Here are some facts about classic horror movies that you may not know.
- The Shining
- The “Here’s Johnny” scene took three days to film and they went through 60 doors
- Psycho
- Psycho was the first American film to show a toilet flushing
- The shower scene took a week to film
- Nosferatu
- Count Orlok is only seen blinking once
- Scream
- Director Wes Craven is wearing the killer’s costume and was actually hit in the face in the scene where the killer smashes his head through a window and is hit in the face with a phone.
- At the end of the movie, Sidney stabs one of the killers with an umbrella. The actor (Skeet Ulrich) was given a protective vest and the umbrella had a retractable tip. In one of the takes, the umbrella missed the vest and wound up hitting a scar on Ulrich’s chest. His reaction in the film was his real reaction to being stabbed.
- Night of the Living Dead
- The “bodies” that the zombies are eating in the truck were actually roast ham covered in chocolate sauce.
- Evil Dead II
- Freddy Krueger’s glove can be seen hanging above the door in the tool shed. This is a nod to The Evil Dead playing on a TV in A Nightmare on Elm Street.
- Halloween
- The Michael Meyers mask was a mask of William Shatner that they spray-painted white, teased the hair, and reshaped the eye holes.
- Friday the 13th
- Jason was originally named Josh, but it was changed because “Josh” was not threatening enough.
- Carrie
- The high school is named Bates High, an ode to Norman Bates from Psycho.
- Candyman
- 500 real bees were put into the lead actor’s mouth at the end of the film. A mouth guard kept the bees from going down his throat.
- Poltergeist
- The skeletons in the swimming pool were actual human bones.
- The Exorcist
- The vomit was made of pea soup.
- Rosemary’s Baby
- The director, Roman Polanski, had Mia Farrow walk through actual oncoming traffic with her pregnant suit on. He claimed no one would actually run over a pregnant woman.
- The Blair Witch Project
- The actors were made to actually camp in tents during filming and were given increasingly smaller food portions to make them feel like they were actually in a bad situation.
- The Amityville Horror
- The movie is based on the true story of George Lutz’s family being haunted in the Amityville home. Lutz claimed to be woken up at 3:15am every morning during the haunting. While filming, Ryan Reynolds (who plays Lutz) and other crew members claimed to wake up every morning at 3:15am.