10 Unnecessary Horror Movie Details You NEED To Know
You just know that you need to know these things that you don't need to know.
In the annals of horror movie history, there are some things that are so imperative to the genre that everybody knows them without even viewing the films or franchises that they're from. Important instances in the timeline such as Psycho's iconic shower scene, the hidden meaning behind Redrum and the integration of explicit, X-rated movies featuring no shortage of naked bodies being decapitated and mutilated by a guy with a penchant for hunting innocent babysitters have remained engrained into pop culture well after they hit the silver screen.
But who cares about all of that now? We already know all of that. What about the not important whatsoever sort of stuff?
It probably goes without saying that a lot of content that slips under the radar - especially in horror - could be considered superfluous. Doesn't that just make it all the more interesting to find out what sort of not so interesting things are eluding us? Sometimes the substance of some sick weirdo murdering people is substantial, but would it not be endlessly intrinsic to elevate the focus a little?
We've listed some of the most influential, if not downright overlooked parts of some of horror's best offerings. In order to show you just what you've been missing, we've ordered them from most poignant to most pointless.
10. The Blob - Supposedly Based On A True Story.
Supposedly, according to a lot of epilogues in the horror movie genre, many of the maleficent acts that begin taking place shortly after the opening's culmination are "based on actual events". A lot of notable films follow this trend. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (which is loosely based on serial killer Ed Gein), The Strangers (which centres around an eerily realistic home invasion) and, erm, The Blob? A picture about a gluttonous blob of space jelly that devours people by absorption and becomes ostensibly bigger by doing so.
With a premise as ludicrously divergent as that, one would suspect that the filmmakers are likely riffing films that surround it in its respective genre. They're not. The Blob is in all actuality based on a real-life phenomenon. Not one that saw a gelatinous mutant space goo dining on citizens, however.
The real life occurrence that gave The Blob's sludge a bit of texture took place on September 26, 1950 - a full eight years before Steve McQueen would be frantically fighting it on-screen - when officers Joe Keenan and John Collins claimed to have discovered something otherworldly in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. They claim to have seen it falling from the sky and, when searching the area, they found an ooze dangling from a telephone which apparently began to move.
When one man reached out to touch it - which if you've ever seen a horror movie you know is not the best move - and it left behind a sticky residue. Instead of covering him head to toe and consuming him like a hungry orphan at an all-you-can eat buffet, the ooze simply evaporated.