Spoiler and Cochran
If Cochran had lived and what he had planned DID take place, would every town in America be like Santa Mira (a police state) with Cochran controlling the world?
shareWell, it's possible that Cochran had further resources... I mean, he did steal a titanic stone from Stonehenge. But. I got the impression that he didn't have any strategy for world conquest after his colossal Halloween joke/mass murder.
I imagine that in the wake of his success, there would be epic upheavals in society.
* The religious reacting to a satanic outbreak of epic proportions.
* The non-religious either getting religion or interpreting the event as "paranormal" - rather as I assume Nigel Kneale intended (See "The Stone Tape" and "Quatermass and the Pit")
* The authorities would follow the obvious course of descending on the Santa Mira factory as the source of the deadly masks, regardless of the actual mechanism of the deadliness... Here we see helicopters, SUVs and the most immediately available military hardware supporting an army of armed law enforcement and, probably, the Army... Posse Comitatus? Screw that. Martial Law would be declared.
So, unless Cochran had some much better robots or some serious "combat magic" (Storms of brimstone, fireballs, earthquakes) or had actually invoked Satan or Cthulhu or Whatthefuckever... Well, witch burning might just come back in the form of flamethrowers and napalm bombs. Hell, "combat magic" vs. tac nukes is not out of the question.
Anyway.
Society would change. But any police state would be something we did to ourselves - probably to protect the remaining children.
Covert government research into "paranormal weaponry" would ensue. Great Britain would either be coerced to serve the CIA/NSA/HSA or would become Great again with it's vast resource of megaliths... An international Para-Arms Race would be underway.
All of that for, in Cochran's own words, "a joke on the children"?
Hey... Half a million dead children by apparently supernatural means... Cochran had better have some apocalyptic follow-up or he's dead... Santa Mira's the biggest crime scene since, well, since ever.
And we could definitely write some kick-ass sequels, but they wind up looking a bit like Hellboy.
I think he was willing to die, he wouldn't have resisted. He just wanted to make his point.
Kinda likely, I suppose. I remember the way he clapped when Tom Atkins (the hero) turned the tables by dumping boxes of those deadly Silver Shamrock medallions on the "control room" and magic circle. This was a guy who just appreciated a bit of irony.
Of course, if his plan went off without a hitch and the maximum number of sacrificial victims resulted, maybe he expected to get something for his efforts. Something from a hypothetical dark or elder god... I don't think that Nigel Kneale intended that when he wrote the original screenplay, but... maybe.
Anyway, speaking of Nigel Kneale, I think this story might be based round an alternate version of "The Stone Tape". I'd call this one "The Stone Battery"; with the assumption being that power of some paranormal variety is stored in standing stones that have been the focus of worship and sacrifice. Some sort of mathematical code or symbol series equating to ancient incantations and occult ceremonies (in this case being run on computers) can release and channel the power.
He (Cochran) might think he would be getting something for his efforts; people who become Satanists/witches do believe that they would be treated favourably by the Devil after dying, but I suspect all that would happen or did happen to Cochran was that he ended up frying in hell.
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