1 I Am Legend
In the originally filmed ending of “I Am Legend,” Will Smith realizes he is the “monster” and the zombies have only been protecting themselves from him. The studio insisted on a replacement “happy ending”, which implies the discovery of a “cure” and nothing of the zombies’ humanity.
2. The movie ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ was based on news articles about Cambodian refugees refusing to fall asleep due to nightmares. Many of them ended up dying in their sleep of unexplained causes.
3. The silent horror film “The Unknown” (1927) was missing for many years in the archives of Cinematheque Francaise because they had hundreds of film cans marked “unknown.”
4. While filming Poltergeist, Robbie truly got choked during a take by the robot clown doll — it wasn’t until the boy turned purple that Spielberg realized what was actually happening.
5. The little boy who played Danny in The Shining was so guarded by Stanley Kubrick during the filming process that he did not know it was a horror film until many years later. He has since abandoned acting and gone on to become a science teacher.
6 Donnie Wahlberg
Donnie Wahlberg lost 43 pounds to play Vincent Grey in The Sixth Sense, a role which had less than 3 minutes of screen time, to prove to people that he was serious about acting.
7. The movie “Cabin in the Woods” was supposed to have a tie-in with the game Left 4 Dead and even had the game’s special infected hidden in the final movie.
8. During the scene for the 2008 film Cloverfield in which the head of the Statue of Liberty falls onto a city street, the head’s size is larger than its actual size in real life. Originally it was made properly to scale, but test audiences complained it looked too small and unrealistic.
9. In The Evil Dead, the original script called for all the characters to be smoking marijuana when they are first listening to the tape. The actors decided to try this for real, and the entire scene had to be later re-shot due to their uncontrollable behavior.
10. The shower scene in Psycho took 7 days to shoot. About 70 takes were shot and the scene lasts for only 45 seconds.
11 Death Bell
There is a Korean horror film named Death Bell in which a student is killed for every exam question answered incorrectly.
12. The demon nun character didn’t exist until about 3 months before Conjuring 2 opened, as she was added during last-minute reshoots.
13. The mask in the Halloween movies is actually a mask of actor William Shatner’s face spray painted white.
14. The movie Final Destination originated as a proposed X-Files episode, entitled Flight 180.
15. To create tension between the actors in The Blair Witch Project, they were deliberately given less food each day of filming. Producer Gregg Hale told them: “We’re very concerned about your safety, just not your comfort.”
16 Take This Lollipop
Take This Lollipop was a 2011 interactive horror short film/Facebook app that requested access to your Facebook account, then used info from that account to fill in details of the film. Its goal was to underscore the dangers inherent in posting too much personal information about oneself online.
17. An ambulance was stationed outside a screening of The Human Centipede 2 as a joke, until a woman became so physically ill after viewing the film that actual paramedics were needed.
18. Three ultra classic horror films, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Silence of the Lambs, and Psycho, were all loosely based on or inspired by actions or attributes of the infamous necrophiliac serial killer, Ed Gein.
19. The film “Scream” was originally rated ‘NC-17’ by the MPAA 9 times. To convince them otherwise, Executive Producer Bob Weinstein explained that the MPAA needed to see Scream more as a comedy than a horror film. This completely changed the MPAA’s view, and the film’s rating was changed to ‘R’.
20. In 2007, children were shown The Hills Have Eyes 2 instead of The Last Mimzy in a movie theater in USA. The opening scene of The Hills Have Eyes 2 features a chained naked woman giving birth to a deformed baby.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 The Omen
The movie set of “The Omen” (1976 and 2006) was believed to be cursed. Many interesting yet creepy coincidences occurred, such as the set designer dying in the exact way he wanted a particular death scene to happen in the movie.
22. When Night of the Living Dead was released in 1968 it was given an afternoon matinee, which meant a large portion of its audience was children.
23. In the iconic door-smashing scene in The Shining, Kubrick originally had a prop door in place. Jack Nicholson, who had worked as a volunteer fire marshal, got through it too quickly, so it was replaced with a real door.
24. Before The Ring (2002)’s release, the tape from the movie was showed during late-night programming, with no reference to the movie. People watching TV late at night might have stumbled across the video, with no idea what it was.
25. Mia Farrow’s acceptance of the role of Rosemary in “Rosemary’s Baby” angered Frank Sinatra (her new husband) so much that he served her divorce papers in front of the film’s entire cast and crew.