Horror movies have many influences. Some films are based on legends, such as the classical werewolf, vampire, and zombie stories. Others are based on the demented imagination of the storytellers. However, many horror movies are based on real-life monsters, some that are even scarier than the movie monsters.
In some cases, the real-life monsters are turned into actual monsters in the movies. In other cases, there are more realistic horror movies that are based on serial killers that entranced the nation and now have a chance to scare everyone all over again. Here are 10 horror movie villains and the real-life monsters who inspired them.
Ravenous (1999) – Alfred Packer
In 1999, Antonia Bird created a cult favorite horror movie called Ravenous. The film starred Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle, and David Arquette in a story of cannibalism in California in the 1840’s.
The story is based on the real-life tale of both Alfred Packer and the Donner Party. Packer was part of a group traveling through Colorado who was caught in a snowstorm, and he resorted to cannibalism to live.
Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (1986) – Henry Lee Lucas
The movie Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer starred Michael Rooker as a serial killer named Henry. It is an extremely uncomfortable watch, as you are put into the shoes of the killer and just watch as a voyeur as he hunts down and kills his victims, including an apprentice he took in.
Henry is based on the real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, a man who was convicted of killing 11 people but falsely confessed to killing over 100 others.
Wolf Creek (2005) – Ivan Milat & Bradley John Murdoch
The polarizing Wolf Creek is an Australian horror film that has since spawned a TV series and a sequel as well. It was an effective horror story that many viewers hated (it received an F CinemaScore) due partially to its unrelenting horror and bleak ending.
The film is about three backpackers who are kidnapped and then hunted by serial killer Mick Taylor. The movie was based on two different serial killers in Australia, the first Ivan Milat in the ’90s, who killed seven backpackers, and the second Bradley Murdoch in 2001, who killed one person.
Psycho (1960) – Ed Gein
It’s widely agreed upon that Alfred Hitchcock was the master of suspense movies, and in 1960 he tried his hand at horror. The result was Psycho, based on the novel by Robert Bloch. As expected from Hitchcock, he used the book as a reference but made the movie his own, which is a story of a motel owner that was also a serial killer.
Like many other horror movies before and after it, Psycho was influenced by story of Ed Gein, a Wisconsin-based serial killer and grave robber. Similarly, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs used Gein as reference for Leather face and Buffalo Bill, respectively.
Scream (1996) – Danny Rolling
Back in the ’90s when the horror genre was in a slump, Wes Craven helped revitalize it once more by creating Scream. The movie was unique because it wore its love of horror movies on its sleeve, being equal parts farcical homage and straightforward slasher fun.
While the entire film paid tribute to classic horror films, there was also a real-life influence for Ghostface. Danny Rolling is the Gainesville Ripper, a serial killer who killed five students in Florida in 1990. He was the inspiration for the script of Scream.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) – Alfredo Balli Trevino
Before Hannibal, there was The Silence of the Lambs, an Oscar-winning movie that was hugely successful for a genre movie at the Academy Awards. The film starred Jodie Foster as an FBI agent who is sent to interview a convicted cannibal serial killer in Dr. Hannibal Lecter to try to catch a serial killer named Buffalo Bill.
While Bill was based on Ed Gein, author Thomas Harris based Hannibal Lecter on a real-life serial killer doctor named Alfredo Balli Trevino, a man he interviewed in prison as a young reporter.
IT (1990/2017/2019) – John Wayne Gacy
Stephen King wrote the horror novel It in 1986, and it has since been adapted twice. Here, a monster showed up every 27 years to kill children in the town of Derry, Maine. In the novel, Pennywise the Clown is the avatar for the monster and it used this form to lure children to their deaths.
The idea of the killer clown was based on serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who performed as Pogo the Clown and Patches the Clown and ended up with the nickname Killer Clown. Gacy assaulted and murdered at least 33 children and young men.
Dracula (1931) – Vlad the Impaler
Dracula is a monster created in the seminal horror novel by Bram Stoker and has since become the most famous of the vampire monsters in fiction and movies. However, there was a clear influence on Dracula, and he even shares a name with that influence — Vlad the Impaler.
Vlad was a ruler who led a great war and plundered Saxon villages, impaling everyone they captured. He massacred tens of thousands of people before his death, infamously impaling his victims.
Misery (1990) – Genene Jones
Another Stephen King adaptation on this list, the author wrote Misery in 1987. The story had a world-famous fiction author involved in an accident and nursed back to health by a nurse named Annie Wilkes, a woman who held him captive and ordered him to write a new book for her, threatening violence if he didn’t do it as she wished.
Wilkes was based on real-life nurse Genene Jones, a woman who killed countless people with lethal injections of drugs.
The Hills Have Eyes (1977) – Alexander “Sawney” Bean
The monsters in Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes don’t seem like they could be based on anyone in real life. The movie saw a family hunted and killed by a group of mutated hill people in Nevada. The film was grotesque and the monsters horrifying. However, there was a real-life influence.
The script was based on the cannibal Sawney Bean, the head of a clan in the 16th century that killed and cannibalized over 1,000 people over 25 years. When Bean’s identity and atrocities were revealed, the local townsfolk brutally executed him and his family. While there is little historical evidence that confirm or deny Bean’s existence, his myth persists.
