The Amityville Horror (1979)
The original 1979
The Amityville Horror,
starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder, is the classic haunted house
horror flick, which was given a not-so-classic remake in 2005. The movie
is actually based on a 1976 book titled
The Amityville Horror: A True Story,
which claimed to tell the true story of George and Kathy Lutz’s 28 days
in an allegedly haunted house. According to them, their large dream
home on the coast of Long Island turned on them not too long after
moving day, when demonic forces began terrorizing their family.
Now,
it’s true that, a little over a year before the Lutzes moved into the
house on 112 Ocean Avenue, Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot and killed his entire
family – six people total – inside the house. The Lutzes purchased the
house furnished with the DeFeo’s furniture, and actually did have a
priest come and bless the house prior to moving into it.
But
that’s where the story gets a little murky. Some evidence suggests the
Lutzes began shopping around for a publishing deal while still in the
house and attempted to get publicity for the haunting once a book was
imminent. Notably, paranormal investigators Lorraine and Ed Warren, who
were also the investigators behind several other “true story” haunting
films, claimed the house was plagued by malevolent spirits. Many have
suggested the whole thing was a scam, and interestingly, no one who has
lived at 112 Ocean Avenue since the Lutzes has reported any strange
happenings.
A new film in the franchise,
Amityville: The Awakening, will hit theaters next year.
The Haunting in Connecticut
Another haunted house flick,
The Haunting in Connecticut
is about another family who failed to check into the history of their
house prior to moving: the Campbells relocate to a home that previously
served as a funeral parlor, where the owner’s son served as a demonic
messenger and provided a gateway for spiritual entities. The story is
supposedly based on the experience of the Snedeker family, who also
worked with paranormal investigators Lorraine and Ed Warren. Horror
novelist Ray Garton was hired to document the tale his 1992 book,
In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting, which became the basis for the movie.
But in subsequent interviews, Garton has claimed that he
made up some of the details.
While the Snedekers and the Warrens have maintained that the house was
truly haunted, there’s obviously no proof that anything supernatural
occurred during the family’s two year stay in the house. No other family
who has lived in the house has come forward with any ghost stories.
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
The Exorcism of Emily Rose follows
a lawyer who takes on the case of a priest who is charged with homicide
after he performs an exorcism on Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter) and
she dies. The story mostly takes place in a courtroom, with Emily Rose’s
possession being told through courtroom testimony and flashbacks. But
the possession and the subsequent trial is actually a fictionalized
version of the possession of a German woman named Anneliese Michel.
During
the 1970s, she was believed to have been possessed by six or more
demons. Michel began experiencing shaking and the inability to control
her body at the age of 16 By the age of 21, her parents were seeking
pastors to perform an exorcism. Two years later, the church finally
granted permission for the exorcism and at the age of 23, Michel died
from malnutrition and dehydration. Prosecutors charged Michel’s parents
and the two priests who performed the exorcism with negligent homicide.
The case has actually inspired two other movies as well, the German drama
Requim and
Anneliese: The Exorcist Tapes.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
One of the first great slasher films, 1974’s
Texas Chain Saw Massacre follows
a group of teens who end up on a farm belonging to a family of
cannibals. Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) torments the teens, occasionally
with a chainsaw, as he tries to off them, one-by-one. The popular
franchise has spawned four sequels, a remake, and a prequel. The latest
in the franchise,
Leatherface,
will be released next year, and it will follow the teen years of
Jackson Sawyer – the boy who one day becomes the skin-wearing serial
killer we all know and, uh… love?
When it came out in 1974, it was
marketed as a “true story,” despite the fact that Leatherface didn’t
actually exist and commit a series of murders in Texas. But while it
might not be based on a true story, it was inspired by the real-life
serial killer Ed Gein, who created a “woman suit” out of skins of
exhumed female corpses and murdered at least two women. He similarly
served as the inspiration for Norman Bates in
Psycho and Buffalo Bill in
The Silence of the Lambs.
The Girl Next Door (2007)
Based on Jack Ketchum’s 1989 novel of the same name,
The Girl Next Door follows
two young girls who must move into their aunt’s house after the death
of their parents. Unfortunately, the aunt (Blanche Baker) is a sadistic
psychopath and the neighborhood boys seem content to allow both girls to
be tortured and sexually abused. It’s a movie so disturbing that you
can’t get it out of your head, much less believe it could actually be
real.
But it’s actually the fictionalized version of the torture
and death of an Indiana teen named Sylvia Likens in 1965. Her and her
sister had been left in the care of family friend Gertrude Baniszewski,
who soon began taking out her financial troubles on Likens. Her children
and several other neighborhood children would beat Likens, tie her up,
force feed her, and sexually abuse her. After being tied up in the
basement, she died at the age of sixteen from shock, malnutrition, and a
brain hemorrhage.
Compliance (2012)
Compliance is
the story of a fast-food worker subjected to sexual humiliation and
psychological abuse at the hands of a prank-caller, who pretends to be
a police officer and calls Sandra (Ann Dowd), the restaurant manager, to
complain that Becky (Dreama Walker), an employee, stole from a
customer. The film may be more thriller than horror movie, but once
Sandra begins taking orders from the stranger, which begins with a
humiliating strip search and gets worse from there. The resulting tale, a
warning against blindly following authority, is downright
chilling. What the film lacks in gore and sudden frights, it makes up
for in emotional trauma and horror at how far some people will go to
avoid conflict.
While watching it, it’s impossible to think anyone
could possibly be so naive, yet the movie is actually inspired by a
real incident that occurred at a McDonald’s in 2004. A prank-caller
began calling various rural locations in over 30 states, pretending to
be an officer and asking managers to conduct strip searches on female
employees. During one such call, the manager of a New Hampshire
McDonald’s detained 18-year-old Louise Ogborn for over three hours.
During that time, she was stripped naked, forced to dance, and ordered
to perform various crude acts by the prank-caller, all of which was
caught on surveillance cameras.
The Strangers (2008)
A movie about what happens when your romantic trip goes awry,
The Strangers
follows a young couple who are terrorized by three masked strangers
while staying at a remote getaway. The unknown assailants destroy all
means of escape and outside communication before the violent invasion,
trapping the couple in the house. It’s a simple premise that could
happen to anyone, so it makes sense that the trailer proclaimed it was
inspired by true events.
However,
the production notes
for the film discredit the claim slightly by clarifying that the seeds
of the story were sparked during Bryan Bertino’s youth: “That part of
the story came to me from a childhood memory. As a kid, I lived in a
house on a street in the middle of nowhere. One night, while our parents
were out, somebody knocked on the front door and my little sister
answered it. At the door were some people asking for somebody that
didn’t live there. We later found out that these people were knocking on
doors in the area and, if no one was home, breaking into the houses. In
The Strangers, the fact that someone is at home does not deter
the people who’ve knocked on the front door; it’s the reverse.” So,
despite the “inspired by true events” claim, it’s almost entirely a work
of fiction
Eaten Alive (1977)
From Tobe Hooper (the same guy behind
Texas Chain Saw Massacre),
Eaten Alive
also takes place in Texas, where a hotel owner kills off anyone who
stands in his way and then feeds them to a crocodile he keeps as a pet. A
curious little slasher flick, it stars Neville Brand as the crazed
hotel owner, who seems to get crazier and crazier as the movie
progresses. It’s Hooper’s sophomore effort, following
Chainsaw Massacre, and while it’s less well-known, the creepy hotel set and effects benefited from a larger budget.
And like
Chainsaw Massacre, the film is actually loosely based on a real life serial killer – a Texas
man named Joe Ball.
Ball owned a bar in a very small Texas town with an alligator pit in
the back. He definitely charged customers a fee to view the alligators
eating live cats and dogs, but he also possibly used the alligators
to dispose the bodies of 20 women he murdered. When
authorities approached Ball about the women who had disappeared, he shot
himself with a handgun. There’s no concrete evidence Ball fed his
victims to an alligator, but a handyman who worked for Ball led officers
to two bodies he claimed he help Ball dispose of.
Wolf Creek (2005)
Wolf Creek
is an Australian horror film about the dangers of hitchhiking and a
dream vacation gone terribly, terribly wrong. When three friends get
stranded in remote Australia on their way to a hiking trip, a bushman
offers them assistance. But the hikers’ thankfulness is short lived when
they wake up bound, gagged, and drugged. It’s an incredibly gruesome
film and was criticized at its release for it’s depiction of violence
against women. But it’s success in theaters earned it
a sequel in 2012.
Upon release,
Wolf Creek
was marketed as “based on true events,” leading many to assume the
story was entirely factual. However, it was actually based on a
combination of murders from around Australia. The 2001 abduction of
Peter Falconio and attack against his girlfriend by Bradley John Murdoch
are said to influence the film, which was scheduled to be released
during Murdoch’s trial. The court in the Northern Territory actually
enjoined the film’s release to prevent it from influencing the jury. But
John Jarratt, who plays the crazed bushman, used
Ivan Milat, known as “the backpack killer,” as inspiration for the role.
The Entity (1981)
Another supernatural horror movie,
The Entity
follows Carla Moran as she is attacked by an invisible assailant. The
film opens with her being violently raped, and the sexual and physical
abuse continues for much of the film. Convinced by friends and family
that she is losing her mind, she seeks help from parapsychologists, who
discover there are supernatural forces at work.
The movie is based
on the book of the same name by Frank De Felitta, which was inspired by
the real story of Doris Bither who lived in California. She approached
some parapsychologists after what she believed herself to be the victim
of a “spectral rape.” At the time, there wasn’t any evidence, but she
did occasionally develop bruises around her body and inner thighs. Of
course, there’s no way to prove one way or the other whether Bither
actually had a malevolent entity following her around. Some of her story
was corroborated by family and friends, including her eldest son, who
said he was also thrown back by an invisible force after attempting to
assist his mother.
From tomorrow, motorists could be hit with a £50 fine for lighting up a cigarette on the school run.
