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With Halloween just around the corner, many enthusiasts gear up for a horror movie binge, embracing the eerie season. With pumpkins on doorsteps and 'The Monster Mash' playing on loop, it's the perfect time to immerse yourself in a terrifying flick.
The creation of these films can be as captivating—and occasionally as terrifying—as the stories themselves. Here are 10 intriguing behind-the-scenes tidbits from some of the most beloved horror films.
10. Real Bees Were Used in Candyman
In Bernard Rose's Candyman (1992), every bee shown on screen is authentic. During the film's intense climax, Tony Todd, portraying Candyman, had hundreds of bees crawling over him and even inside his mouth. Todd recalls, 'I had a dental dam to avoid any intake, and I simply had nerves of steel.' Across three films, Todd was stung 23 times, but his lawyer managed to secure a $1,000 bonus for each sting.
Virginia Madsen, who portrayed graduate student Helen Lyle, has an allergy to bees, which made her understandably anxious. She recalls that director Bernard Rose told her, 'No, you're not allergic to bees; you're just afraid.' After being tested, it turned out she was actually more allergic to wasps, but paramedics were on hand just in case. Other precautions included using younger bees whose venom is less potent and applying synthetic queen bee venom to the actors, theoretically making the bees less likely to attack.
9. Sissy Spacek’s Devotion to Her Role in Carrie
Director Brian De Palma initially allowed Sissy Spacek to audition for the role of Carrie in his 1976 adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie (1974) as a favor to her husband, Jack Fisk, the film's production designer. Eager to secure the role, Spacek showed up in the same sailor dress she wore in junior high, explaining that she 'didn't brush my teeth, didn't wash my face, [and put Vaseline in my hair so it would look dirty and unkempt.'
Once hired, Spacek fully immersed herself in the role, distancing herself from the rest of the cast to remain in the same fragile mental state as Carrie. Her co-star P. J. Soles recalls that after the infamous prom scene where Carrie is drenched in pig’s blood, Spacek 'slept in that blood for three days' to ensure continuity.
Spacek even insisted on performing the final shot where Carrie’s hand bursts through her own grave, despite De Palma's desire to use a stunt double due to the injury risk. Spacek remembers, 'I had to push my hand up through this thing covered in pumice rocks. My hand got very raw from doing that!'
8. Michael Myers Wears a Captain Kirk Mask in Halloween
The mask worn by Michael Myers in Halloween (1978) is iconic, but director John Carpenter initially described it as 'a pale mask' that was 'almost featureless.' Tasked with creating the mask on a tight budget, production designer Tommy Lee Wallace opted to alter a cheap, store-bought mask. Although he considered using a mask of the clown Weary Willie, he ultimately chose a Star Trek Captain Kirk mask because it had 'just kind of a blank face, it didn’t really look like anybody.'
Wallace then made a few adjustments to make it suitably eerie: he enlarged the eye holes, removed the eyebrows and sideburns, disheveled the hair, and spray-painted it white. Carpenter humorously notes, 'I guess I owe the success of Halloween to William Shatner.' In a fun twist, Shatner, amused by the idea of his face appearing in a horror film, dressed as Michael Myers one Halloween to take his kids trick-or-treating.
7. Breakdancing Zombies in Train to Busan
For Train to Busan (2016), director Yeon Sang-ho wanted the zombies to have jerky, erratic movements rather than the typical slow shuffle. To achieve this, he hired a team of breakdancers to create specific choreography for the film and train the human actors playing zombies. Yeon explains, 'We had our actors learn some very strange dances, with unnatural movements like having broken elbows.'
Gong Yoo, who portrays the overworked father Seok-woo, found it particularly challenging during the fight scenes due to the unnatural movements of the zombies. He explains, 'Even when I try to mirror their motions, their bodies are constantly jerking and their limbs twisted, making it hard to anticipate their attacks. It's also tough to know exactly where to strike them since they are always in motion.'
6. A Double Amputee Was Used for the Chest Chomp in The Thing
The groundbreaking practical effects in John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) were created by Rob Bottin, who was just 21 years old when he joined the pre-production team. One of the standout effects he designed was the chest chomp scene, where Cooper (played by Richard Dysart) tries to revive Norris (played by Charles Hallahan) using a defibrillator, only to have his arms bitten off as they break through Norris's chest.
A fake body was crafted from fiberglass and attached to Hallahan, with his head and arms emerging from underneath the table. The chest had a hydraulic mechanism designed to snap shut on lifelike arms made of Jell-O, wax bones, and rubber and gelatin veins. These arms were affixed to Joe Carone, a double amputee, who wore a prosthetic mask of Dysart. When the mechanism triggered, it ripped the fake arms off, sending gore flying as Carone flailed his real amputated arms in the air.
Bottin’s dedication to creating these effects was so intense that he ended up in the hospital after filming wrapped, suffering from a bleeding ulcer, exhaustion, and double pneumonia.
5. An Eddie Murphy Joke Partly Inspired Get Out
Jordan Peele has cited several influences behind Get Out (2017), including the racial dynamics in America during the Obama era, his personal experience of dating a white girl and meeting her parents, and even an Eddie Murphy joke. In Murphy’s 1983 stand-up special Delirious, he humorously reflects on how a black family would respond differently to a white family in a horror movie. He references 'The Amityville Horror,' where the ghost tells the family to leave, but the white family stays, while he jokes that he'd simply 'tip the f*ck out the door.'
Drawing inspiration from this joke, Peele crafted the black characters in Get Out to react authentically in the face of danger. He explains, 'There is a heightened awareness that black Americans have developed over time, constantly looking out for racism and the real-life horrors we've faced.' Peele believes these realistic responses resonate universally, as 'it’s rewarding to see a film where someone at least acknowledges that this could spiral into a terrifying situation.'
4. Rare Replicas of the Pop-Up Book from The Babadook
While horror and children’s pop-up books aren’t typically seen together (for obvious reasons), they proved to be a perfect blend in Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014). In 2015, Insight Editions released a limited run of 6,200 replicas of the Mister Babadook book, designed by illustrator Alex Juhasz, the eerie book that haunts widowed mother Amelia and her son Sam throughout the film.
Simon Arizpe, the book's paper engineer, notes that 'the specifications of the book are identical in the limited edition copies as they were in the film version, such as the color, binding, and trim size.' Since the movie doesn’t show every page, they added 'several new pages to complete the story.' A second edition was released in 2019, also in a limited run. Although copies are rare, they occasionally appear for sale online, often at a significantly marked-up price. Alternatively, you can watch a flip-through of the book on YouTube.
3. A Convicted Murderer Acted in The Exorcist
The production of The Exorcist (1973) is famously believed to have been cursed. Nine crew members passed away during or shortly after filming, and numerous accidents, including fires and injuries, occurred. While the tales of a curse may have been deliberately exaggerated to generate publicity, director William Friedkin even stated, 'After all I’ve seen on this film, I definitely believe in demonic possession.' However, it wasn’t until years later that one of the cast members was convicted of murder.
Friedkin was intent on making the scene where Regan (Linda Blair) undergoes an angiogram as realistic as possible, so he hired actual medical professionals instead of actors. In 1979, Paul Bateson, the radiological technician featured in this scene, was convicted of murdering Addison Verrill and was suspected of several other killings. Friedkin later used Bateson's case as inspiration for his 1980 crime thriller Cruising.
2. The Horrific Filming Conditions of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The most harrowing scene in Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is the dinner sequence. Shot in Texas during the peak of summer, the scene where Sally (Marilyn Burns) is tormented by her cannibalistic captors around the dinner table took a grueling 26 hours to film. The temperature soared beyond 100°F (38°C), and the room reeked of decay due to the animal hides and bones.
Gunnar Hansen, who portrayed Leatherface, recalls, 'The food on the table decayed so quickly that we had to discard it every few hours and replace it with fresh head cheese and sausage.' Interestingly, Head Cheese was even considered as a potential title for the film. Joseph Lanza, author of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: The Film That Terrified a Rattled Nation (2019), notes that the heat was so unbearable that the cast and crew had to regularly step outside for oxygen and occasional breaks to vomit.
However, Burns endured the harshest conditions. She fainted after truly being beaten, and Hansen inadvertently cut her finger when the prop knife and fake blood malfunctioned during the shot of the frail Grandpa sucking her finger. 'When I was losing my mind at the end of the movie, laughing uncontrollably, that wasn’t acting,' Burns recalls. 'That was me, having to do it again.'
1. The Bloody Bed Scene Going Wrong in A Nightmare on Elm Street
In Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the iconic scene where Glen (Johnny Depp) is pulled into his bed by Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), resulting in a geyser of blood spilling onto the ceiling, was achieved through a rotating room. Everything in the room was secured, and then the entire room was flipped upside down. About 220 gallons of fake blood, composed of water, red food coloring, and poster paint for thickening, were poured through a hole in the bed. However, the scene didn’t go exactly as intended.
When the water hit the ceiling light, it became electrified, shocking the man who was pouring it (luckily, he wasn’t seriously harmed). Another problem stemmed from the film’s tight budget, which meant the room was manually rotated by the crew rather than with a motorized system. As the water splashed around, the crew lost control, causing the room to spin unexpectedly. While this was a mistake, the final shot, with the angle veering off, ended up being even creepier than if gravity had stayed constant.
