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HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
Snowtown (2011)
In its account of the so-called ‘barrel murders’ that haunted a poor Australian suburb in the 1990s, Snowtown lives alongside Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer as a film that brings viewers a little too close to the darkest corners of humanity to qualify as ‘entertainment’. For seven years, a group of four men, led by John Bunting, carried out a series of gruesome slayings, mostly targeting alleged pedophiles and homosexuals. Director Justin Kurzel focuses particularly on how Bunting recruited an abused teenager into assisting him, and spares few details. No, it’s not something you casually throw on during a boring night in. But if you’re ever compelled to stare directly into the abyss of the human psyche, there may be no darker portal in movies.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
The Birds (1963)
It’s aged a bit worse than other Alfred Hitchcock classics, but perhaps it’d seem a bit less goofy today if more people knew that, in 1961, birds in the coastal town of Capitola, California, really did turn against their human superiors. Poisoned by toxic algae, flocks of normally mild-mannered seagulls began crashing into homes and cars and vomiting up half-digested food. It took decades for scientists to figure out the cause, but only two years for Big Al to turn the incident into an allegory for man’s increasingly fragile peace with the natural world – and maybe also female sexual frustration.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
Dead Ringers (1988)
Imagine the look of deranged glee that spread across David Cronenberg’s face when he read a New York magazine article about the Marcus brothers, twin gynaecologists who died simultaneously of drug overdoses in 1975. Cronenberg, of course, wildly embellishes their shared decline, using the case as a jumping off point to examine male sexual anxiety, among other things, in the most skincrawling, off-putting, distinctly Cronenbergian way possible.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
Ravenous (1999)
Nineties kids remember Alive, the harrowing story of a Uruguayan rugby team who resorted to eating their dead teammates to survive after a plane crash in the Andes. Nineties kids almost certainly do not remember this box-office bomb, the decade’s other true cannibal tale. Well, sort of true – yes, Guy Pearce’s character, Capt. John Boyd, is based on Alfred Packer, a prospector who ate five members of his own party after getting trapped traversing the mountains of Colorado in 1874. No, he did not turn into a flesh-craving lunatic after being rescued. Packer’s life also inspired another, even more fabricated pseudo-biopic: 1993’s Cannibal! The Musical, directed by future South Park co-creator Trey Parker.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
Borderland (2007)
In the late ‘80s, the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas was terrorised by a group of so-called ‘narcosatanists’, a clan of drug-dealing occultists who practised ritual human sacrifice as a means of assisting their associated cartel. This effectively freaky indie horror flick dramatises the events surrounding the cult’s most widely publicised crime, the abduction and subsequent murder of a University of Texas medical student in 1989. While the film embellishes the details, a lot of it is more factual than you might think – a horrifying thought.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
In ultra-religious circles, exorcisms are, of course, a very real and not outmoded practice – even The Exorcist was loosely based on an actual incident – but The Exorcism of Emily Rose is more specific in its inspiration. In 1975, a young German woman named Anneliese Michel began experiencing seizures and hallucinations. At the behest of her Catholic parents, two local priests initiated dozens of exorcism rites until she eventually died from malnutrition. Her parents were then charged with negligent homicide. Director Scott Derrickson blends those facts with a liberal sprinkling of fiction, creating an interesting mix of psychological thriller, demonic horror and courtroom drama.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
Fire in the Sky (1993)
Alien abduction may stretch the definition for ‘true story’, and sceptics have certainly tried to throw doubt on logger Travis Walton’s account of being sucked into a spaceship, violently probed, then deposited on the side of an Arizona highway. Whether or not it actually happened – and for the record, Walton and his coworkers who witnessed his alleged extraterrestrial kidnapping have all passed polygraph tests – the depiction of Walton’s abduction in Fire in the Sky is one of the most horrifying scenes in ‘90s cinema: vivid, nightmarish and worst of all, totally believable.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
Winchester (2018)
It’s not a great movie, even with Helen Mirren in the lead role, but it is a great, weird piece of lore. As the legend goes, after the sudden passing of her husband, gunmaker William Winchester, his widow, Sarah, began making odd additions to their Northern California mansion – hundreds of extra rooms, random doors, stairways to nowhere – supposedly at the behest of the spirits of those killed by her namesake rifle. It’s mostly hogwash: the renovations were primarily the result of hasty repairs following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. But hey, when choosing between myth and fact, film the myth.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'Fire in the Sky' (1993)
Fire in the Sky retells the tale of Travis Walton, a man who claims to have been abducted by aliens on Nov. 5, 1975, while heading home to Snowflake, Ariz., with a few colleagues. Walton was missing for five days before returning. He published his experiences in a book called The Walton Experience, which was later republished and titled Fire in the Sky following the release of the movie.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'A Nightmare on Elm Street' (1984)
Wes Craven’s 1984 slasher film centers on a killer who stalks his prey while they’re sleeping. In an interview with Vulture for the film’s 30th anniversary, the late Craven shared that the film’s premise was inspired by newspaper articles from the Los Angeles Times about young male Southeast Asian refugees who died in their sleep. Many men would reportedly refuse to sleep because of the nightmares that they feared would lead to death, with a total of 26 men, dying in their sleep in 1981.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'Annabelle' (2014)
The cursed doll Annabelle was first introduced in The Conjuring (2013) and later the focus of a separate franchise with the films Annabelle (2014), Annabelle: Creation (2017) and Annabelle Comes Home (2019). The doll is based off a Raggedy Anne doll that was gifted to a young nurse. But after a string of mysterious events occur, including a traumatic experience with the nurse’s boyfriend, the nurse and her friend invited a medium over, who stated that the doll was inhabited by the spirit of a deceased 7-year-old named Annabelle Higgins. The doll, allegedly cursed by a demonic spirit, has been blamed for violent attacks and at least two near-death experiences. The allegedly haunted Raggedy Anne doll is kept in the Occult Museum owned by paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren with a message under her glass case reading: “Warning: Positively do not open.”
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'Deliver Us From Evil' (2014)
Eric Bana portrays real New York cop Ralph Sarchie, who encountered paranormal activity while working on crimes in the city. This is director Scott Derrickson’s second film based on real events.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'The Possession' (2012)
The Possession originated from an eBay listing for a “dybbuk box” accompanied by a horror story written by its owner, Kevin Mannis. In Hebrew folklore, a dybbuk is a malicious a spirit that has the ability to haunt and possess the living.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'The Rite' (2011)
Colin O’Donoghue stars as Michael Kovak, whose experiences are inspired by the real-life Father Gary Thomas, “one of 14 Vatican-certified exorcists working in the U.S.” While studying in Rome, Thomas met journalist Matt Baglio, who wrote about Thomas’ journey in The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist. Thomas helped supervise the making of the film.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'The Haunting in Connecticut' (2009)
In 1986, the Snedeker family rented a home in Connecticut that turned out to be a former mortuary. Well-known demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren declared the home to be overrun by demons. The experiences of the Snedeker family provide the inspiration for what happens to the Campbell family in The Haunting in Connecticut.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'Stuck' (2007)
After committing a hit-and-run where the victim becomes lodged in the windshield, a young nursing assistant named Brandi (Mena Suvari) tries to figure out her next course of action. Brandi is based on Chante Jawan Mallard, a Texan woman who hit Gregory Glen Biggs — a homeless man — and left him embedded in her windshield until he died. She was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison for her crime.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'Borderland' (2007)
Rider Strong and Sean Astin star in Borderland, a film that centers on three friends who head down to Mexico to celebrate their college graduation but stumble upon a cult that practices human sacrifice. The film is loosely based on the life of Adolfo Constanzo, an American-born serial killer and cult leader who moved to Mexico City as an adult where he met friends who would become his future followers.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'Black Water' (2007)
What begins as a family vacation to the mangroves of Northern Australia ends up with a crocodile attack and a fight to survive in Black Water. The marketing for the film said that it was based on real-life events, and to an extent, that’s true. The movie is inspired by a crocodile attack that happened in Northern Australia in 2003. The film used footage of real crocodiles (and some CGI) to create the vicious monsters portrayed in the embellished story.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'Monster' (2003)
Charlize Theron won 17 awards, including an Oscar, for her portrayal of former prostitute-turned-serial killer Aileen Wuornos. Wuornos was convicted on six counts of first-degree murder — though there was a seventh victim — and was executed in Florida in 2002.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'Dahmer' (2002)
Jeremy Renner plays well-known serial killer and rapist Jeffrey Dahmer in the 2002 biopic. Though the crimes portrayed are real events, the victims’ names were changed. The Dahmer story was also portrayed in the 2017 film My Friend Dahmer, with Ross Lynch starring as the serial killer. Evan Peters also portrayed Dahmer in the 2022 Netflix series Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'Things Heard & Seen' (2021)
In the Amanda Seyfried starrer Things Heard & Seen, a Manhattan couple moves to a historic hamlet where they discover that their marriage has sinister secrets involving their new home’s history. The film was based on the 2016 novel All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage. The novel and film are loosely based off alleged supernatural experiences in a home Brundage and her husband rented.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'Scream' (1996)
The 1996 original slasher film that would spawn a franchise was inspired by the Gainesville, Florida, mutilations in which several young people were murdered in the Florida community. After screenwriter Kevin Williamson watched a television special on the Gainesville murders, the story inspired what would be a script about a knife-wielding killer.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' (1974)
The 1974 film centered on chainsaw murderer Leatherface is loosely inspired by the life and crimes of killer Ed Gein, also known as “the Butcher of Plainfield” or “Plainfield Ghoul,” in the 1950s. Gein exhumed corpses from graveyards and made keepsakes from their bones and skin. Gein also had a history of wearing women’s clothes as Leatherface does in the original film.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'The Strangers' (2008)
Bryan Bertino’s 2008 film, which starred Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler, chronicled a terrifying home invasion. The story was inspired by real-life violent crimes, including the murders committed by the Manson Family and the 1981 Keddie Cabin Murders, in which four people were killed by three masked assailants in a California resort town. It was announced Sept. 13 that The Strangers will be getting a reboot from Lionsgate, with Madelaine Petsch to star and Renny Harlin directing.
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
'The Exorcist' (1973)
The Exorcist continues to frighten audiences years after its 1974 debut, but the film’s inspiration is just as chilling. The film’s premise is based off the case of 14-year-old boy known as Roland Doe. In 1994, it was reported that Doe was possessed by something sinister, and an exorcism was performed on him by priests. The exorcism reportedly had to be stopped because Doe ripped off and threw a piece of mattress spring at the priest. Red scratches would appear on Doe a few days later with marks spelling out “LOUIS.” The circumstances surrounding Doe continue to be a mystery.
Who's up for a challenge. With roughly 2 days left for New Year, let's see if we can take it to page 100 before that
HORROR/THRILLER MOVIES TRIVIA - MOVIES BASED ON REAL INCIDENTS
The Silence of the Lambs
This might be one of the most revered scary films of all time—and with good reason. Based on the 1988 novel, this movie tells the story of Buffalo Bill, aka Jame Gumn, a killer who targeted and killed women to craft a suit for himself out of their skin. Luckily, the movie’s main character didn’t actually exist IRL. However, he was loosely based on numerous other famous killers, including Jerry Brudos, Ted Bundy, Gary M. Heidnik, Edmund Kemper, and Gary Ridgway.