10 Horror Movies Where Pranks Brutally Backfired

1996's Scream led to a glut of slasher-lite, self-aware horror films. Urban Legend fits this mold to a tee.

Urban Legend's premise is that its young and attractive cast members are being killed off with, well, urban legends. A few characters are killed by a shadowy ax-wielding maniac. Another is killed with a riff on the Pop Rocks and Coke legend. Our Final Girl is close to having her kidney removed as in the 'organ removal and sale' legend.

An urban legend drives the whole movie, actually. We find out about halfway through that characters Michelle and Natalie, a few years before, played the "chase the first car that flashes you" game as they drove with their headlights out. Their actions panicked the other driver, who flipped his car and died, an act which will ultimately cause the death of over a dozen people.

See, the dead driver's fiancee, Brenda, decides that she will avenge his death through a complicated process of becoming friends with Michelle and Natalie and then killing everyone close to them via urban legend. What is never explained is how Brenda, played by roughly 120-pound Rebecca Gayheart, managed to overpower several men much larger than her and then drag their bodies across a college campus.

The film is also worth a peek for the who's who of young actors who would launch to stardom within a few years.