10 Things You Didn't Know About Horror Movies 🎃

Halloween is here! Which means it’s that time of year where we gather all the scary movies in our film collections and prepare for a month-long horror movie marathon! Before you grab the snacks and dim the lights, take the time to read up on some horror knowledge from our favourite scary movies.

 

10. Sissy Spacek who played Carrie in the original Carrie (1976) didn’t take off her blood-soaked clothes for three-days straight.

The scene where pigs’ blood is poured over the prom queen is truly iconic. To ensure continuity, Spacek chose to sleep in her bloody dress for three days! Of course, it wasn’t real pigs’ blood, but a substance made from corn syrup and red food colouring.

 

9. It took just 18 days to film the first Saw (2004) movie.

The movie has no exterior shots because of a very small production budget. Very few takes were possible for each scene, and pre-production only lasted 5 days. In post-production, director James Wan realised that there were not enough shots to work with, so he got very creative with editor Kevin Greutert to fill in some gaps.

 

8. The cast from Final Destination 3 (2006) had to ride the roller coaster 26 times!

The main premonition scene required the actors to ride it 26 times on the same night. Considering they had to remember their lines and act properly, this experience must have been quite the challenge!

 

7. Jaws doesn’t fully appear in a shot until 1 hour and 21 minutes into the first film.

While the lack of shark appearances works well to heighten the tension in Jaws (1975), the real reason the shark isn’t shown in full until over halfway through the film is because the mechanical shark that was built rarely worked during filming.

 

6. The bees in Candyman (1992) were real, including the ones that come out of Tony Todd’s mouth.

A dental dam was positioned at the back of the actor’s throat to keep the bees form crawling down it. Todd, who plays the titular character, agreed to the stunt on the condition he would receive £1,000 per bee sting, which ended up being 23 overall!

 

5. Alien (1979) featured a genuine surprise.

The cast of Alien shows genuine shock and fear during the iconic ‘chest-burster’ scene, where John Hurt’s character plays host to the title creature. This is because details of the scene were kept hidden from the rest of the actors, with Ridley Scott citing a desire for a genuine reaction. He certainly got it!

 

4. Steven Spielberg initially doubted the Jaws Theme.

Whilst the Jaws theme feels crucial to the film today, Spielberg originally thought that composer John Williams was playing a joke on him. Saying when he first heard the track, “At first I began to laugh, he had a great sense of humour, so I thought he was putting me on”.

 

3. Jack Nicholson chopped through the prop door too fast in The Shining (1980)

Since Nicholson was previously a volunteer firefighter, he was so good with an axe that when it came to knocking the door down, it went down unnaturally fast. The production crew had to replace the weak door with a real one so Nicholson could chop away at it.

 

2.  Not Exactly Final Destination.

The Final Destination series of films were originally an idea for an episode of the X-Files that never got written.

 

1. Anthony Hopkins almost didn’t star in The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Gene Hackman was originally meant to star in The Silence of the Lambs but decided to pull out of the film after he saw a clip of himself at the 1989 Oscars as FBI agent Rupert Anderson from Mississippi Burning. Hackman didn’t want to follow up such a dark film with an even darker one.

 

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