7 More Horror Films That Eerily Came True

Sweeney Todd, a horror-comedy featuring the Fleet Street barber that killed his patrons and turned them into pies, was originally based on English folklore and transformed into Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim - before grabbing Johnny Depp by the stringy mustache and pulling him in for the film adaptation. It’s campy, fun, and mostly ridiculous, slathered in Tim Burton charm and a whole load of blood.

But of course, we can’t have nice things, and instead of simply serving as a popular interpretation of a dark fairy tale: Sweeney Todd is also tarred with being a troubling starting point for a string of murders.

A year after the film’s release, Jorge Beltrao Negromonte da Silveira, along with his wife and mistress, started killing young women in a small town in Brazil; forming their own cult intent on murdering those that they believed would only bring ‘bad souls’ into the world as a form of population purification. They then took their victims flesh, packed it into their meat pies and empanadas, and sold it to the general populace.

And you thought the horse meat scandal was bad.