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Real Life Horror Films
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Serial killers are something that are made of nightmares, the nightmares we are awake to witness. It's something we try and not desensitise ourselves from. As much as we try and forget there are names that will stick with us forever. Hindly and Brady, Jack the Ripper, The Krays, Camden Ripper and Ted Bundy are just a few that are embedded in our history. Each incomparably horrific as the next.
I personally, am obsessed with serial killers. I find it fascinating. I'm so curious about the people that commit the murders. I just question how they think like that? What makes them do it? I'm not alone in this. There are thousands of groups within the online community that are also obsessed. I'm not alone in this thinking!
Then I started to think, what horror films have been made based on real life? There must be a few...
I found a top 50.. so here we go:
I personally, am obsessed with serial killers. I find it fascinating. I'm so curious about the people that commit the murders. I just question how they think like that? What makes them do it? I'm not alone in this. There are thousands of groups within the online community that are also obsessed. I'm not alone in this thinking!
Then I started to think, what horror films have been made based on real life? There must be a few...
I found a top 50.. so here we go:
50. Deranged (1974)
The Horror Movie: Raised by his religious mother to despise women, Ezra Cobb (Roberts Blossom) first digs up dead bodies and decorates his house with them--including the body of his dead ma--then turns his bloody hand to murder.
The True Story: Like many of the films on this list, Deranged was inspired by the life of Ed Gein, America's most notorious serial killer. The film fudges the facts, though: Gein was never into necrophilia.
49. 247F (2011)
The Horror Movie: The old 'cabin in the woods' set-up plays out in this micro-budget horror, in which four friends head to a secluded cabin... and get locked in the sauna. Yes, it's the opposite of Frozen.
The True Story: Three friends spent ten hours in a sauna in Georgia when their friend went to the toilet and forgot to go back, not realising he had locked them all in. Luckily nobody died.
48. Hard Candy (2006)
The Horror Movie: A sinister cyber-groomer (Patrick Wilson) falls prey to his, er, prey in this horror-thriller mash, in which Wilson is tortured by Ellen Page's savvy youngster.
The True Story: Producer David W. Higgins came up with the idea when he saw a news story on 20/20 about Japanese girls who lured businessmen into traps where they were beaten and robbed. "What if the person you expect to be the predator is not who you expect it to be?" Higgins mused. "What if it's the other person?"
47. Fire In The Sky (1993)
The Horror Movie: Sci-fi horror directed by Robert Lieberman. Set in 1975, the film follows logger Travis Walton (D. B. Sweeney), who spots a UFO in the night sky before he's captured by a beam of light and disappears
The True Story: The film's based on Travis Walton's book The Walton Experience, in which the real-life logger details exactly what happened to him in 1975. According to him, he was abducted by aliens and subjected to numerous tests before he was returned to Earth five days later. Walton's story has since become one of the most well-known abduction cases in history.
46. The Legend Of Boggy Creek (1972)
The Horror Movie: Mockumentary horror flick which investigates the existence of a monster that supposedly dwells in an Arkansas swamp. Via staged and allegedly real-life interviews, plus the requisite re-enactment footage, we learn the story of the monster
The True Story: The Fouke Monster is a large Sasquatch-style monster that's reputed to have a home in Fouke, Arkansas. We're sort of imagining Sully fromMonsters, Inc
45. Ravenous (1999)
The Horror Movie: "You are what you eat" screams the tagline for this horror flick. Yes, it's about cannibalism, as Captain John Boyd (Guy Pearce) discovers there could be flesh-eaters afoot in 19th Century America.
The True Story: Robert Carlyle's flesh-eating character was at least partially inspired by Alfred Packer, who stood trial for cannibalism in 1874. He was sentenced to 40 years behind bars and also went under the name Big Headed Cannibal. As you do.
43. Monster (2003)
The Horror Movie: Inspired by the life of Aileen Wuornos, a former prostitute from Florida who was tried and sentenced to death for murdering six men during the eighties and nineties.
The True Story: Though Patty Jenkins' film added in a fictional lover for Aileen (and got more attention for Charlize Theron's uglification), it IS based on Wuornos' life. Or, at least, the colourful, transitory stories that Wuornos told about her life, including the claim that the men she killed had all raped or attacked her at one point.
42. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
The Horror Movie: Based on the titular author's vampire yarn, this follows Count Dracula (Gary Oldman) as he arrives on English soil and doesn't waste any time spilling blood. Meanwhile, Keanu Reeves plays a Brit version of Ted Theodore Logan. Excellent!
The True Story: Though scholars argue back and forth on the matter, it's widely accepted that Stoker based Dracula on Vlad the Impaler, a Romanian folk hero who famously impaled his enemies.
41. Stuck (2007)
The Horror Movie: Mena Suvari leaves her American Pie days far behind her to play Brandi, a nursing home worker who hits Tom (Stephen Rea) with her car after a night of drugs and drinking. Instead of killing him, though, Brandi's left with Tom badly injured and wedged in her windscreen. She leaves him and the car in her garage
The True Story: Chante Jawan Mallard hit a 37-year-old homeless man with her car in 2001 and left the man stuck in her windshield, trapped in her garage. Mallard was sentenced to 50 years in prison
40. Open Water (2003)
The Horror Movie: Scuba divers Daniel Kintner (Daniel Travis) and Susan Watkins (Blanchard Ryan) are stranded in shark-infested waters when they're left behind during a sea-bound excursion.
The True Story: Tom and Eileen Lonergan disappeared near the Great Barrier Reef in January 1998 when a diving company left them behind by accident. Two days later, the company realised their mistake (sheesh) and manned a search, but the Lonergans were never found.
39. The Haunting In Connecticut (2009)
The Horror Movie: When the Campbell family move into a new home to better facilitate their son's ill health, they discover it used to be a mortuary... and the dead people who once rested there aren't happy about their new guests.
The True Story: Al and Carmen Snedeker lived in an allegedly haunted funeral parlour in Connecticut. Their spooky goings-on were so disturbing that infamous paranormal researchers Ed and Lorraine Warren were brought in to investigate.
38. Primeval (2007)
The Horror Movie: American news bods Tim Manfrey (Dominic Purcell) and his cameraman Steven Johnson (Orlando Jones) head to Burundi hoping to track down a man-eating crocodile. They get more than they bargained for when the croc turns out to be a 25-ft monstrosity
The True Story: A 20-ft long crocodile called Gustave really does live in Burundi. He's thought to be 65 years old, has managed to evade authorities for years, and is generally considered to have eaten around 300 people. Sometimes true life really is worse than the movies
37. Hoboken Hollow (2006)
The Horror Movie: Drifter Trevor (Jason Connery) is offered a ride and ends up trapped by the evil Brodrick family, who live in a remote Texas ranch known only as Hoboken Hollow.
The True Story: In 1984, a ranch known as the Texas Slave Ranch was raided by authorities who discovered that workers were being kept against their will to work the land. Not only that, there were also recordings of torture sessions involving cattle prods, and the discovery of human remains.
36. The Mothman Prophecies (2002)
The Horror Movie: Richard Gere plays John Kline, a reporter who investigates the mysterious Mothman, who's said to haunt the town of Point Pleasant. Is he just a myth, though?
The True Story: Author John Keel's book was inspired by his own investigations into the Mothman in Point Pleasant in 1966 and 1967. In the book, he eventually links his detective work with that of others, in particular the Silver Bridge Collapse in 1967.
35. Shadow People (2012)
The Horror Movie: When a number of people disappear in the 1980s, radio host Charlie Crowe (Dallas Roberts) suspects that 'shadow people' are responsible for their deaths. He sets out to investigate with the more rationally-minded Sophie Lacombe (Alison Eastwood).
The True Story: According to the filmmakers, their film was based on a viral video called Sleep Study GR16 1971, plus certain cultural beliefs that 'shadow people' are responsible for something called Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome.
34. Karla (2006)
The Horror Movie: After Paul Bernardo (Misha Collins) rapes and murders the sister of Karla Homolka (Laura Prepon), the pair get married and continue on a violent crime spree.
The True Story: Paul Kenneth Bernardo was a Canadian serial killer who raped and killed young women in Scarborough, Ontario. He was responsible for at least three deaths and was sentenced to life imprisonment, where he's still serving time today.
33. Black Water (2007)
The Horror Movie: A routine fishing trip goes horrible wrong for Grace (Diana Glenn) and her family when they head to the mangrove swamps of Northern Australia and discover man-sized crocs are sizing them up for dinner.
The True Story: In December 2003, Ashley McGough, Brett Mann and Shaun Blowers went to the Kangaroo Flats to race their quad bikes, only for 22-year-old Brett to be eaten by a giant crocodile. The facts are terrifying: crocodiles have been responsible for the deaths of at least a dozen people in Northern Australia over the past 20 years.
32. The Zodiac Killer (1971)
The Horror Movie: As a number of dead bodies turn up in San Francisco, the SF Police Department is harassed and harangued by a series of gloating phone calls and letters from the alleged killer. But can they track him down before he kills again?
The True Story: The Zodiac was a serial killer operating in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s. He named himself 'Zodiac' in a series of letters sent to the SFPD, and is thought to be responsible for the deaths of seven people. His identity remains unknown See also David Fincher's excellent Zodiac.
31. The Possession (2012)
The Horror Movie: A young girl discovers a dybbuk's old box at a second-hand sale. After opening it, her behaviour becomes increasingly uncontrollable. Is she possessed? Or is she merely struggling to deal with the divorce of her parents, Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Stephanie Brenek (Kyra Sedgwick)?
The True Story: Director Ole Bornedal cited the story of the dybbuk box as inspiration for the film. Jewish folklore states that a dybbuk is malicious spirit that can possess the living. Numerous owners of one specific box that went for sale on eBay reported strange phenomena happening around it.
30. Dahmer (2002)
The Horror Movie: A young Jeremy Renner dons floppy hair and faze fuzz to play Jeffrey Dahmer, a serial killer operating in Ohio and Wisconsin, and whose crimes he blames on the torment of his parents going through a divorce.
The True Story: Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1992 for the murder and dismemberment of 17 men over a 15 year spree. Though his perversions--cannibalism, necrophilia--led many to claim he was insane, psychiatrists found that he was in fact legally sane. He was beaten to death by a fellow prisoner just two years into his 16 life sentences.
29. Eaten Alive (1977)
The Horror Movie: Killer crocodile flick directed by Tobe Hooper and featuring Robert Englund as a hooker-lover. Neville Brand is the owner of a hotel who kills anybody who pisses him off, and feeds them to his pet croc.
The True Story: Joe Ball was also known as the Alligator Man because he killed as many as 20 women in the 1930s and fed them to his alligators. Ball was never brought to justice. When a police officer stopped by to ask him about the murders, Ball shot himself dead.
28. From Hell (2001)
The Horror Movie: An American adaptation of Alan Moore's beautiful graphic novel, which centres on Police Inspector Frederick Abberline (Johnny Depp) and his mission to track down Jack the Ripper.
The True Story: Jack the Ripper is easily one of England's most famous serial killers, even though nobody knows exactly who he was. During 1888, Jack was responsible for five murders, and his identity still remains a mystery. Which of course makes him perfect fodder for horror movies
27. Borderland (2007)
The Horror Movie: A trio of college buddies visit a Mexican border town, where they discover a human-sacrificing cult has set up home.
The True Story: Berman's film was inspired by the story of Adolfo de Jess Constanzo, a leader of a cult where human sacrifice was openly practiced. Constanzo kidnapped and killed members of drug cartels when he was denied a share in the business. The mutilation he carried out was so horrendous we'll refrain from detailing it here.
26. The Exorcism Of Emily Rose (2005)
The Horror Movie: A courtroom horror in which Erin Christine Bruner (Laura Linney) defends priest Richard Moore (Tom Wilkinson) after he performed an exorcism that resulted in a death.
The True Story: The film's inspired by the case of a 16-year-old German girl called Anneliese Michel, who was thought to be demonically possessed in 1968. It wasn't until 1975 that two priests stepped in to perform an exorcism that took ten months to accomplish.
25. An American Haunting (2005)
The Horror Movie: Period chiller in which John Bell (Donald Sutherland) and his family fall prey to an invisible ghoul that sets its sights on Bell's daughter, Betsy (Rachel Hurd-Wood).
The True Story: The legend of the Bell Witch, which originated in Tennessee in the 1800s. In the legend, John Bell was poisoned and killed by a ghost. His death is the only death in the history of America to be recorded as caused by a ghost.
24. Audrey Rose (1977)
The Horror Movie: Horror connoisseur Robert Wise directs a supernatural mindfuck. Anthony Hopkins is on deliciously sinister form as Elliot Hooper, who believes that the daughter of a young couple is his dead wife reincarnate. Yeah, that's just weird
The True Story: Things only get weirder when you look into the creation of Frank De Felitta's novel, on which this is based. Felitta's six-year-old son could play the piano perfectly, despite the fact that he'd never had a single lesson in his short life. The bizarre development led Felitta to contact an occultist and resulted in the author's belief in reincarnation.
23. The Strangers (2008)
The Horror Movie: House invasion horror starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman as a couple who go to stay at a summer home, only to fall victim to a trio of menacing, mask-wearing psychopaths.
The True Story: Director Bryan Bertino revealed the movie's premise was based on a series of break-ins that occurred in his childhood neighbourhood. On top of that, he also drew inspiration from the infamous Manson killings, carried out by occultist and serial killer Charles Manson.
22. A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)
The Horror Movie: American teenagers are haunted by the knife-fingered ghost of a scarred serial killer who goes by the name of Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). There will be blood. Lots and lots of blood.
The True Story: Though the story itself is entirely fictional, writer-director Wes Craven has admitted that he was at least partly inspired by an LA Times article about a group of Cambodian immigrants who all died while in the throes of a nightmare
21. Dead Ringers (1988)
The Horror Movie: A David Cronenberg classic about identical twin gynaecologists Elliot and Beverly Mantle (Jeremy Irons). They live complicated lives in which people believe they're actually one person. The more confident brother seduces women that he passes onto the less confident twin when he's tired of them.
The True Story: Twins Stewart and Cyril Marcus were gynaecologists who were found dead in 1975 having suffered withdrawal from their barbiturate addiction. Cronenberg read about the brothers in Ron Rosenbaum's essays and took elements of their story for his movie.
20. When The Lights Went Out (2012)
The Horror Movie: Set in Yorkshire 1974, this Brit horror sees the Maynard family moving into their new home, only to find that they're house-sharing with a sadistic poltergeist. Seriously, why does anybody ever move house?
The True Story: A legend titled The Black Monk of Pontefract, which tells of a poltergeist haunting that took place in 1974, one of the most violent ever recorded. Joe and Jean Pritchard reported poltergeist activity in their home in Pontefract. As well as objects moving around their home, they also saw a hooded apparition.
19. Them (2006)
The Horror Movie: A gang of hoodies break into the remote home of Lucas (Michal Cohen) and Clementine (Olivia Bonamy) for a night of nerve-shredding terror. You want fist-chewing tension? You got it
The True Story: Directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud based their film on the case of an Austrian couple who were staying at their Romanian holiday home when they were attacked and killed by three teenagers.
18. The Serpent And The Rainbow (1988)
The Horror Movie: Anthropologist Dennis Alan (Bill Pullman) heads to Haiti in order to study black magic practitioners who are able to transform people into zombies. Soon after his arrival, he falls prey to those very practitioners.
The True Story: Canadian scientist Wade Davis wrote about his experiences of the process of zombification in his 1985 book of the same name. Though he obviously didn't have quite as much trouble as Dennis, his findings are pretty eye-opening, and form the basis of Wes Craven's film.
17. Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (1986)
The Horror Movie: Follows the exploits of Henry (Michael Rooker), whose hobby just so happens to be killing people. He changes his MO every time as he stalks then kills his victims. Trust us, this is grisly stuff.
The True Story: The character of Henry is loosely based on the stories of real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, who claims to have killed up to 3,000 people. Though that remains unverified (and Lucas even recanted those statements), he was at the centre of 11 murder cases and blamed being bullied as a child as part of the reason he became a killer.
16. The Entity (1981)
The Horror Movie: Based on the novel by Frank De Felitta, Sidney J Furie's adaptation follows single mother Carla Moran (Barbara Hershey), who seems to be the victim of a violent, sexually-abusive poltergeist.
The True Story: In 1974, paranormal investigators Kerry Gaynor and Barry Taff visited the home of Culver City resident Doris Bither, who claimed that she'd been assaulted by some sort of entity. While at Bither's home, Gaynor and Taff allegedly saw objects moving of their own accord and a strange apparition
15. I Spit On Your Grave (1978)
The Horror Movie: Rape revenge flick and cult classic (though it was condemned on release as tasteless and violent). We follow writer Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton), who heads off on a retreat in Connecticut, where she's brutally assaulted by a gang of locals.
The True Story: Writer/director Meir Zarchi took inspiration from one of his own experiences in Central Part in 1974. There, he came across a woman who had been raped and beaten, but when he took her to the police, she was allegedly treated unfairly. Zarchi stated that the character of Jennifer Hills came out of that incident: she's somebody who deals with her attackers without relying on the law.
14. The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
The Horror Movie: Freaky desert flick in which a family stumbles across a brood of flesh-eating weirdos out in the wilds of California.
The True Story: Wes Craven wrote the script for this after getting inspired by the legend of Alexander 'Sawney' Bean, the head of a 16th Century clan of cave-dwellers. They lived there for 25 years, chowing down on an estimated 1,000 people before they were found out and killed.
13. The Conjuring (2013)
The Horror Movie: Directed by Saw mastermind James Wan. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga star as paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who are called in when a family's new home starts behaving very strangely.
The True Story: Ed and Lorraine Warren are real-life investigators who claim to have investigated over 10,000 cases in their time. One of those cases was that of the Perron family, whose new Rhode Island home was being haunted by malevolent a witch called Bathsheba Sheran, who had lived there in the 19th century.
12. The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)
The Horror Movie: A micro-budget indie slasher that pre-dates Halloween (but not Black Christmas). A hood-wearing killer terrorises a town in 1946 Arkansas, while a Texas Ranger attempts to bring him down.
The True Story: A spate of murders in the 1940s, called the Texarkana Moonlight Murders, were carried out by the so-called Phantom Killer. Over a ten week period, the Phantom Killer murdered eight people... and the culprit was never found. Shudder.
11. The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)
The Horror Movie: An Oscar-winning horror-thriller in which FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is chucked in at the deep end when she's tasked with working alongside cannibal Hannibal (Anthony Hopkins) to bring down Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine).
The True Story: Author Thomas Harris based Buffalo Bill on a number of serial killers, including Ed Gein (skinning his victims) and Ted Bundy (using a cast to lure in innocent women). Harris also based the relationship between Starling and Lecter on that between Bundy and Robert Keppel, a criminal profiler and professor at the University of Washington.
10. Psycho (1960)
The Horror Movie: Hitchcock classic. Janet Leigh is the runaway employee who's just ripped off her boss. Karma intervenes when she lands at the Bates Motel, where she comes to a sticky end in one of cinema's finest shock scenes.
The True Story: Robert Bloch based his novel very loosely on Ed Gein, the serial killer who murdered women in Wisconsin. Bloch didn't use Gein as a template for his story, though. He started writing his novel at the time Gein was arrested. When the story hit the news, it sparked Bloch's imagination, though he didn't use any of the specifics of Gein's case in his writing.
9. Snowtown (2011)
The Horror Movie: Deeply disturbing Aussie flick centring around 16-year-old Jamie (Lucas Pittaway), who's abused by his older brother before befriending his mum's new boyfriend John (Daniel Henshall). Problem? John has his own brutal (and deadly) punishment for anybody he considers to be in any way perverted or weak.
The True Story: The 'Snowtown murders' were carried out by John Bunting and his crew between 1992 and 1999. In total 11 people were tortured and killed. The crimes were covered up by Bunting, who forced his victims to leave voicemail messages to relatives telling them that they were going away
8. The Amityville Horror (1979)
The Horror Movie: When the Lutz family move into a new home in Amityville, New York, strange events lead them to believe that something terrible is lurking in the house. Then they discover that it used to belong to a man who killed his entire family with an axe
The True Story: A case investigated by paranormal detectives Ed and Lorraine Warren, the book on which the film's based (by Jay Anson) is reportedly based on the experiences of the real Lutz family. That said, there have been numerous lawsuits about the story's legitimacy over the years.
7. Child's Play (1988)
The Horror Movie: "Hi, I'm Chucky. Wanna play?" Serial killer Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif) transfers his soul into an inanimate doll using spooky voodoo when he's mortally wounded by the cops. And just because he's trapped in a doll doesn't mean Charles, now Chucky, is going to give up his old ways any time soon.
The True Story: Writer Don Mancini based the Child's Play script on the case of a nurse who allegedly put a voodoo curse on the author Robert Eugene Otto, transforming one of his childhood dolls into a night-time menace.
6. Wolf Creek (2005)
The Horror Movie: When their car breaks down in the Australian outback, three backpackers accept help from a bushman who kidnaps and tortures them in Wolf Creek National Park.
The True Story: Two men provided the inspiration for Greg McLean's film. First there was Ivan Milat who, in the nineties, would kidnap hitchhikers and torture them in the woods. And secondly Bradley John Murdoch, who was responsible for killing a British tourist.
5. The Blob (1958)
The Horror Movie: Pretty much the weirdest alien invasion movie ever, but also one of the (unintentionally?) coolest, as an alien blob of jelly descends on planet Earth and begins devouring the inhabitants of a small US town.
The True Story: Meteoric jelly is apparently a commonly-found substance, referred to as 'star jelly'. The Blob was inspired by an event in 1950, when Philadelphia cops discovered a massive glob of the jelly. It dissolved when they tried to move it. Which is preferable to being eaten by it, right?
4. The Girl Next Door (2007)
The Horror Movie: Not the Emile Hirsch rom-com, but a traumatic horror flick in which Meg (Blythe Auffarth) is kidnapped by her neighbours and submitted to extreme torture in their cellar.
The True Story: The shocking events in The Girl Next Door were loosely inspired by the death of Sylvia Likens, who was tortured and eventually killed by Gertrude Baniszewski in 1965. She was just 16 years old at the time of her death. The crime was described as "the most terrible crime ever committed in the state of Indiana" by the prosecutor during the court case.
3. The Exorcist (1973)
The Horror Movie: The exorcism movie to end all exorcism movies. Based on William Peter Blatty's novel, William Friedkin directs Linda Blair as the young girl who unleashes demonic forces with a Ouija board... and soon finds herself possessed by the devil himself.
The True Story: Blatty's book was itself inspired by the cast of Roland Doe, the pseudonym given to a boy who was allegedly possessed in 1949. The Catholic Church was brought in to perform an exorcism.
2. Jaws (1975)
The Horror Movie: The first official blockbuster, though it doesn't resemble any of the massive-budget blockbusters that contemporary cinema-goers are accustomed to. Based on Peter Benchley's novel, Steven Spielberg's film follows police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) as his town's beset by a great white shark.
The True Story: Benchley's book was inspired by the story of fisherman Frank Mundus, who caught a great white shark in Long Island in 1964. Other writers also claim that Benchley drew inspiration from a spate of shark attacks in Jersey Shore in 1916.
1. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
The Horror Movie: Genre-defining horror slasher in which a group of teenagers fall prey to a chain saw-wielding maniac called Leatherface. There have been numerous sequels and remakes, none of which come close to Tobe Hooper's powerful and gritty original.
The True Story: Though the film's plot is fictional, the character of Leatherface is partly based on real-life serial killer Ed Gein, who was found in possession of nine 'human skin' masks when he was arrested. (Anon, n.d)
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