10 Best Films Based On Urban Legends
The best stories can told, re-told, changed and even made into films good and bad.
On May 31, 2014, two twelve-year-olds in Wisconsin stabbed a friend 19 times in honour of the mythic Slender Man. Fortunately, the victim survived. We disseminate most urban legends and false news stories via the internet now, and the Slender Man was one of the first urban legends created as a meme, its success often credited to the chaotic and unverifiable reality of the world wide web.
This tragedy is something of a role-reversal. Monsters, serial killers and maniacs in film and literature are often inspired by the real thing. A truly horrific incident based on fiction is another matter. For no matter what sick, depraved Awful one can create, it doesn’t hold a candle to reality.
But throughout cinema, urban legends have come to inspire scenes and elevator pitches for entire films. When Urban Legend was released in 1998, no book existed compiling the stories This interested Jan Harold Brunvand, who set about compiling one. In the introduction, he writes of the folklore class in the film, “[The class] is of interest to folklorists since it shows us Hollywood’s idea of what a college class in the subject might be like.
Unfortunately, it’s a poor example, since professor Wexler’s approach is merely to tell a lot of scary stories, show some slides, and encourage students to try ‘urban legend experiments,’ like drinking a can of soda after eating Pop Rocks candies to test whether the combination will explode in the stomach.”
Here are the ten best films linked to those round-the-campfire tales.
10. 8mm
Snuff films have long been the topic of discussion - whispered rumours of bootleg VHS tapes that feature onscreen murders are still something many people believe exist. They aren't just for a serial killer's personal collection - those exist - these tapes are circulated on the black market. The likely source of the legend comes from the Faces of Death series, which employed special effects to purportedly portray onscreen murder and suicide. When Roggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust was released, the director had to clear himself of murder in court by bringing to rumoured murdered actor along with him.
Fact of the matter is, the reality or unreality of a snuff film is virtually impossible to prove if one chooses not to disclose the truth. There were several films about the dangerous, perverted reality of the snuff world, but none caught more attention than Joel Schumacher's 8mm, scripted by Se7en's Andrew Kevin Walker.
In the film, investigator Nicolas Cage is hired by a wealthy widow to uncover whether or not an unearthed snuff film from her late husband's collection is real or not. From there, Cage is led to the L.A. underground, the kind of dark yet still neon freak show Schumacher revels in. A wacky, seemingly pansexual Joaquin Phoenix is his guide.
It's an interesting premise, sadly undone in the final act when it unspools into a standard revenge thriller. What's most disconcerting is its portrayal of homosexuality - particularly exploitative for someone like Schumacher.