Think you're a horror movie trivia buff? There are always more creepy facts to learn! Boost your knowledge with the following 50 little-known horror movie facts every fan should know.
1. “Stephen King based Carrie White in Carrie on two girls he knew while at school, both were social outcasts from deeply religious families and both died while still in their 20s.”
2. “In 2005, 12 years after the accidental shooting of Brandon Lee during the filming of The Crow, Michael Massee (who fired the gun) claimed to still have nightmares of the incident.”
Still from Evil Dead via TriStar Pictures
3. “If you take the first letters of the main characters in Evil Dead, David, Eric, Mia, Olivia and Natalie, the letters spell out DEMON.”
4. “Of ‘Se7en’, David Fincher told Kevin Spacey and Brad Pitt ‘this is not going to be the movie that you’re remembered for, but it may be a movie you’re incredibly proud of.’”
5. “Millie Bobby Brown had to shave most of her hair off for Stranger Things. As can be expected of any 11-year-old girl, it was a terrifying prospect. The Duffers showed her how cool Charlize Theron looked in Mad Max: Fury Road 2015, after which Millie agreed to it.”
Still from Child’s Play via United Artists
6. “The Chucky films (including 1988’s Child's Play) have always been accused of inspiring violence in children. One case linked to the series was a gang in Manchester kidnapping and murdering a 16-year-old girl. While they tortured her, they forced her to listen to recordings of the gang leader repeating the catchphrase ‘I’m Chucky, wanna play?’ Director Tom Holland has always defended the first film from these accusations, stating that viewers of horror movies could only be influenced by their content if they were unbalanced to begin with.”
7. “In Jeepers Creepers, Victor Salva wrote the main characters as brother and sister in order to eliminate any sexual tension and keep them focused on escaping the Creeper.”
8. “While on the set of Planet Terror, Robert Rodriguez would play the soundtracks from Escape from New York (1981) and The Thing (1982) to set the mood for the movie.”
Still from The Blob via Paramount Pictures
9. “Steve McQueen from The Blob was playing a teenage high-school student, but he was actually 27 years old.”
10. “Misery was almost turned into a Broadway play with Julia Roberts as Annie Wilkes. King vetoed the idea because Annie is (in his words) ‘a brawny woman who can sling a guy around, not a pixie.’”
11. “Shelley Duvall suffered from nervous exhaustion throughout filming The Shining, including physical illness and hair loss.”
Still from An American Werewolf in London via Universal Pictures
12. “In An American Werewolf in London (1981), John Landis had to avoid filming any full-frontal nudity of David Naughton during the transformation scene and dream sequences after Naughton informed Landis that he was not circumcised, even though his role, David Kessler, was written as being Jewish.”
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13. “The house used for Night of the Living Dead's film was loaned to the filmmakers by the owner, who planned to demolish it anyway, thereby ensuring that they could do whatever they wanted to the house.”
14. “Tom Cruise wanted a private set in Interview with the Vampire, and hence tunnels were built to escort the actors to and from the set. This was done so that the vampire’s makeup effects would remain a secret.”
Still from 28 Days Later via 20th Century Fox
15. “Alex Garland and Danny Boyle felt that the notion of the living dead wanting to eat peoples’ brains was outdated. One of the original factors behind zombie movies was a fear of nuclear power and its possible effects on people. Garland and Boyle concluded that one of the biggest fears in modern society is fear of disease, especially a viral apocalypse, such as Ebola or Marburg. When writing 28 Days Later, Garland and Boyle were specifically inspired by such incidents as anthrax and bio-terrorism scares in London and the spread of mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease in the UK.”
16. “Christopher Collet, who played Paul in Sleepaway Camp, had a latex version of his head created for the final scene. Someone on the set took the head.”
17. “It was Jeffrey Combs who suggested the Adolf Hitler-inspired haircut for his character in The Frighteners, to show Milton Dammers’ extreme sense of nationalism after serving his country for so long. Combs also suggested two ear appliances, which made his ears stick out quite comically, and several of Dammers’ chest tattoos.
Still from Jaws via Universal Pictures
18. “When composer John Williams originally played the score for Steven Spielberg, Spielberg laughed and said, ‘That’s funny, John, really; but what did you really have in mind for the theme of Jaws (1975)?’ Spielberg later stated that without Williams’s score, the movie would only have been half as successful and according to Williams, it jump started his career.”
19. “The words ‘Beep beep, Richie’ are often used in IT. In the novel it is explained that this phrase is meant to get Richie to shut up.”
20. “In Predator, when Dutch sees the prisoner get shot he is looking through the wrong end of the binoculars. He does this twice.”
Still from The Devil’s Rejects via Lions Gate Filmsa
21. “Rosario Dawson originally had a small part as a nurse in The Devil's Rejects. Her character was cut out of the theatrical release for Rob Zombie’s decision of not having any Dr. Satan in the film. Her character was killed off within 40 seconds of her debut to the film.”
22. “During the scene in The Evil Dead where Ash is about to cut up his girlfriend with a chainsaw, Bruce Campbell actually had to use a real chainsaw and hold it up to the actress’s chest. You can see on the close-up of Linda’s neck (looking at the necklace) that her pulse is racing.”
23. “In Alien, the blue laser lights that were used in the alien ship’s egg chamber were borrowed from The Who. The band was testing out the lasers for their stage show in the soundstage next door.”
Still from Saw via Lions Gate Films
24. “Lawrence (Cary Elwes) is supposed to be a surgical doctor in Saw. Yet he never notices the body in the middle of the room didn’t turn yellow, and its blood never turns black.”
25. “The scenes of the child vampires floating outside of their victims’ windows in Salem's Lot, was partly filmed in reverse to give it a more eerie effect. Additionally, the actors performed on a boom crane rather than being suspended on wires.”
26. “In Nosferatu, Count Orlok is only seen blinking one time on screen (near the end of part 1).”
Still from Tremors via Universal Pictures
27. “Tremors was originally given an R rating by the MPAA not for violence but for language; the film included as many as 20 f-bombs. As an appeal, producers removed all utterances of the f-word, with the exception of two. Many of the swears were dubbed over with other words, including ‘Can you fly you sucker?’, ‘We killed that motherhumper,’ and ‘what the s***’ when Val is overlooking the dead sheep.”
28. “During all the horrors that proceeded while filming Poltergeist (1982), only one scene really scared Heather O’Rourke: that in which she had to hold onto the headboard, while a wind machine blew toys into the closet behind her. She fell apart; Steven Spielberg stopped everything, took her in his arms, and said that she would not have to do that scene again.”
29. “In The Wolf Man, we’re told that a werewolf is ‘a human being who becomes a wolf at certain times of the year … when the wolf-bane blooms and the autumn moon is bright,’ and the moon is never depicted in the film. This is the only one of the Universal series of Wolf Man films in which the full moon is never shown. In the sequel, the folklore is changed to ‘when the moon is full and bright.’”
Stills from It Follows via Northern Lights Films
30. “Jay and Kelly’s mother’s face is never clearly shown during It Follows. In the first scene in which she appears in the film she is seen talking on the phone in the kitchen with her face completely covered by her hair. In every other scene her face is either out of focus or partially cut by the frame.”
31. “In M. Night Shyamalan’s early drafts of The Sixth Sense, the Bruce Willis character was a crime scene photographer, not a child psychologist.”
32. “When Laurence R. Harvey auditioned for The Human Centipede II, director Tom Six asked him to ‘rape’ a chair, which he did.”
Still from The Nightmare Before Christmas via Touchstone Pictures
33. “Some of the presents Jack delivers to the kids in The Nightmare Before Christmas are nods to Tim Burton films. The snake looks like a Sandworm from Beetlejuice (1988), and the shrunken head is from the afterlife waiting room in the same film. The Cat and Duck are both featured in Batman Returns (1992)—the Cat as the mascot for Shreck’s department store, the duck resembling a vehicle driven by the Penguin”
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34. “Corey Feldman, who plays Edgar Frog in The Lost Boys foreshadows how each of the vampires die: ‘No two vamps die the same way, some yell and scream, some go quietly, some explode, some implode…’”
35. “The actual house in House of 1000 Corpses is the same used in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), which can be viewed during Universal Studio’s tram ride. However, during filming, Universal refused to cease the tram tours, which delayed filming during many scenes.”
Poster for Ghoulies via Empire Pictures
36. “The poster for Ghoulies featuring a Ghoulie popping out of a toilet reportedly cause several angry mothers to write letters to the studio saying that their kids were too scared to use the bathroom after seeing the poster.”
37. “Silent Hill took director Christophe Gans five years to obtain the rights to make the film. He was given the rights after he sent Konami a video of an interview describing how much the movie meant to him. Along with the interview, he sent scenes that he filmed on his own dollar cut up and overlayed with music from the games.”
38. “The entire story of Edward Scissorhands is meant to be seen through Edward’s eyes, which is why the neighborhood looks so ‘fantastical.’”
Still from A Nightmare on Elm Street via New Line Cinema
39. “The idea behind the glove in A Nightmare on Elm Street was a practical one on Wes Craven’s part, as he wanted to give the character a unique weapon, but also something that could be made cheaply and wouldn’t be difficult to use or transport. At the time, he was studying primal fears embedded in the subconscious of people of all cultures and discovered that one of those fears is attack by animal claws. Around the same time, he saw his cat unsheathe its claws, and the two concepts merged, although in the original script the blades were fishing knives, not steak knives as in the finished film. ”
40. “According to Bryan Bertino and Liv Tyler, the finale of The Strangers had much more interaction and dialog between the victims and the strangers in the original script. It was cut to keep the intruders mysterious and eerie.”
41. “John Carpenter and Debra Hill have stated many times over the years that they did not consciously set out to depict virginity as a way of defeating a rampaging killer in Halloween. The reason why the horny teens all die is simply that they’re so preoccupied with getting laid that they don’t notice that there’s a killer at large. Laurie Strode, on the other hand, spends a lot of time on her own and is therefore more alert.”
Still from The Exorcist via Warner Bros.
42. “During the exorcism in The Exorcist, Regan is lying on the bed with her head to one side while green vomit is pouring from her mouth onto the bed. When she turns her head to the other side, the tube that pumps this ‘vomit’ is visible on the back of her cheek, just under her ear, which in turn is shown devoid of make-up after the pressure from the pump tube lifts the prosthetic mask away from her neck.”
43. “The two zombie children who attack Peter in the airport chart house in Dawn of the Dead are played by Donna Savini and Mike Savini, the real-life niece and nephew of Tom Savini. These are the only zombies in all of George A. Romero’s ‘Dead’ films that spontaneously run and never do the trademark ‘Zombie shuffle.’”
44. “Zach Galligan recounted in an interview that when Gremlins was made there was no CGI so all the Gremlins were animatronics, each costing between $30,000 and $40,000. So when everyone left the lot for the day, security would have everyone pop the trunks on their cars to make sure they weren’t stolen.”
Still from Stand By Me via Columbia Pictures
45. “After watching the first cut of Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me (1986), Stephen King was said to be crying and stated it was the closest adaptation to one of his novels he’d ever seen.”
46. “The name Wednesday in The Addams Family is a reference to the line in the Mother Goose poem that goes, ‘Wednesday’s child is full of woe.’”
47. “The name of the high school from Carrie is Bates High, a reference to Norman Bates from Psycho (1960). In addition, the four note violin theme from Psycho is used over and over in the film.”
Still from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter via Paramount Pictures
48. “(At around the 1 hour 17 minutes mark in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter)—according to Corey Feldman, the screams he made when Jason (Ted White) grabs him through the window were genuine, as he was truly terrified.”
49. “The Satanic Temple has endorsed The Witch and hosted several screenings of the film. Their spokesperson, Jex Blackmore, addressed the film as ‘an impressive presentation of Satanic insight that will inform contemporary discussion of religious experience.’”
50. “Both Joe Swanberg and Ti West, who play eldest brother Drake and Aimee’s underground director boyfriend Tariq are two prominent mumblegore directors, a horror genre in which You’re Next (2011) is also included.”
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This story was first published on Creepy Catalog.
Still for "Halloween" via Compass International Pictures
