10 Classic Movie Monsters With Unexpected Origins
2. The Babadook Was Inspired By A 1927 Lon Chaney Movie
Though 2014's Aussie arthouse horror film The Babadook may not be on the blockbuster level of some of these other films, the titular pale, top hat-wearing monster is nevertheless one of the most memorably creepy horror movie antagonists of the last decade.
But writer-director Jennifer Kent had some inspiration from a movie released almost 90 years prior - the Lon Chaney-starring 1927 horror film London After Midnight.
In the film, Chaney plays a pale, sharp-toothed, top hat-wearing entity billed simply as The Man in the Beaver Hat, and the visual similarity between it and the Babadook is unmistakable.
Kent has freely admitted the "borrowing", though, and considering that the last-known print of Chaney's movie was sadly lost in the 1965 MGM vault fire, it's almost as though she's helping keep the character's likeness alive by inserting it into her contemporary movie - quite brilliantly, too.