Rotten Tomatoes score. For shame!
Star power helped enormously.
Sequels almost always performed well.
Box office flops often found new life as annual TV staples (A Christmas Story, It’s a Wonderful Life) during a time with far fewer options than today.
Most importantly, pre-existing fame and uniqueness drove success. Rudolph built on the popularity of the song, The Santa Clause leveraged perhaps the most famous and instantly recognizable “mascot” of all time—Santa—and other films drew on well-known characters from other genres, like the Muppets or Charlie Brown. The only truly original hit was Home Alone—even its producers were blindsided by its success on opening weekend.
In other words, Christmas movie success relied on:
Mental availability: pre-existing iconic characters, sequels, songs
Physical availability: marketing budgets, opening weekend sales, VHS/DVD distribution, and yearly TV reruns
In every film, distinctiveness played a critical role in its success, but ultimately, that distinctiveness was not built from scratch.
Horror films flip that logic. Their success rarely starts with familiarity—it starts with distinctiveness. The most famous franchises launched with something radically unique: a sound, a mask, or a memorable line.
Christmas films relied on distinctiveness, but it was inherited. Santa’s red suit, flying reindeer, Charlie Brown’s yellow-and-black shirt—all existed before the films. Horror had to invent its assets from scratch: masks, costumes, theme songs, and villains were born on screen.
Horror Classics vs. Consumer Brands
A great filmmaker knows how to captivate an audience; a great brander knows how to be remembered. Filmmakers often overlook the commercial power of distinctiveness, focusing instead on emotional impact. Branders frequently do the same—but without the same payoff. For filmmakers, emotion is the goal. For brands, it’s a means to an end. And audiences know the difference.
Viewers accept that films are meant to move them, even if they also make money. No one expects that from a brand. Brands don’t get two hours of attention—they get seconds. That’s why distinctiveness works differently in each world.
In branding, distinctiveness is much less an artistic choice and more a deliberate tool for recognition. A logo doesn’t need to make you feel something in the moment; it just needs to trigger everything you already feel toward the brand. The Apple logo doesn’t need to look innovative or inspire emotion on its own—if not for the brand built around it, it could just as easily belong to an elementary school.
Filmmaking is different. Its distinctive assets—like a mask or theme song—have to do something on their own. A Halloween mask has to be both scary and memorable. A score has to reinforce the emotion as it unfolds. But filmmakers could learn something from brand science, too. The most iconic movies, especially horror films, don’t rely on emotion alone—they build instantly recognizable cues that burn into memory. A mask, a sound, an iconic movie line. Deliberate distinctiveness doesn’t dull emotion—it anchors it, making sure the feeling lasts long after the credits roll.
Types of Distinctive Brand Assets In Film
This article isn’t about how Halloween movies grow, but how they were born—and how accidents of design became enduring assets. Horror films with unusual visual or audio traits were far more likely to become classics or evolve into franchises. Many of those traits were chosen on a whim, yet became inseparable from the films’ identity.
Just like consumer brands, horror films rely on recognizable cues to stay in memory. Their distinctive brand assets just take different forms:
Mascots → Costumes
Taglines → Famous movie lines and film taglines
Jingles → Theme songs
Advertising styles → visual motifs
Logos → Movie posters
Both films and brands rely on repetition and distinctiveness to anchor these cues in memory—the difference is in how those cues are created. Filmmakers often stumble into them, while brands try to engineer them.
I’d love to see more filmmakers take a page from marketing science and design their distinctiveness deliberately, rather than by accident.
But enough theory—let’s get to the real reason you clicked on this article: the backstories behind these iconic Halloween assets.
Brand Assets: Costumes
Brand mascots are known to be one of the most powerful assets for consumer brands. The same can definitely be said for the costumes that made horror classics famous.
Ghostface - Scream
In the Scream franchise, the killers target teens whose deaths follow the “unwritten rules” of classic horror movies—rules like never have sex, never drink or do drugs, and never say “I’ll be right back.” Each murder plays out as both a parody and a tribute to the slasher genre’s clichés, turning the film itself into a self-aware commentary on horror tropes.
“Ghostface” is the costume worn by various killers throughout the Scream franchise. Within the film, it had to be something any would-be killer could buy off the rack—ordinary enough to be believable, but eerie enough to stick in memory. That’s almost exactly how Marianne Maddalena, one of the film’s producers, discovered it in real life—though the story was far more accidental.
Three weeks before shooting, Wes Craven, Maddalena, and the rest of the Scream team were still struggling to design the mask that would become the star of the film.
Then, during a location scout, Maddalena stumbled upon it by accident—sitting on a chair in a boy’s bedroom in one of the houses they were considering for the shoot.1 It was the exact mask that would end up in the final film, though with a white shroud. She’d stumbled onto the “Wailing Ghost” mask, made by the costume company Fun World.
She ran downstairs to show the team, ecstatic. They weren’t impressed. “No, we’re going to make our own,” they replied. Somehow, no one seemed to grasp just how absurdly lucky it was—that the perfect mask they’d been struggling to create was simply sitting there, waiting, while they were out scouting for a house.
The team resisted the found mask for another couple of weeks, until Maddalena raised it again, hoping the homeowner still had it. Craven finally relented: “Ok… but I want to make some alterations.”
There was still one obstacle—the rights belonged to Fun World, the mask’s producer. Dimension executive Cary Granat initiated negotiations that same day. Meanwhile, the crew experimented with altered versions. When shooting began, they used a slightly modified mask, but soon realized the original worked best and went back to replace the shots with the Fun World version. By now, the rights to Ghostface must be worth millions. Scream only paid around $30,000 for them.
The rest of the costume was also a challenge. According to Maddalena, Craven was “not a happy camper” when he first read the script, which only described the killer as wearing a “ghostly white mask.” He worried: “How do you hide the feet? How do you hide the hands?”
The team experimented with a black turtleneck and other ideas before settling on a… white robe?
Once again, Maddalena provided the crucial suggestion, recommending a black robe for maximum scare factor—an idea that would stick.
Michael Myers - Halloween
Halloween was shot on a shoestring budget, yet went on to become the highest-grossing independent film of all time when it was released in 1978.
In the film, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital to kill his sister, after murdering the rest of their family as a boy. In the script, the adult killer was described as having a “blank face.”
With almost no money for props, Tommy Lee Wallace was sent to find a mask at a local costume shop—and stumbled upon a Captain Kirk mask from Star Trek.
According to William Shatner, the mask Wallace found was actually a replica of a “death mask” used on the Star Trek set—a placeholder so Shatner wouldn’t need to be on set for scenes where his character had to look older or altered in some way.
Wallace modified the mask by cutting larger eye holes, removing the eyebrows and sideburns, painting the face white, and darkening the hair.
The crew tested two options: a sad clown mask, which everyone agreed was “eerie,” and the altered Captain Kirk mask. When someone tried the latter on, the reaction was instant. “We were all like, ‘oh, fuck me,’” Wallace recalled. The Kirk mask was terrifying—and instantly iconic.
As for the rest of the costume, the origin wasn’t nearly as random as the mask. Myers’ dark grey coveralls came straight from the story itself—he kills a mechanic early in the film and takes his clothes as his own.
Jason Vorhees - Friday The 13th
If you’re like me, you might forget that Jason’s iconic hockey mask didn’t appear until Friday the 13th Part III.
In the first film, the killer murders several teenage counselors trying to reopen an abandoned summer camp in 1980 after a tragic incident decades earlier. In Part II—which takes place five years after the first film—Jason Voorhees picks up where things left off, killing more teenagers at the same camp. Part III begins right after, with Jason murdering a shop owner, stealing his clothes, and continuing his rampage at a nearby lake house.
The filmmakers have openly admitted they borrowed the whole Friday the 13th concept from Halloween, so it’s fitting they borrowed that detail too—having the killer take the clothes of someone he’d just murdered. To be fair, it’s also a pretty practical move when you need new clothes and you’re committed to killing teenagers.
Of course, no one talks about Jason’s costume from the neck down. Whereas Michael Myers’ coveralls are fairly distinct, Jason’s green button down and jeans are pretty generic and have changed a lot over the years. What really makes Jason Vorhees an iconic movie mascot is his hockey mask.
In Friday the 13th Part II, Jason wore a sack over his head. By Part III, the script said he’d wear a mask—but no one had decided what kind.
During a lighting test one day, director Steve Miner needed Jason in frame, but no one wanted to bother with makeup. So, they grabbed the first mask they could find. As luck would have it, the film’s 3D effects supervisor, Martin Jay Sadoff—a die-hard hockey player—had his hockey gear with him on set that day. Inside his bag was a Detroit Red Wings goalie mask. They threw it on Richard Brooker (who played Jason) just for the test.2
It worked. Miner instantly loved the look, but the mask was too small. The crew enlarged it, made new molds, and production assistant Terry Ballard added red triangles, new holes, and subtle changes to make it unique. What started as a lazy workaround during a lighting check became one of the most iconic masks in movie history.
Hannibal Lector - Silence Of The Lambs
In The Silence of the Lambs, Dr. Hannibal Lecter—a brilliant psychiatrist and convicted cannibal—is held in a maximum-security psychiatric facility for the criminally insane. Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee played by Jodie Foster, is sent to interview him in hopes of gaining insight into the mind of another serial killer known as Buffalo Bill.
The mask makes its appearance during Lecter’s transfer from Baltimore State Hospital to a temporary holding cell inside a Tennessee courthouse. The transfer is arranged after he agrees to help Starling and the FBI with the case. To prevent him from biting or attacking anyone, the guards restrain him with a straightjacket and fit him with the now-iconic muzzle-like mask.
It’s the only time in the series that Lecter wears the mask, but the image was chilling enough to make it instantly iconic and one of the most recognizable visuals in film history.
Like the Scream mask, coming up with Lector’s iconic mask took trial and error. Kristi Zea, the production designer for The Silence of the Lambs, called it “an interesting dilemma.”3
Costume designer Colleen Atwood and the team tried a range of ideas—some genuinely creepy, others unintentionally funny. Hopkins tested several different masks, including fencing-style grids and medical restraints, but none felt right.
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Eventually, they decided to make something original. The plan was to give the mask a smooth finish, but when the fiberglass prototype arrived, it looked rough and weathered, almost like dried leather or skin. They kept it that way, and that unfinished sample became the final mask seen in the film.
Freddy Krueger - A Nightmare On Elm Street
Inspired by news reports of a Cambodian refugee who mysteriously died in his sleep after suffering recurring nightmares—a phenomenon that reportedly affected others in the same community—A Nightmare on Elm Street follows a group of teenagers in Springwood, Ohio, hunted in their dreams by Freddy Krueger, a burned man with a glove of razor blades. What happens in their dreams kills them in real life, forcing them to stay awake just to survive.
By 1982, after the success of Halloween and Friday the 13th, the slasher genre was already crowded. Wes Craven wanted to make something different—something psychological. He also wanted to do what most slasher directors avoided: show the killer’s face.
The Fedora
Freddy’s fedora came from Craven’s own childhood. One night, as a boy, he woke to see a drunk man wearing a fedora standing on the sidewalk outside his window, staring up at him. “He just basically somehow knew I was up there,” Craven recalled. “He looked right into my eyes.” Craven ducked out of sight, then looked again after what felt like hours—the man was still there, only now he was walking slowly backward down the street while keeping eye contact. Then he turned the corner—toward the entrance of Craven’s apartment building. Moments later, Craven heard the door open downstairs. He grabbed a baseball bat with his brother, but found no one. That image stayed with him.4
The Sweater
The red-and-green sweater was chosen more scientifically. Craven had read in Scientific American that red and green were the most clashing color combination to the human eye. It seemed fitting for a horror film.5
The Knife Glove
Freddy’s bladed glove was part instinct, part biology. Craven wanted to combine humanity’s primal fear of claws and sharp edges with one of its most evolved traits: hands. But the prop itself was dangerous—according to mechanical effects designer Jim Doyle, “Every time someone put it on, they hurt themselves. If you closed your fist, the blades cut your forearm.”
The Face
Freddy’s grotesque burns came from a slice of pizza. Makeup artist David Miller recalled: “The final design for Freddy was based on a pepperoni pizza. I was having dinner one night, playing with the cheese and pepperoni, and I realized—I’d just made Freddy’s face.”
Sam - Trick R’ Treat
You’ve probably started seeing Sam more often in recent years, appearing alongside more well-known Halloween characters in decorations and displays. If you’re not a horror fan, though, you might not know who he is.
Sam is the pint-sized enforcer from Trick ’r Treat, a film structured as an anthology of Halloween stories. He punishes anyone who fails to honor the spirit of the holiday, serving as a unifying thread across the film’s separate tales.
What makes Sam unique is that he may be the only truly intentional “mascot” created for a horror film. He was designed by writer-director Michael Dougherty for his NYU animated thesis film, Season’s Greetings. According to Dougherty in a documentary interview about the film, his goal was straightforward: “Every holiday has a cool mascot. Halloween is the only one that didn’t. There are iconic images, but not a single mascot character.”6
For authenticity, Sam was played by a real 7-year-old, giving his movements a natural, childlike quality. As for what truly lurks beneath the costume—you’ll have to watch the film to see the surprise for yourself.
Brand Assets: Theme Songs
Jingles are another powerful distinctive brand asset for consumer brands. The same can be said for movie theme songs and motifs.
“Tubular Bells” - The Exorcist
Tubular Bells is best known as the theme from The Exorcist, but it actually comes from a groundbreaking instrumental progressive rock album written by Mike Oldfield, who began composing it at just 17. Its unusual 15/8 time signature was virtually unheard of in rock at the time, and its mix of bells and slowed-down electric guitars helped pave the way for the New Age music movement.7
When director William Friedkin was searching for a score for The Exorcist, he’d commissioned music he didn’t like. He wanted something “akin to Brahms’ Lullaby” to evoke a sense of childhood. After consulting the head of Warner Bros., he was sent to the studio’s music library down the hall, where he discovered Tubular Bells. Warner Bros. had little interest in the album, so Friedkin acquired the rights himself.8 When The Exorcist premiered, the album exploded in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time.
“I Got 5 On It” - Us
Us (2019), from Key & Peele co-creator turned horror auteur Jordan Peele, follows a vacationing family terrorized by another family that looks exactly like them. It’s only been six years since its release, but the comparisons between Peele and Hitchcock already feel earned—and I’d bet Get Out, Us, and Nope will all be considered classics within the decade.
The film is loaded with instantly recognizable visual cues—from gloved hands wielding scissors to the now-iconic red coveralls, which feel like a modern extension of a horror villain tradition. But one of its most striking cues is actually auditory: the main theme, a haunting horror remix of Luniz’s 1995 hit “I’ve Got 5 On It.”
The remix wasn’t originally made for the film itself—it was composed for the official trailer by Michael Abels. Audience reaction was so strong that Peele decided to integrate it as the film’s central musical motif. He had long felt the song carried an eerie undertone. In an interview about his choice for the trailer, he said, “I love songs that have a great feeling but also a haunting element to them, and I feel like the beat in that song has this inherent cryptic energy, almost reminiscent of the Nightmare on Elm Street soundtrack.”9
Interestingly, in an episode of The Empire Film Podcast, Peele revealed that the final fight scene was originally filmed with Pas de Deux from The Nutcracker as its score, highlighting how the film’s music evolved into the memorable, unsettling motif audiences now associate with Us.10
Since discovering the eerie potency of I’ve Got 5 On It, Peele has continued the trend—turning the 80s pop hit Sunglasses at Night into a haunting motif in his most recent film Nope, weaving it through the film’s most suspenseful moments. The collaboration between Jordan Peele and composer Michael Abels has already drawn comparisons to Steven Spielberg and John Williams… by Spielberg himself.11
Ch, Ch, Ch, Ah, Ah, Ah (Actually Ki, Ki, Ki, Ma, Ma, Ma) - Friday The 13th
In the original Friday the 13th, several scenes are shot from the killer’s perspective, with a subtle camera wobble to convey the viewpoint. On a practical level, composer Harry Manfredini created a musical motif to immediately signal whose eyes the audience was seeing through—so viewers knew within seconds it was the killer’s perspective.
The sounds in that iconic motif were debated for years—until Manfredini finally clarified what was being said.
Spoiler warning: Skip to the next section on movie lines if you don’t want the original film’s ending spoiled.
In the story, the tragic incident at the heart of the plot is the drowning of a young boy, Jason, at the camp. He was thrown into the lake and went undiscovered due to the negligence of the counselors. The killer in the first film—who Jason Vorhees succeeds in later installments—is his mother, Pamela Vorhees.
Toward the film’s climax, Pamela chases a teenage girl and utters, in a childlike voice, “Kill her, mommy.” This suggests she is hearing her son’s voice in her head as she hunts her victims.
Manfredini used that line as the basis for Jason’s motif. He took the first two letters of the first and last words of Pamela’s hallucination—“Ki…ma”—recorded them himself, and then distorted them into the haunting audio cue that became synonymous with the series. The motif signals that, with every kill, Pamela is guided by the imagined voice of her son.
Brand Assets: Movie Lines
Certain movie lines stick in our minds long after the credits roll, becoming shorthand for the film itself. Like distinctive brand assets, they instantly trigger recognition and recall, carrying the story—and the emotion—of the movie in just a few words.
Most movie lines get misattributed or forgotten over time. These are unmistakable.
“Here’s Johnny” - The Shining
The Shining has no mascot, franchise, or a particularly strong theme song, yet it’s often hailed as one of the greatest horror films ever made. Few would argue that Stanley Kubrick isn’t a genius or that this isn’t among his best work.
The film follows Jack Torrence, a man hired to be the caretaker of a sprawling ski resort. He brings his wife and young son, hoping the isolation will help him finish his latest novel. Meanwhile, his son begins experiencing supernatural phenomena and discovers he is telepathic, able to sense a mysterious force called “the shining.” Over time, Jack slowly descends into madness, culminating in a murderous rampage against his own family.
According to a study that tracked viewers’ heart rates and asked them to rate the films that scared them most, the scariest movie moment of all time is Jack Nicholson’s “Here’s Johnny” scene. Jack bursts through a door, peers through the splintered hole, and grins maniacally while chasing his wife and son with an ax.12
That line became legendary thanks to Nicholson’s improvisation—he ad-libbed it on the spot. There’s a clever cultural layer, too: in 1980, audiences would have instantly recognized the reference to The Tonight Show, which opened with Ed McMahon—perhaps better known to some 90s kids from The Price Is Right—calling out, “Here’s Johnny!” before Johnny Carson appeared through a rainbow-colored curtain. Kubrick twists that cheerful, familiar phrase into pure terror.13
“It’s Alive!” - Frankenstein
The line “It’s alive!” is famously shouted by Dr. Frankenstein after his creation springs to life. In Mary Shelley’s original novel, Frankenstein reacts with terror and revulsion, recoiling from what he has made. The 1931 film flips that reaction: here, he exclaims with pride and triumph, celebrating his achievement rather than fearing it.
The line is often spoofed with a thunderclap immediately following it—but that iconic punch was partly a workaround. The original line continued: “In the name of God, now I know what it feels like to BE God!” This second half was censored to secure a seal from the Production Code Administration (PCA), which deemed it offensive to Christian audiences. To hide the excised line, the filmmakers used a jump cut and a loud clap of thunder immediately after “It’s alive!”
Before the censorship, the film had attempted to placate the PCA with an opening narration describing Frankenstein as “a man of science who sought to create a man after his own image without reckoning upon God.” It wasn’t enough. The second half of the line was removed, and remained unknown to the public until it was rediscovered in the 1980s.14
“I Ate His Liver With Some Fava Beans And A Nice Chianti” - Silence Of The Lambs
When Hannibal Lecter warns Clarice Starling not to “test me,” he recounts the fate of the last person who did—a census taker, murdered and served as a meal. He chillingly adds that he “ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.”
Even more unsettling than the idea of a human liver with fava beans and a fine chianti is the hiss Anthony Hopkins adds at the end. That chilling sound wasn’t scripted; Hopkins had been joking around with the hiss on set, and its inclusion here turned it into one of the most unnerving touches in cinematic history.15
There’s another layer to the line. Reddit sleuths have noted that liver, fava beans, and wine—all high in tyramine—can dangerously interact with monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), a drug that could have treated Lecter’s own condition. The implication being that Lecter was likely off his meds when he killed the census taker.16 Whether the filmmakers included this detail knowingly remains unknown.
The Power Of Unplanned Creativity
From masks and costumes to theme songs and unforgettable lines, horror films show how powerful distinctive assets can be—sometimes by accident, sometimes by design. Unlike consumer brands, which carefully engineer recognition, many of these iconic horror cues were improvised, stumbled upon, or discovered by sheer luck. And yet, they endure, becoming instantly recognizable shorthand for the films themselves.
Whether it’s Michael Myers’ altered Captain Kirk mask, Jason Vorhees’ goalie helmet, or Hannibal Lecter’s muzzle, these assets demonstrate that distinctiveness—when repeated and reinforced—anchors a story in our memory. Audiences don’t need a full two-hour explanation; a single visual, sound, or line can trigger the entire narrative in an instant.
The lesson isn’t just for filmmakers to lean on marketing science to manufacture memorable assets. Branders could take a page from the horror playbook: embrace a little randomness, experiment under constraints, and leave room for accidents. Sometimes the quirkiest, most improvised choices become the elements people remember most. Unplanned creativity, when recognized and amplified, can create assets that are far more memorable—and iconic—than anything fully scripted.
Hills, Ryan. Interview With Marianne Maddalena. Scream Trillogy, 2020
Grove, David (2005). Making Friday the 13th: The Legend of Camp Blood. FAB Press.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/silence-of-the-lambs-the-interesting-dilemma-of-selecting-hannibal-lecters-mask-4130361/
https://the-take.com/read/what-inspired-a-nightmare-on-elm-street-and-freddy-krueger
https://theartofcostume.com/2021/10/22/designing-fear-freddy-krueger/
https://www.thehorrorsofhalloween.com/2014/06/trick-r-treat-the-lore-and-legends-of-halloween.html?m=1
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/tubular-bells-the-exorcist/
https://www.vice.com/en/article/revisiting-the-exorcist-with-director-william-friedkin-1030/
https://ew.com/trailers/2018/12/25/us-movie-trailer-jordan-peele/
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/empire-podcast-us-spoiler-special-ft-jordan-peele/
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-en-mn-composer-michael-abels-20171206-story.html
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/oct/31/the-shining-heres-johnny-scariest-movie-scene-jack-nicholson
https://www.cracked.com/article_46710_how-the-shinings-heres-johnny-became-comedy-gold.html
https://screenrant.com/frankenstein-1931-universal-classic-monster-censorship-iconic-its-alive-line/
https://www.slashfilm.com/714947/this-improvised-sir-anthony-hopkins-line-changed-the-silence-of-the-lambs-forever/
https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/films/news/the-secret-joke-hidden-in-silence-of-the-lambs-most-famous-line-10011561.html