10 Real Life Happy Endings That Became Disturbing Movies

It’s often said that there are little to no original ideas in Hollywood these days. If it’s not a franchise film, a sequel, a reboot or a remake, it’s an adaptation of a play, a novel or, these days, a comic book. And let’s not forget those ideas stolen from the headlines: when screenwriters read about something that’s happened in real life, and, eyes alight, think there’s a movie in this...

But of course, Hollywood isn’t that interested in accuracy, historical or otherwise, and even less in authenticity - especially when it comes to the nastier end of the cinematic scale. After all, why let the truth get in the way of a good horror story?

All’s well that ends well? Nah. Moviemakers tend not to care about the disturbing tales where everything turns out okay in the end: where the bad guy gets got, or the good guy lives to fight another day.

This article is dedicated to those true stories with happy endings that were eclipsed by the rather more famous horrific versions on the big screen. Sometimes that’s a good thing, of course - maybe the real life version just wouldn’t have made such a good movie - but you can be the judge of that. And of course, here be spoilers...

Adapted by director George Sluizer and Tim Krabbé from Krabbé’s own 1984 novella The Golden Egg, the original Dutch version of The Vanishing sees an obsessed man confronted with the sociopath who kidnapped his girlfriend three years earlier, determined to find out what happened to her.

In Sluizer’s 1988 original, the kidnapper tells the bereaved man that the only way to find out what happened to his lady is to experience it for himself. Damaged beyond repair by his obsession, he agrees, is drugged and wakes to find himself buried alive...

Krabbé’s idea came from reading a newspaper article about a tourist who vanished from a coach trip after disembarking at a rest stop. The police had searched for two nights, but she seemed to have disappeared without a trace. It became the jumping off point for his story about two lovers reunited in death, and the madman who stood between them.

A decade later, curious to find out what had happened in the real life version of the story, Krabbé did some digging and discovered that the girl had been found. In fact, she’d been found hours after the newspaper article he’d read had been published: she’d just got back on the wrong bus and become lost.

Of course, Sluizer notoriously remade his own movie in 1993 for an American audience, starring Keifer Sutherland and Jeff Bridges, in which the protagonist is rescued and kills the villain with a shovel. It’s difficult to know which alternate ending is more of an anti-climax...