- 6/22/2025
Some of Hollywood's most memorable scenes have disturbing real-life origins. From method actors going too far to unexplained occurrences on cursed sets, these behind-the-scenes stories will make you see these famous movies in a completely different light. Warning: some of these tales are not for the faint of heart.
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00:00I had no concept whatever of what was to come.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the top 20 creepiest true stories behind movie scenes.
00:14Oh, good lord. It's... it's unbelievable.
00:21Number 20. Sissy Spacek Slept in Blood. Carrie.
00:25Continuity is a hugely important aspect of the moviemaking process.
00:30However, it's not necessarily an actor's job to keep tabs upon their wardrobe to this end.
00:35Sissy Spacek, however, went the extra mile when she was filming Carrie back in 1976.
00:39Stop it, mama! Stop hurting yourself, mama!
00:45He's gonna laugh at you. They're all gonna laugh at you.
00:48The actor, determined to retain continuity for the scene, slept in Carrie's bloodied prom dress until the scene was finished.
00:55This wasn't done in a single day, mind you.
00:58Meaning that Spacek slept for multiple nights in her dirtied and sticky dress.
01:02Spacek, to her credit, actually told Yahoo in 2014 that the warmed corn syrup felt like, quote,
01:08a warm blanket.
01:15Number 19. Sliced Open. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
01:20The filming of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1973 is notorious at this point for the hellish conditions endured by the entire production.
01:28Marilyn Burns' character may have made it to the end of the film alive, but the actor didn't escape unharmed.
01:34Young lady, you just take it easy there now, but we'll fix you some supper in a few minutes, huh?
01:41Die-hard fans of the film may know that Burns actually cut her finger during the scene where her character Sally Hardesty is being tortured by the Sawyer clan.
01:49This wasn't the only time Burns suffered for her art either,
01:53as the actor can be seen suffering cuts and bruises while frantically fleeing from Leatherface.
01:57Number 18. Real Tears. Skippy.
02:09Not every actor can cry on cue.
02:12It's even more challenging when a production is working with a child actor.
02:16But this does not mean that any director should go to the lengths Norman Torog did on 1931's Skippy.
02:21One scene in the film required lead Jackie Cooper to cry over the loss of his character's dog, and the young boy was having some difficulty.
02:29So, Torog actually had Cooper's own dog led away and ordered a production assistant to fire a gun.
02:36The director told Cooper his dog had been shot in order to get, well, the shot.
02:41Don't touch me!
02:42To make things worse, Cooper was so inconsolable that he kept on crying after Torog brought the unharmed dog back on set.
02:51Number 17. Injuries and a Real Murderer. The Exorcist.
02:56Ellen Burstyn wasn't the only actor to get hurt on the set of The Exorcist.
03:00Linda Blair also suffered some debilitating injuries during the filming of this classic Fright Fest.
03:04We're speaking specifically of the sequence where Blair's possessed character Regan is thrashing around in a bed.
03:10Mother! Mom! Take it!
03:15The harness that held Blair down was improperly secured, to the point where the actor's beleaguered pleas for help were just that.
03:23She was in some real pain.
03:25I didn't know what to do, and so I'm just yelling. It hurts really, really, and somebody thought I yelled, Billy.
03:32And I actually never broke character.
03:34Blair would develop scoliosis as a result of the sequence.
03:37But even more troubling is the case of Paul Bateson, who played a radiographer in the film.
03:42Regan, I'm just going to move you down on the table, okay?
03:45Bateson served actual prison time for the murder of film industry reporter Addison Verrill in 1977.
03:52Number 16. Real Bees. Candyman.
03:55We're not sure how many trained Hollywood stunt bees exist out there, but we do know that Candyman star Tony Todd held a remarkable amount of them in his mouth during this legendary sequence.
04:18The bees in Todd's mouth are actually babies, although they appear like the normal everyday bees you'd see pollinating a flower.
04:26However, baby bees have less developed stingers, so the effect of an attack is less painful than if Todd was getting stung by a fully grown honeybee.
04:35Oh, Todd was stung, however. Stung 23 times, in fact.
04:40However, the actor had a clause in his contract that paid out a cool thousand bucks for every sting on set.
04:46Not too shabby.
04:47Allow me at least a kiss. Just one exquisite kiss.
04:55Murder!
04:57Number 15. That Horsehead. The Godfather.
05:00They are $600,000 on four hooks. I'll bet Russian stars never paid that kind of dough for a single horse.
05:07It seems so simple, right? Develop a mock horsehead that you can put in the bed during that infamously bloody scene in The Godfather.
05:13This wasn't what director Francis Ford Coppola had in mind, however.
05:17He wanted realism, to the point where he ordered an actual horsehead from the local slaughterhouse.
05:23A horse that was being put down anyway, mind you.
05:26Soon enough, a box containing a severed horsehead arrived on set, enclosed in a package of dry ice.
05:33Coppola and crew set up the head on the bed, shot the scene, and the rest is history.
05:37Gross, bloody history.
05:43Number 14. Danger. Then fiction.
05:47Roar.
05:47The 1981 movie Roar is one of the craziest ideas from an industry that is basically defined by crazy ideas.
05:55The decision to film a family comedy drama surrounded by real wildcats was that of writer-director Noel Marshall and his wife, film star Tippi Hedren.
06:03What are you trying to prove? That you're going to have lions socializing with people?
06:08No, but we can't keep exterminating them. We can't keep eliminating their land. We can't keep exterminating everything that we fear that inconveniences us.
06:17The film itself would probably be forgotten today, were it not for the extremely dangerous and potentially deadly situations Roar provided for its cast and crew.
06:27At least 70 people were injured during the making of Roar, including the main cast of Marshall, Hedren, and Hedren's daughter, Melanie Griffith.
06:35Why did you bring us here? We're just going to die.
06:39No, we are not going to die. Your father is going to be here soon and it'll be all over.
06:43These injuries and attacks can be seen on screen, too.
06:46And Roar's infamous reputation eventually grew to the point where documentaries were made about this stranger-than-fiction exercise in poor judgment.
06:55Number 13. Dawn Doe – Dawn of the Dead
06:58George A. Romero and the crew from 1978's Dawn of the Dead didn't intend to utilize real human remains in their movie.
07:06However, Dawn Doe, as she's now affectionately known by fans, was indeed a mummified corpse that was accidentally featured in Romero's film.
07:14Annie have died last week on these threes in the basement of this building. We'll find them.
07:22This occurred when special effects legend Tom Savini brought over what he thought was a rented prop from a man named Larry Winterstellar.
07:30Dawn Doe wasn't a prop, however, but a real person.
07:33And she then spent time in the front window of a costume shop for years after her brush with undead fame.
07:39The skeletal remains were then spotted by a police officer, positively identified, and finally laid to rest in a grave on March 19th, 1983.
07:49Number 12. Lemming Toss – White Wilderness
07:52It's an animal myth that has persisted for decades, thanks in part to one old-school Disney film.
07:58The story is one of the persistent tales of the Arctic, and as often happens in man's nature lore, it's a story both true and false, as we shall see in a moment.
08:06White Wilderness presented the idea that lemmings commit self-destruction in groups, hurtling themselves over cliffs to their deaths.
08:13This actually isn't true, but that doesn't mean White Wilderness is off the hook with regards to creepy behavior.
08:19That's because the crew on set actually tossed lemmings from cliffs and into the water in order to achieve the illusion of self-destruction.
08:26It's unclear as to whether any lemmings were actually hurt during this sequence,
08:30but it's always controversial when any production stages animal behavior in a dangerous or reckless manner.
08:36Number 11. Nearly Electrocuted – A Nightmare on Elm Street
08:40What do you think of when the original A Nightmare on Elm Street pops into your head?
08:45Maybe it's the reports of actual dream death that inspired director Wes Craven's creative vision for the film?
08:50Or maybe it's that iconic Johnny Depp death scene.
08:56Well, as classic as that scene is, getting it in the can did not come without cost.
09:04The rotating room turned into a wheel of electrified death after fake blood spilled onto some set equipment.
09:10So the guy pouring the water got electrocuted.
09:14Oops.
09:15Oops.
09:16Multiple crew members were non-fatally electrocuted during the scene,
09:19and Robert Englund recalled in an interview how he assisted in getting co-star Heather Langenkamp out of the way from suffering similar shocks.
09:27Come on, Freddy.
09:28I can't be catching you.
09:32I'm gonna split you and chill.
09:35Number 10. Lion Attack – Tarzan – The Ape Man
09:38John Derrick directed a number of films that starred his wife, the actor and model Bo Derrick.
09:44One of them was 1981's Tarzan – The Ape Man, featuring the hunky Miles O'Keefe in the lead role.
09:50Are you Tarzan?
09:55100 feet tall?
10:00Maybe a thousand?
10:01It would be O'Keefe that would ultimately prove to be Bo Derrick's guardian angel on set,
10:07since it was the actor's quick thinking that allowed his co-star to escape a potentially fatal lion attack.
10:13The attack was actually kept in the finished film, too,
10:16although it's edited in a way that cuts out the drastic moment where O'Keefe restrains the lion long enough for his co-star to escape with just minor injuries.
10:24Number 9. Ghostly Goings On – The Conjuring
10:27God brought us together for a reason?
10:29This is it.
10:30At this point, it's almost expected to have some supernatural story come out of the making of a scary movie.
10:36Even more so for The Conjuring,
10:38due to its basis on the true paranormal investigations of demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren.
10:43But we prefer to be known simply as Ed and Lorraine Warren.
10:47The entire production process was marred with strange occurrences early on,
10:51with weird noises being heard when the screenwriters were communicating over the phone with Lorraine Warren,
10:56and Vera Farmiga finding claw marks on her laptop.
10:59The strangeness continued on the set of The Conjuring 2 when curtains were caught moving on camera without a draft in the room.
11:07Number 8. Beak and Switch – The Birds
11:16Alfred Hitchcock became infamous for his behind-the-scenes antics and for how he treated some actors over the years.
11:27Actress Tippi Hedren, who made her big picture debut in The Birds, has often gone on record to describe her time with Hitchcock as abusive.
11:35This is evident by the shocking climactic attack of Hedren's character by a swarm of birds.
11:45While she was promised that they would use mechanical ones,
11:49instead, tons of live birds were thrown at her,
11:52in what she called a, quote,
11:54brutal and ugly and relentless experience.
12:02Number 7. A Haunted House and Then Some – The Amityville Horror
12:06Kill people.
12:08People kill people.
12:11Another famous horror film based on a supposedly real-life haunting.
12:14You can bet that some bizarre stuff happened on the set of The Amityville Horror remake.
12:18Not only did a dead body turn up in the lake at the outdoor set,
12:22but also, the real Kathy Lutz passed away during production.
12:27It wasn't just a set.
12:29We felt like there was a force.
12:34Melissa George, who played Kathy in the remake,
12:36has claimed that many supernatural things happened during filming.
12:40For example, just like the real George Lutz,
12:43Ryan Reynolds kept waking up at 3.15 a.m.
12:46The estimated time the DeFeo murders occurred in the Amityville house.
12:51Number 6. It's Only a Movie.
12:54The Last House on the Left.
12:56You only got the two little letters on them.
12:58You guys let the hell out of here.
13:00I'm going to start screaming.
13:01A brutal film about assault and revenge.
13:04The Last House on the Left famously used the tagline,
13:07quote,
13:08However, the on-set reality was quite brutal itself.
13:15Actress Sandra Peabody was allegedly so genuinely scared,
13:19she even walked off-set.
13:21Actors David Hess and Mark Scheffler
13:22were reportedly very abusive towards their female co-stars,
13:26threatening to hurt or even kill them off-camera,
13:29in order to get a strong reaction.
13:31Hess also experienced some real terror,
13:33since he was chased by a real chainsaw in the film's climax.
13:37The Omen may deal with demons and the Antichrist,
13:54but the production team is considered one of the most cursed film crews of all time.
13:59Head-on collisions,
14:00Rottweilers attacking trainers,
14:02multiple planes being struck by lightning,
14:05and even director Richard Donner's hotel being bombed by the IRA,
14:09were all challenges the crew had to deal with.
14:12As if all that wasn't enough,
14:13their special effects artist,
14:15John Richardson,
14:16was seriously injured in a car accident less than a year later,
14:19while his assistant,
14:20who was sitting next to him,
14:22was brutally cut in half,
14:24similar to a scene in The Omen.
14:26Number 4.
14:31Mystery Baby.
14:32Eraserhead.
14:37Indie productions,
14:38as opposed to Hollywood pictures,
14:40normally have much less coverage and reports from behind the scenes.
14:43And if David Lynch is the director,
14:45then even more of the film's details will be shrouded in mystery.
14:49Eraserhead may be a big question mark to any moviegoers who discover it,
14:52but the biggest mystery will always be how Lynch created that mutant baby effect.
14:58Many claim that he used and wired up a real preserved lamb fetus.
15:03The late Lynch always refused to reveal his secret,
15:06instead making comments that raised more questions than answers.
15:09There's a baby.
15:11It's at the hospital.
15:12Mom!
15:13And you're the father.
15:14Number 3.
15:15Harrowing Hallucinations.
15:17The End of Evangelion.
15:19I don't know where to find happiness.
15:21So you only find happiness in your dreams.
15:24As one of the trippiest and most surreal anime series ever made,
15:27the cinematic conclusion to Neon Genesis Evangelion
15:30clearly does not shy away from nudity,
15:33violence,
15:33or general controversy.
15:35In fact,
15:36during one of the many hallucinations in the film,
15:38it's been rumored that the drawings shown
15:40are in fact real drawings made by victims of abuse.
15:43Whether this is true or not,
15:45the sequence also includes real death threats
15:47the director received for the ending of the original series,
15:50as well as pictures of his vandalized animation studio.
15:54It's a chilling bit of trivia
15:55that adds to an already traumatic viewing experience.
15:59I thought if I came here,
16:01I would find what I was looking for.
16:03Number 2.
16:04No special effects?
16:05No problem.
16:06Men Behind the Sun.
16:07A movie about the real-life torture and human experimentation
16:14that occurred in a Japanese World War II camp
16:17was always bound to cause some controversy.
16:20However,
16:21its disturbing nature not only stemmed from its subject matter,
16:24but also from how far the production went for the sake of realism.
16:28Some of its highlights are when they set real rats on fire
16:31and more famously used a real dead body for the autopsy scene.
16:34Real animals and dead bodies were utilized for many of the effects,
16:38since there was no mainstream special effects industry
16:41where the movie was made at the time.
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17:00One of the most famous post-production scandals in all of film history,
17:13Cannibal Holocaust took the documentary-style found footage angle a little too far.
17:18So much so,
17:19the director Ruggiero Deodato was brought in front of a court on murder accusations
17:24and had to get his actors to come out of hiding to prove that he did not kill them.
17:29But the creepiness doesn't end there,
17:31as many still refuse to watch the film
17:34because of the very real animal deaths caught on camera,
17:37including a detailed butchering of a river turtle.
17:41Did you know all of these facts?
17:43Let us know in the comments.
17:59Let us know in the comments.
18:00partir to the comments?
18:13Let us know.
18:17Let us know in the comments.
18:20Let's how大日 how smart you can tutto the mold thing in the aftermath.
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