As film lovers, we're all used to seeing the placard "based on a true story" appear before a film, and though the use of the word "based" can range from a fervent devotion to authenticity to completely abandoning the facts in order to craft a more compelling story, there are those films that oddly decide to downplay the fact they're spawned from some measure of fact. Perhaps it's because directors feel that such a claim would only cheapen their product, but whatever the reason, these films, largely ridiculous, are unknown to most audiences to actually be rooted in at least a little fact. Though they embellish the true events or leap off in different directions, here are 10 films you're probably not even remotely aware are based (somewhat dubiously in many cases) on some true story that happened to someone...somewhere.
10. Jaws
Jaws is a film that doesn't exactly try and wow viewers with its authenticity, given that the production essentially consisted of a number of actors on a boat fighting against a blatantly plastic shark, yet thanks to Steven Spielberg's directorial genius, the end result is a stunningly tense feat of filmmaking nonetheless. Of course, it's no surprise that, yes, shark attacks took place prior to Jaws, and the blockbuster smash hit wasn't the first thing to make humans hate sharks - it was the fact that, yes, they were a lot more erratic than scientists had first predicted. Jaws is based loosely on the 1916 Jersey Shore Shark Attacks, in which four people were killed by a shark, which caused the local community, as in the film, to launch an assault against the shark, both for the sake of protection and to preserve their precious tourism sector. At the time of the attack, shark experts assumed that the creatures were placid in warmer climates, a fact they soon came to realise was absolute bunk once the attacks began. Jaws didn't make us hate sharks, but it sure as Hell reminded us that they're freaking scary...