13 Real-World Inspirations For These Horror and Mystery Films

There’s something a little more unsettling when a horror film is inspired by real events. Whether it starts out by spouting its based on a true story or recounts the lives of those caught in the cross-fire of crime or terror, we’ve collected a series of films that draw ever so slightly from the real world.

Countdown to Halloween: Michael Myers and the Messy Timeline Split

In 1978 John Carpenter and Debra Hill gave us one of the greatest indie movies of all time in Halloween. It has become a true classic, the theme music iconically representing the season, and the blank stare of the mask now synonymous with evil.

The story goes that on Halloween night, when he was only six, little Michael Myers killed his sister Judith with a butcher knife. He then spent the next 15 years institutionalized, and his parents died in a car crash, leaving behind his baby sister named Cynthia. At the age of 21, Michael escapes the hospital and returns home to murder the last remaining member of his family. The guy is thorough.

Here’s Chucky! Child’s Play Star Invades the Horror Genre!

Curse of Chucky slashed its way onto DVD shelves last week, and as part of a very clever advertising campaign we now have the chance to see how Chucky would react if he got caught up in other horror movies. Below are the four videos so far that Chucky has invaded, and they are fantastic little shorts. Modern horror like The Purge comes under fire from the tiny ginger killer, but horror classics like Psycho aren’t safe either. Chucky has been inserted perfectly into these videos and in some cases enhances the clips from the original movies.

The stand out short has to be the Psycho scene which has a brilliant sight gag in it with had this reviewer chuckling. But do not take my word for it see for yourself.

Maniac Remake Makes For Disturbing Viewing

The horror genre goes in phases, it always has. With the recent spell of haunting movies and zombie flicks it seems that the new trend is brutal horror pieces that dare you to keep on looking. The Purge, You’re Next and the new Evil Dead movie have all gone for extreme violence and thrills. Now Maniac is getting in on the action. Another remake, this time of a 1980s film made by cult horror director William Lustig and starring Joe Spinell (best known to main stream film goers for his part as Rocky’s mob boss) as the overweight sweaty psycho. This remake seems to be following the same formula but has switched it around by having baby face Elijah Wood in the lead role of the killer and is written by Alexandre Aja, the man behind horror classic High Tension. The director is Franck Khalfoun (P2). The killer is called Frank who is a disturbed man with only his mother for company. When she died his thoughts turned to darkness. He owns a mannequin shop and develops an obsession with a woman who he sees photographing mannequins. While this relationship is building, his killer urges still need to be satisfied in the most extreme ways. Here is the new trailer but be warned it has extreme content in it.

This trailer certainly captures the tone of the movie with its mix of sex and violence which makes for uncomfortable viewing. As usual, the red band trailer takes it just a little bit further.

Elijah Wood seems to be able to give off that puppy dog look and then switch it to inverted psycho very easily and it is pretty creepy hearing him talk about how much he loves his potential victims before smashing their faces in walls, stabbing them up, etc. The difference here is that you can imagine pretty boy Elijah having no trouble picking up these women to murder and also the relationship angle works a lot better here. In the original because of his size and general look, it was difficult to see poor Joe Spinell in a relationship with a hot lady. It seemed forced in that film, while from the bits we have seen in the trailer this relationship seems to develop more organically. The original did have a sleazy feel to it because of its tone and the low budget it had. This film tries to retain some of the original’s grime and even though it looks a lot smoother it does show that dark underbelly. The tense scenes in darkened alley ways and streets certainly helps add to this feeling. There is a good chance a shower may be in order after diving into this sleazy affair.

Elijah is a big part of this film working as he plays against his typecasting to give us a truly scary portrayal of a mad man. Much like Norman Bates in Psycho, his good looks and supposedly normal interactions with people hide the darkness inside and is merely a shell to hold the killer at bay. Mind you, anyone that has seen Green Street will know that when Elijah Wood really wants to kick off he can break heads with the best of them. The use of constant POV shots will no doubt make the viewing experience even more uncomfortable because the viewer has no escape from the carnage they are seeing and it seems like we are actively engaging in it to or just as bad, becoming a voyeur looking at all the carnage as it unfolds. Mannequins are just plain freaky anyway and they pop up a lot throughout this movie, all helping to keep that dark atmosphere.

This is all looking promising but if the film will be able to  keep up with the dark tone of the original still remains to be seen, but it looks well on its way to getting there. Getting Alexandre on board is certainly a plus. He is well known for his work on hard hitting and shocking horror movies so this film is in safe hands and the dark tone seen in the trailer will hopefully be seen throughout the movie. The key part of the original film was the way the female victims were killed, with their heads getting scalped and put onto mannequin’s heads. With the new posters that have just come out (via Dread Central) it seems that this film is going the same route with some nice posters showing how gruesome this film is going to get.

A&E’s Bates Motel: 1.01 – “First You Dream, Then You Die”

In 1959 Robert Bloch wrote a novel titled Psycho. It was about an unbalanced man named Norman Bates and his mother Norma, with whom he ran a motel…and murdered people. A year later, Alfred Hitchcock cast Antony Perkins as Norman, and turned the novel into a masterpiece of film-making which to this day stands as his more recognized work.

‘Bates Motel’ Has Some Teasers; Motel Room Sales Decline After Viewings

This seems to be the days of Alfred Hitchcock with his imprint and likeness being reintroduced to pop culture recently with movies and television series abound. We had The Girl, the HBO movie; Hitchcock, the Anthony Hopkins film; and now we have some more awesome news on the new A&E series, Bates Motel.

Now, we haven’t heard too much other than the first details of the Freddie Highmore as Norman Bates as a kid series with Vera Farmiga playing his less decrepit looking mother in her youth, but we at have this first picture to show. Which is awesome because I love the house looming large in the background and it creates such a buzz for me in wanting to watch this series. But that’s not all folks! We also got some teaser trailers for you that show absolutely nothing yet definitely set the tone of (hopefully) what is to come. Shall we take a gander?

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1

Want more? How about the 2nd teaser?

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1

So yeah, all you really need is the Inception “BRRHAAAAAMMM” horns and you can make anything epic. Again, it sets a great tone for the series as we try to figure out what about the house makes the people go a little bit….Psycho? Too much? But seriously, looking into the relationship between how the son developed into the adult Norman Bates and the impact of his mother on his future is something we all need to see. With the teasers showing that perhaps the Bates Motel is something not to be trifled with, or at least the family, we might know exactly how dedicated this family is to each other.

Anyways, leave some comments on the bottom or on our Facebook so we can see how excited about this you are or how lame you are if you don’t like Hitchcock. It better be the former because that’s just un-American otherwise. Bates Motel is due in 2013 on A&E.

[amazon_carousel widget_type=”SearchAndAdd” width=”600″ height=”200″ title=”Alfred Hitchcock Movies” market_place=”US” shuffle_products=”False” show_border=”False” keywords=”Hitchcock” browse_node=”” search_index=”DVD” /]