8 Horror Movies Supposedly Based On "True" Events

Candyman achieved the impossible, becoming a successful slasher-horror movie at a time when the genre was all but dead. Furthermore, Candyman tackled issues of class divides and racial inequality and lore around the film's origins has grown and varied wildly over the years.

Perhaps it was the film's unflinching portrayal of inner city crime that gave rise to ts origins being touted as a series of "candyman" style murders that took place around Chicago. Two particular scenes in Candyman are often presented as evidence of its factual basis. Firstly, the discussion of an intruder entering an apartment through a medicine cabinet. Next a much more visceral flashback where it is implied "Candyman" has cut the genitals off a child in a public toilet.

The facts that can be borne out are that Ruthie Mae McCoy was murdered in the Chicago projects in 1987, an intruder indeed gaining entry via her bathroom medicine chest. The fact the film's victim shares Ruthie's name, makes it quite obvious this event inspired the film's screenplay. But did the unnerving public bathroom scene really happen? Thankfully no. This disturbing sequence comes from the mind of Clive Barker. Growing up in working-class Liverpool, Barker recalls his grandmother discouraging him from using public bathrooms as "bad men will come and cut it off!" Her warning evidently stuck as Barker shared this story with writer-director Bernard Rose and it subsequently became one of the Candyman's more shocking scenes.