There's one title card you'll see, without fail, on any schlocky, bad horror film produced in the last couple of decades. No, not the Platinum Dunes name - well, yes, that, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the staggering amount of horror films that claim to be "based on a true story" or, at the very least, "inspired by actual events." It's something that seems to have begun in the seventies with The Amityville Horror, the classic ghost story that was indeed adapted from the "non-fiction" book by Jay Anson. The story of the Lutz family, who were terrorized by paranormal phenomena in their Dutch Colonial house, was a publishing sensation when it was released, and even more so when the film version was released. Never mind that it turned out to be a heaping helping of bullsh*t concocted by the Lutz family to make their fortune, apparently in collaboration with Anson and paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (who also featured in The Conjuring, another "based on true" horror flick that's probably a load of nonsense), and has since been widely discredited as a hoax. That hasn't stopped producers from slapping an inspired by credit on each and every scary movie which passed through their doors, to different degrees of veracity. Besides non-fiction books one of the most popular sources of inspiration for horror films are urban legends, those spooky stories that get passed around at campfires and usually happened to a friend-of-a-friend. Telling yourself "it's only a movie" is a tried-and-true method of keeping your calm whilst watching a horror film, but we're afraid in some cases that's simply not true. As bad a reputation The Amityville Horror (or The Conjuring, or Haunting In Connecticut, or...) has given these movies based on "true events", for every one of those made-up stories and bestsellers, there's one that really did happen. Urban legends Snopes confirmed as the real McCoy, serial killers more terrifying than anything we've seen on screen, and people who mysteriously died in their sleep...these are ten horror films based on actual true stories.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
