10 Most Shocking And Strange Facts About Famous Horror Movies
Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.
Many among you might already be familiar with the usual trivia that gets trotted out on lists with titles similar to this one. It's likely you all know that Halloween's Michael Myers is wearing a William Shatner mask, that Psycho was the first movie to show a toilet flush, that Freddy Krueger's glove is visible in Evil Dead 2's tool shed.
But did you know that a certain horror classic features an actual convicted murderer/possible serial killer? Or that a notorious video nasty featured a scene deemed so realistic that it had genuine consequences in the life of the actor involved?
Here we've compiled a list of ten shocking and strange facts about well-known horror movies, ranging from the grisly to the outright bizarre. Some will send a shiver down your spine, others may raise a chuckle and even the most seasoned horror buffs among you could find some trivia to add to your knowledge.
But be warned, the following contains references to true events, in some cases more horrifying than the movies themselves...
10. Leatherface Drew Blood On Screen For Real
Notorious in its time and now rightly revered, The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre remains a gruelling watch even compared to the most bloodthirsty horrors of today. This is in large part thanks to the movie's scuzzy, gritty look which may have been borne out of necessity as much as it was a stylistic choice.
For his independent production director Tobe Hooper was working with an extremely limited budget. This meant that set decorations and props such as the animal bones, feathers and carcasses scattering the set were in fact real, while cast and crew were extremely low paid. Leatherface himself, Gunnar Hansen, reportedly received around $800 for an entire summer's worth of work and John Larroquette's fee for narrating the movie's introduction was just a single joint of marijuana.
This factor no doubt heavily influenced what transpired during filming of the infamous dinner scene, where the Sawyer family torture and terrorise Marilyn Burns as Sally. With blackout curtains used to block the daylight outside, temperatures on that dining room set rose to around 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The stink of the already smelly cast, who had to endure wearing the same unwashed costumes for days on end, was soon joined by the smell of rotting meat. It became so unbearable that some of the actors would go outside to vomit between takes.
It was at some point in this twenty seven hour shoot, that Hansen was required to simulate cutting Burns' finger with a prop knife. But when the prop knife failed a fatigued and frustrated Hansen opted to use a real knife to actually slice her finger, just so they could finish the scene.
Neither Burns nor John Dugan, the actor who as Grandpa Sawyer then had to suck the wounded finger, knew what had really happened until years later at a postscreening Q&A.