3 Horror Movies That Deserve a TV Show

To be honest, all you had to say was Zoe Saldana and that was enough to get me to tune in to the upcoming remake of Rosemary's Baby. All you have to say is Zoe Saldana to get me to do anything really. NBC has shared the full press release for the show on their official website and, Saldana aside, it promises epic conflict between wife and husband, mother and child, and neighbor and neighbor — which is to be expected when your neighbors are in a cult and your husband has sold your unborn baby to them in exchange for fame and fortune. Saldana will spend four hours trying to save herself from Roman Castevat, played by Jason Isaacs (or, as I still call him, Lucius Malfoy), and his wife Margeaux Castevat, played by Carole Bouquet, while her husband Guy sits around being as useless as a man who promised your baby as a human sacrifice would be.

The mini-series will be the third show on television lately that is a remake or prequel to a beloved horror movie and I'm hoping it won't be the last. As an avid fan of movies that make me want to lock all my doors and windows and never sleep again, there are a lot of films that left me wanting more after the credits started to roll. And, no, I don't mean more in the form of increasingly terrible sequels that made me wish Hollywood would just stop with that already. I mean more in the vein of Hannibal and Bates Motel, shows I didn't know that I could have before, where my beloved sociopathic serial killers are surrounded with a cast of supportive friends, family, and potential victims and I can watch their weekly journey into becoming the people I met on the screen.

Now that I am in this magical world where I don't have to pay $12.50 to watch a horror movie that only lasts for two hours (though that won't stop me), there are a lot of movies that should be turned into a TV series following the success of Rosemary's Baby.

1. The Exorcist

Rosemary's Baby has got nothing on Linda Blair in The Exorcist. When 12 year old Reagan MacNeil got possessed by the demon Pazuzu, what followed was two hours of disgusting contortions, projectile vomiting, and foul sacrilegious language that had everyone in the audience cringing in their seats. Reagan's possession wasn't the first time that Father Lankester Merrin had dealt with Pazuzu and he certainly couldn't have been the only person to ever go up against the demon. A prequel to The Exorcist following the trail of bodies that Pazuzu has left in his wake, perhaps done in an anthology style similar to American Horror Story, would be amazing.

2. A Nightmare on Elm Street

1... 2... Freddie's coming for you... If that didn't send a shiver down your spine, then how about remembering that before Freddie Krueger became the king of nightmares, he used to slaughter children and escaped being persecuted for it on a technicality? If the parents of Elm Street hadn't turned to vigilante justice to get that man off the streets, then he might have — well, not turned into a vengeful spirit bent on killing those same children in their sleep to punish their parents. Oops. When it comes to A Nightmare on Elm Street-based TV series, instead of following the life of Krueger before it all went wrong, I'd like to follow him after that. Surely, there's got to be an interesting story to be told behind how he got his power over dreams? Maybe he had to earn them and learn how to master them. Maybe A Nightmare on Elm Street wasn't the first time Krueger's been defeated by a group of meddling kids.

3. Scream

I loved Scream 4 as much as the next person, don't get me wrong. But it seems insane that no one's thought to make a TV series out of the most self-aware horror movie in the past fifty years. It parodied scary movies without being as heavy-handed about it as, say, Scary Movie, and if the sight of that many Ghostface masks wandering around the streets on Halloween doesn't give you a chill then there's probably something wrong with you. Or you are Ghostface. The thing that made Ghostface perhaps more terrifying than most other villains is that he could be anyone you know and trust. One of the original Ghostfaces cited peer pressure as the reason for the murders, after all. If Scream were a TV series, then Ghostface could just become the new 'A'.

Image: Warner Bros.