"Based on a true story", those five simple words are every movie marketing man's dream. No matter how preposterous some of the film's plot twists and sequences are, the film can always point to its truthful origins to get audiences to remain on side. No genre relies more on the "inspired by real events" tag (an even looser concept than "true story") than horror. Horror fans can always look at stories of poltergeists and possessions and smugly think that this could never happen, not in reality. Introducing the movie with a simple title screen informing viewers that the seemingly fantastical events that they are about to observe really happened instantly creates a much more receptive audience. Of course, while they're in the cinema the audience can't look up just what the real story is behind the on screen horrors, meaning that films can pass some pretty dubious "real events" off as true and can make some fairly sweeping changes to non-fiction sources, with the audience none the wiser. Most film fans know that the real story that inspired Psycho, the murders of grave robbing corpse-skinner Ed Gein, also inspired The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs. When three such disparate "inspired by real events" stories can be inspired by the same real events, well, it just goes to show how many liberties movies can take with the truth. These ten horror films all sold themselves on being a representation of real life horrors, but just how true are their true stories? Let's take a look at the real story behind the stories.
