With Red State and Tusk, Kevin Smith has established himself as an interesting horror filmmaker even after solidifying his legendary status within the comedy genre, most notably with his many films, which feature Jay and Silent Bob. The pair have appeared in Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and Clerks II, not to mention the Clerks animated series. They even have their own store. And we still have Clerks III and Mallbrats to look forward to.

In fact, we recently learned that they may even appear in Smith’s next genre entry Moose Jaws. He’s been asking fans whether or not he should put them in it. I can’t imagine a majority of Kevin Smith saying no. I also can’t imagine a horror movie written and directed by Kevin Smith with appearances by Jay and Silent Bob not being fun.

In fact, the two almost made it into one a long time ago, and it would have been alongside another familiar face. There were actually talks of a Hellraiser/Jay and Silent Bob crossover and even a Halloween/Jay and Silent Bob crossover at one point.

Smith recalled a conversation with Bob Weinstein for Tuscon Weekly ten years ago. He told the publication:

I’ll let you in on a funny little secret that I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody, but since it’ll never come to fruition, here it is: After we did Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Bob Weinstein called me one night about midnight, and he goes (in his best Weinstein voice), “I have a brilliant idea. You know the arc of classic comedy teams? First, they start off in another movie, then they get their own movie? What did they then do?” And I was like, “Uhh … retired?” And he says, “No, think about it. What did Abbott and Costello do eventually? They met monsters, right?” And I’m like, “Bob, do you want to make a Jay and Silent Bob-meet-monsters movie?” And he’s like, “I’ve got Hellraiser; I’ve got Children of the Corn, and I’ve got Michael Myers … Halloween. So you put Jay and Silent Bob in with those guys.” So for about five minutes, we all mulled over Jay and Silent Bob Meet Michael Myers. My favorite was the idea where Jay and Silent Bob meet Hellraiser, where they find the box, and their version of hell is they wind up in rehab. It will never come to pass, but I thought that was kind of funny. Bob wasn’t wrong. The arc exists in cinema history, but I just don’t know if we were necessarily meant to be part of that arc.

I told Affleck that story once, who stared at me blankly for about 10 seconds and goes, “You know, at first I was going to say that’s fucking retarded, but I bet you a lot of people would go to see that movie.”

Smith retold the story to Crave Online back in 2012:

Yeah, Bob Weinstein said to me one day on the phone, this was after Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, he goes, “You know what happens with buddy team comedies in the history of cinema.” I go, “No, what? They stop making them eventually? People get tired?” And he goes, “Thing about what Abbott and Costello did. They met the monsters.”

This was back in the day at Miramax, not even The Weinstein Company. He’s like, “We haveHellraiser, Pinhead. We have Michael Myers, Halloween. We have Children of the Corn. Why not Jay and Bob meeting the modern day monsters so it’s kind of like Abbot and Costello Meet Frankensteinor The Wolfman but instead it’s Jay and Bob meeting Pinhead?” And I was like, “Bob, I can’t get my head around that.”

I remember I told Ben Affleck that idea. Next time I spoke to Ben I was like, “Bob Weinstein told me, he suggested that I do Jay and Silent Bob vs. Hellraiser.” And Affleck starts laughing and then he stops and he goes, “You know what, man? That movie would make $100 million.” I said, “Get out of here.” He goes, “Come on, dude. Think about it. It’s just so f***in’ stupid that enough people might be like, ‘I want to see what happens.’” I mean, to me it never went beyond that conversation but I’d often joked about if I was going to do it, it would be Jay and Silent Bob with that puzzle box and it snaps into place and they wind up in rehab.”

Now many of you are probably thinking that this would have been a terrible movie, but if you’re asking me, it’s more likely it would have been better than the majority of Hellraiser sequels. Let’s be honest here. There’s really not a lot of love for this franchise beyond its early installments, even from hard core fans. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back came out in 2001, so the next Hellraiser movie after that ended up being 2002’s Hellseeker, and it was all downhill after that. I know which movie I would have gotten more enjoyment out of.

The next Halloween movie to be released was Resurrection, which is one of the most reviled of the franchise. I’d imagine that a lot of Michael Myers fans would have been repulsed by the idea of The Shape meeting Jay and Silent Bob, but I’d bet good money that the film would have more fans today than Resurrection does.

It’s worth noting (as Cracked did in an article about this subject) that Freddy vs. Jason had a Jay knock-off in it. While that was indeed annoying, most of us still have a pretty good time with that movie, right? Had it been the real Jason Mewes (Jay), I’m willing to bet those scenes would have been a lot better. Here’s Jason Mewes (Jay) weighing in on that:

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Smith even had experience with demons and Hell by the time Weinstein brought the idea up, and had played with these concepts in a Jay and Silent Bob movie no less. That film was of course Dogma in which the duo went up against a shit demon and various biblical entities to save God.

In fact, in that Tuscon Weekly interview, Smith described a scene they ended up never shooting for Dogma in which we would have seen what Hell looked like:

There was one moment in a speech that Jason Lee was giving where he turns to Linda Fiorentino, says something like, “Would you like to see what hell looks like?” and covers her eyes. In the script, it was, like, five seconds of the most grisly, horrible, inhuman footage known to man.

The more I read about this, the more I wish Jay and Silent Bob actually did meet Pinhead.

Now, for the hell of it, here’s Jay re-enacting a classic scene from The Silence of the Lambs.

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[Via John Squires]