10 Best Fake Horror Movies Within Horror Movies

10. Don't

Appeared in: Grindhouse

The fake film: "Based on the terrifying best seller" and a mash-up of different 1970s more gore than plot genres from Euro-horror to Hammer House of Horror, Don't is marketed by a trailer that includes no dialogue that might clue American audiences into the fact that it is not an American film. "If you are thinking of going into this house...Don't!" intones trailer man very slowly as a group including Jason Isaacs and Mark Gatiss approach an old, dark house. From there it's all baby eating madmen (Nick Frost) in the basement, a woman (Katie Melua) getting a hatchet to the face from a maniac in a wedding dress and creepy knife wielding children with glazed over white eyes a la The Beyond.

The real film: Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's expensive vanity project was designed to recall a trashy double bill in a dirty 70s fleapit. Tarantino's talky chicks and car crashes story Death Proof and Rodriguez's fun zombies, strippers and a machine gun leg themed actioner Planet Terror came complete with faux distressed film stock, missing reels and "prevues of coming attractions".

The pair of movies themselves may have been hit and miss, but the whole Grindhouse experience was a slice of unusual and individual fun wherein the fake trailers were probably the most enjoyable bit. Machete may have been the one to get a real world adaptation, but Don't, from director Edgar Wright (Rodriguez penned some music for Hot Fuzz in return), is the standout alongside Eli Roth's holiday slasher Thanksgiving and Rob Zombie's self explanatory Werewolf Women Of The SS (with Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu).