Creepy myths surround several classic horror films - and they can be just as scary as what
you see onscreen.
There are movies that are supposedly cursed, and films that are apparently based on actual
events.
Here, we'll dispel some of the false facts to put your mind at ease.
In the 2008 film The Strangers, a couple is tormented and tortured by a group of masked
criminals in and around their vacation home.
The Strangers made quite an impression upon its release, partly for the striking look
of its masked intruders, but mostly for its central thesis that evil can be senseless
and random.
One aspect of the film significantly added to the horror.
The Strangers was supposedly "inspired by true events," a claim that was repeated in
its more outlandish 2018 sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night.
In both cases, this is a wildly misleading claim.
Did someone wearing a spooky mask really terrorize a woman while a Joanna Newsom record skipped
in the background?
The long answer is No.
Writer-director Bryan Bertino says the story was inspired by something that happened to
him as a child.
One night, a stranger reportedly knocked on the door and asked for someone who didn't
live there.
It turns out that thieves were using this strategy to burglarize homes.
As he explained to Collider in 2008:
“And they were knocking on every door on the street with the idea that whoever didn't
open the door, they would kick in the door and rob the place."
Bertino was also inspired by the Mansons:
"I was around eleven or twelve years old and my dad gave me a book to read, and he gave
me Helter Skelter, which was a very strange pick."
And those are the events that inspired The Strangers.
True story.
Ever since the original Poltergeist hit theaters in 1982, fans of the film have argued over
who really directed the now-classic supernatural thriller.
Was it the credited director Tobe Hooper, or the film's co-writer and producer, Steven
Spielberg?
Some members of the cast and crew have said that Spielberg was so hands-on during filming
that he ultimately deserves credit for directing the movie.
But following Hooper's death in 2017, filmmaker Mick Garris set the record straight on his
podcast Post Mortem.
According to Garris, Spielberg was indeed a strong presence on the Poltergeist set,
but that had more to do with the fact that this was Hooper's first big studio film.
Plus, Spielberg is evidently just an enthusiastic guy when it comes to movies.
Garris claims Spielberg may have occasionally jumped in when he wasn't needed, but he insists
that at the end of the day, it's Hooper's vision you see onscreen.
As Garris said to producer and actress Caroline Williams,
"Tobe directed that movie, Steven Spielberg had a lot to do with directing that movie,
too."
"Thank you very much for stating that."
Garris claims Hooper did all the pre-production work, and says he was always on set to yell
"Action!" and "Cut!"
In fact, Spielberg himself reportedly acknowledged that Hooper ultimately directed the film.
"Tobe got credit because he deserved that credit - including Steven Spielberg said that."
Shouldn't that be enough to settle this once and for all?
And since we're on the subject of Poltergeist: You've probably heard that the film is supposedly
cursed, and this curse is apparently so powerful, it somehow extends to the film's increasingly
terrible sequels.
[kid with possessed braces yelling]
It's hard to say why evil forces would choose to lord over an entire trilogy of films, but
the crew reportedly did use actual human skeletons in the first Poltergeist, so maybe that caused
some sort of otherworldly ruckus?
Frankly, we have our doubts - and so should you.
As for what this supposed curse entails, there are various myths floating around.
According to Snopes,
"An extreme version of the 'curse' rumor asserts everyone who appeared in these movies is now
dead."
Well, that is extreme.
It's also extremely untrue.
We're sure Poltergeist stars Craig T. Nelson and Jo Beth Williams were startled to hear
this news, seeing as they're both very much alive.
But two major players in the Poltergeist franchise did suffer horrible fates in real life.
Dominique Dunne - the actress who played the older sister in the first movie — was strangled
by her boyfriend a few months after the film's release.
Heather O'Rourke - the young actress who played Carol Anne in all three films - suddenly passed
from septic shock in 1988.
These two tragic, unforeseen deaths are really what inspired the rumored curse, but the myth
sometimes includes the death of actor Julian Beck, who playedthe fiendish Kane in Poltergeist
II: The Other Side, and who died from stomach cancer at the age of 60, seven months before
the film premiered.
Sometimes the curse also involves the death of actress Zelda Rubinstein, who starred in
all three Poltergeist films.
But it's important to note that Rubinstein died of natural causes at the age of 76, and
in the year 2010.
That's a full 28 years after the original Poltergeist premiered.
Not exactly the stuff terrifying curses are made of, is it?
There are two surefire ways to entice moviegoers to go see your horror film: You can claim
your movie is based on actual events, or you can claim the production was cursed by dark,
unseen forces.
Or, in the case of 1973's The Exorcist, you can do both.
"Your mother's in here with us, Karras.
Would you like to leave a message?
I'll see that she gets it."
The 1971 novel by William Peter Blatty was inspired by a supposed real-life exorcism
that took place in 1949.
The Washington Post even covered the story at the time, publishing an article with the
grabby headline,
"Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip"
According to St. Louis magazine, all sorts of freakish antics surrounded this reported
possession:
"Objects flew; his bed shook; a heavy chair tilted; a rug slid across the room.
His body was raked with red scratches, which seemed to appear spontaneously and sometimes
spell out words (or draw a devil’s face)."
Of course, it's worth looking at this incident with a healthy degree of skepticism.
Author Thomas Allen - who wrote Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism - told St. Louis
in 2014,
"I’ve always felt it was something we don’t yet understand about the way the body handles
problems that have invaded it.
[...] I felt there had to be a rational explanation for what was causing that kid to be suffering.”
Meanwhile, Michael Cuneo, author of American Exorcism, told the magazine:
"If I had been there, my hunch is that I would not have seen the things they reported.”
Because the filmmakers decided to explore these occult themes, many people believe The
Exorcist is a cursed film.
According to The 13th Floor, that curse supposedly caused numerous on-set accidents.
For example, the set used for the MacNeil's home caught on fire - and only Regan's room
was left unharmed.
Oh, and actress Ellen Burstyn injured her spine after she was thrown to the ground in
a scene, according to Huffington Post.
Also, Linda Blair reportedly hurt her back when a piece of rigging broke.
During post-production, two actors died in the film - Jack MacGowran , and Vasiliki
Maliaros - died in real life.
Also, several relatives of people who starred in The Exorcist were reportedly hurt or killed
while the film was being made.
Meanwhile, some people believe the actual film stock was cursed, including the late
evangelist Billy Graham, who always had the spooky stuff on his brain:
"I want to talk tonight about The Devil, and demons, and witches, and wizards!"
Director William Friedkin told Entertainment Weekly that,
"Billy Graham, who was not Catholic, denounced [The Exorcist] from the pulpit and said ‘The
Devil is in every frame of this film.’
Now, how he examined every frame, I don’t know."
Of course, people get hurt all the time - on and off movie sets.
People pass away all the time, too.
That doesn't mean the film is cursed or haunted in any way.
It's worth noting that Vasiliki Maliaros was 89-years-old at the time of her death.
She died of natural causes - not supernatural causes.
Marketing materials for 1974's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre really wanted to convince viewers
that the film was based on real-life events.
One of its taglines even claimed:
"What happened is true.
Now the motion picture that's just as real."
And the film even opens with this grand announcement:
"The events of that day were to lead to the discovery of one of the most bizarre crimes
in the annals of American history."
The 2003 remake adopted the same strategy, with promotional posters proudly boasting
that the film was inspired by a true story.
So is this tale actually based on terrible things that happened in real life?
According to Snopes, that's a big ole' "Not really."
The website points out that the The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is "based on a true incident"
in two ways.
For one thing, director Tobe Hooper knew a bit about Ed Gein, a real-life murderer and
grave robber who made furniture out of skin and bone and who also inspired Psycho and
Silence of the Lambs.
Oh, and once, Hooper imagined himself chainsawing his way out of a crowded department store
- but haven't we all?
That's it.
That's the inspiration for the film and its remake.
So don't let the grimy documentary feel of this 1974 classic convince you that you're
watching a documentary.
You aren't.
The mysterious mousse and its chalky undertaste.
The ominous tannis root pendant.
The devil is truly in the details in 1968's Rosemary's Baby, a horror film about Satanism
that's full of tantalizingly terrifying touches.
Surely someone with a firm grasp on the black arts had to be on hand to advise the filmmakers,
right?
"That's not possible!
It's a mistake!"
Well, a popular myth about the film involves the late Anton LaVey - otherwise known as
the founder of The Church of Satan.
According to Vanity Fair,
"LaVey [was] falsely credited with working as a consultant on the film Rosemary’s Baby."
It's a myth that's endured for decades, and the story has grown over time.
According to Criterion,
"One urban legend [...] insists that Church of Satan bigwig Anton LaVey not only served
as 'technical consultant' on Rosemary’s Baby but [also] donned the hairy devil suit."
The plot thickens.
In fact, it's not at all unusual for publications to state this rumor as fact, such as when
The Telegraph gleefully reported in 2018 that,
"A breakthrough [for LaVey] seemed to come with Roman Polanski's film of Rosemary's Baby
in 1968, where he played the Devil himself."
Some sources claim LaVey started the rumor himself - but is there any truth to the story?
Sorry to say, the answer seems to be "No."
As The Washington Post reported in 1998,
"According to an interview with the original producer of the film Rosemary's Baby, LaVey
was not technical adviser, as he claimed, and not a single member of the cast or crew
has ever mentioned LaVey's involvement."
In fact, according to The Wall Street Journal, a little-known character actor actor named
Clay Tanner actually played the role of the devil.
So, that settles that.
But even if LaVey did make up these tall tales, his efforts might have been encouraged by
Paramount Pictures - that is, if The Church of Satan can be believed, and that's a pretty
big "if."
A post on the organization's official website claims that:
"A lot of people like to attribute this legend to Anton LaVey.
But in May of 1967, the publicists for Rosemary's Baby found Anton LaVey and his Church and
were very excited.
They solicited his support [for[ their efforts."
So if you're desperate to believe LaVey was somehow involved with Rosemary's Baby, you
can at least cling onto that little tidbit.
If you close your eyes and think of Dracula, you probably see Bela Lugosi's slicked-back
hair and black cape, and hear that hypnotic voice say,
"I never drink… wine."
Such is the power of 1931's Dracula, one of the first "talkie" horror films.
Dracula was a breakthrough role for Lugosi, and it turned him into a household name in
America.
To this day, many people believe the actor couldn't speak English during the making of
the movie and therefore recited every line phonetically.
"Van Helsing.
A most distinguished scientist whose name we know, even in the wilds of Transylvania."
But no.
As Legends Revealed explains, that simply isn't true.
By the time he starred in the film, Lugosi had already been playing Count Dracula on
stage for several years, and he spoke English as well as he ever would.
However, he did speak his lines phonetically in The Red Poppy, his 1922 Broadway debut.
Perhaps that's where this rumor got started, even though the two projects were nearly a
decade apart.
Universal Studios' 1931 film Frankenstein is one of the all-time classics of the horror
genre.
You probably know most of the character's names by heart: There's Dr. Frankenstein,
and, of course, his trusty hunchback assistant, Igor.
Right?
The iconic Igor character was famously spoofed in 1974's Young Frankenstein with the character
Igor, portrayed by Marty Feldman.
"Dr Frankenstein?"
The character also inspired the 2008 animated feature Igor.
But here's the interesting thing: There is no Igor in the classic Universal Frankenstein
film.
Dr. Frankenstein did have a hunchback assistant played by Dwight Frye, but his name was Fritz.
However, Dr. Frankenstein has an assistant named Ygor in the sequel films Son of Frankenstein
and Ghost of Frankenstein.
But wait: As you can see, Ygor wasn't hunchbacked, though he still had some pretty serious physical
issues.
"You see that?
They hanged me once."
So how did the name Igor become forever associated with the image of a hunchbacked assistant?
According to Dr. M's Frankenblog:
"Mass misremembering may be the culprit for its popularity."
If that's true, the idea of Igor the hunchbacked assistant was ultimately the result of filmgoers
collectively confusing and recombining Fritz, Ygor, and a number of other hunchback assistants
from B-movies like 1944's The House of Frankenstein.
Over time, this enduring archetype was born.
That's our hunch, anyway.
"It's alive, it's alive!
It's alive!
It's alive!"
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