80 Fun Facts About 90s Horror Movie

Who wrote the screenplay for Scream (1996)?

His spec script, originally titled Scary Movie, sparked a bidding war and revived the teen slasher for the rest of the decade.

Which actor provides the voice of Ghostface in Scream?

He was hired after his work on Mars Attacks! and stayed on the phone in every sequel that followed.

Casey Becker's death in the opening of Scream was inspired by a killing in which earlier film?

Killing the biggest star in the cast within the first twelve minutes was the film's way of announcing that nobody was safe.

What was the production budget of Scream (1996)?

It went on to earn roughly $173 million worldwide, an enormous return for a December horror release.

In The Silence of the Lambs, what is found lodged in a victim's throat?

The insect's skull-like thorax markings became the film's poster image, printed over Jodie Foster's mouth.

The Silence of the Lambs was adapted from a 1988 novel by which author?

His Hannibal Lecter had already appeared on screen in Manhunter, played by Brian Cox, five years earlier.

On which holiday was The Silence of the Lambs released in US cinemas in 1991?

A February release is usually a graveyard for awards hopes, yet the film swept Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Adapted Screenplay a year later.

The student filmmakers in The Blair Witch Project vanish in the woods near which town?

The real town was so overrun by fans after release that its welcome sign kept getting stolen.

What was the original shooting budget of The Blair Witch Project?

It grossed around $248 million worldwide, making it one of the most profitable films ever made relative to cost.

How did The Blair Witch Project's marketing campaign describe its three lead actors?

The website and IMDb listings kept up the fiction so well that the actors' families reportedly received sympathy cards.

What is Bruce Willis's profession in The Sixth Sense?

He spends the film convinced he is helping a troubled boy, and the audience is convinced right alongside him.

Which colour is deliberately kept out of most scenes in The Sixth Sense, appearing only at key moments?

A doorknob, a balloon, a tent and a dress all use it to flag the moments when the living and the dead are about to collide.

Where did The Sixth Sense finish among the highest-grossing films of 1999?

Only Star Wars: Episode I made more that year, and it did so with a fraction of the surprise factor.

Candyman (1992) is set in which real housing project?

The production actually filmed inside the towers, and residents were hired as extras and consultants.

Candyman is based on a Clive Barker short story with what title?

Barker's original was set on a Liverpool council estate; the film moved the legend to America and rewired it around race.

Which minimalist composer wrote the score for Candyman?

He reportedly expected an art film and was unhappy to find he had scored a slasher, though the organ-and-choir theme is now beloved.

How many times must you say Candyman's name into a mirror to summon him?

The production used more than 200,000 real honeybees, and Tony Todd negotiated a bonus for every sting he took.

Who directed Misery (1990)?

He had already adapted Stephen King once with Stand by Me, and his production company Castle Rock is named after King's fictional town.

In Misery, what does Kathy Bates's character use to break Paul Sheldon's ankles?

In the novel she uses an axe; the screenplay softened it, and it is still the scene everyone remembers.

Kathy Bates won the Best Actress Oscar for playing which character?

It remains the only Academy Award ever won by a film based on a Stephen King novel.

Who directed Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)?

He insisted every effect be done in-camera with old techniques such as double exposure and reverse projection, no digital work at all.

Which role does Keanu Reeves play in Bram Stoker's Dracula?

His English accent in the film has been mocked for three decades; Reeves himself later admitted he was exhausted from back-to-back shoots.

Eiko Ishioka won an Academy Award for Bram Stoker's Dracula in which category?

She was given free rein to design not just Dracula's clothes but his entire shifting persona, from the armoured red suit to the old-man kimono.

Who replaced River Phoenix as the interviewer Daniel Molloy in Interview with the Vampire?

He donated his entire salary to Phoenix's favourite charities after stepping into the part four weeks before shooting.

Which actor's casting as Lestat did Anne Rice publicly object to before praising the finished film?

After seeing the finished film she reversed herself completely and took out ads praising the performance.

How old was Kirsten Dunst when talent scouts spotted her for the role of Claudia?

She was the first girl tested for the part and picked up a Golden Globe nomination for it.

Which actor asked to be left out of Seven's opening credits so the killer's identity stayed secret?

He was instead billed first in the closing credits, which roll top-to-bottom, the reverse of the usual direction.

Seven received exactly one Academy Award nomination. In which category?

The rain-soaked, deliberately grimy look also spawned a wave of imitators, but the Academy noticed only the cutting.

The 1998 Japanese film Ring was adapted from a 1991 novel by which writer?

It became the highest-grossing horror film ever released in Japan and launched a wave of pale, long-haired ghosts worldwide.

In Ring, where was the psychic Sadako Yamamura left to die?

The cursed videotape and its climbing ghost were remade in Hollywood as The Ring in 2002.

Who directed the 1999 Japanese horror film Audition?

The film plays as a quiet drama for over an hour before its final act, which is why the ending hit festival audiences so hard.

In Audition, what does Asami repeat while torturing Aoyama with acupuncture needles?

The actress had planned to whisper her lines until she and the director agreed the sing-song chant would be far more disturbing.

In Event Horizon, the missing ship reappears in orbit around which planet?

It had vanished seven years earlier on its maiden voyage to Proxima Centauri and came back with something aboard.

In what year is Event Horizon set?

The gorier footage cut by the studio was never properly stored, so the long-rumoured director's cut can never be assembled.

What is the name of the deity the four girls invoke in The Craft?

The name was invented for the film so that no real religion's god would be depicted as a horror-movie power source.

Which character does Fairuza Balk play in The Craft?

Her increasingly unhinged performance became the film's signature and she reportedly bought an occult bookshop in LA afterwards.

Who directed From Dusk till Dawn (1996)?

Tarantino only wrote it and co-starred as the unstable Richard Gecko opposite George Clooney.

What is the name of Salma Hayek's vampire dancer in From Dusk till Dawn?

Her snake dance was performed with a real Burmese python, despite Hayek's fear of snakes.

In Army of Darkness, Ash works at which department store?

The chirpier theatrical ending was filmed after the studio rejected the original one, in which Ash oversleeps and wakes in a ruined future.

Elmer Bernstein's score for Cape Fear (1991) reworks whose original 1962 score?

The screeching strings are among the most recognisable in film, and Scorsese kept them as a nod to Hitchcock's regular composer.

Which star of the original 1962 Cape Fear made a cameo in the remake in his final theatrical film role?

Mitchum and Balsam also returned in small parts, so all three of the original's leads appear in the remake.

Jacob's Ladder (1990) is widely credited as a major inspiration for which video game series?

The twitching, fast-shaking heads of the film's demons were borrowed almost directly for the game's monsters.

Who directed Jacob's Ladder?

It was an unusual detour for the director of Fatal Attraction and 9½ Weeks, and Tim Robbins plays the haunted Vietnam veteran.

Tremors (1990) is set in which fictional desert town?

The film flopped in cinemas but became a video-rental staple and spawned six sequels and a TV series.

Which country singer made her acting debut in Tremors?

She postponed her honeymoon until the shoot wrapped and played survivalist Heather Gummer.

Which actress plays herself in Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)?

It was the lowest-grossing entry in the franchise, but its self-aware approach was refined two years later into Scream.

In The Faculty (1998), the students' homemade drug that dehydrates the alien parasites is made from what?

The film essentially reworks Invasion of the Body Snatchers for a high school, with Jon Stewart as a science teacher.

In Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane is reimagined as what?

Washington Irving's original was a Connecticut schoolteacher; the film turned him into a forensics-obsessed investigator sent upstate.

Who plays the Headless Horseman, seen with his head in flashbacks, in Sleepy Hollow?

The film won the Oscar for Best Art Direction for its fog-bound, almost colourless village built in England.

Which actor plays the resurrected high priest Imhotep in The Mummy (1999)?

The film is a loose remake of the 1932 Boris Karloff original and grossed over $418 million worldwide.

Which artist, also responsible for the Alien creature, designed Sil in Species (1995)?

Natasha Henstridge made her film debut as the alien-human hybrid, who is grown from DNA sent by an extraterrestrial signal.

Cube (1997) is a low-budget horror film from which country?

Only one 14-foot cube set was built; the room's colour was changed with sliding panels to stand in for the whole maze.

In Cube, Leaven eventually works out that the trapped rooms are marked by numbers that are what?

Kazan, the savant who can factorise in his head, is the only one to walk out into the light at the end.

In Deep Blue Sea, scientists enlarge shark brains while searching for a cure for which disease?

Samuel L. Jackson is eaten mid-motivational-speech, one of the most quoted surprise deaths of the decade.

I Know What You Did Last Summer was adapted from a 1973 novel by which author?

The novelist disliked the adaptation, saying her suspense story had been turned into a slasher.

I Know What You Did Last Summer is set in a fishing town in which US state?

The killer's hook-and-slicker fisherman look was designed to feel like a campfire urban legend come to life.

What is the title of the film-within-a-film based on the Woodsboro murders in Scream 2?

The sequel's script was leaked online in full by one of the extras, forcing rewrites of the killers' identities during production.

Which character is revealed as the killer in Urban Legend (1998)?

Her motive is revenge for a fiancé killed in a car crash the heroine caused, and Robert Englund plays a folklore professor as a red herring.

Who directed The Frighteners (1996), starring Michael J. Fox as a con-man who can see ghosts?

It was shot entirely in New Zealand dressed as the American Midwest, and its effects workload helped build Weta Digital before The Lord of the Rings.

In Leprechaun (1993), what is the only thing that can kill the title creature?

A young Jennifer Aniston, then an unknown, plays Tory Redding in her first major film role.

In Arachnophobia (1990), the deadly spider arrives in California from which country?

The crew used over 300 harmless Avondale spiders from New Zealand, chosen for their size and unusually social behaviour.

Under what title was the 1992 New Zealand splatter film Braindead released in the United States?

Its lawnmower finale reportedly used 300 litres of fake blood, cementing its reputation as one of the goriest films ever made.

Clive Barker's Nightbreed (1990) is based on which of his own novellas?

Director David Cronenberg plays the villain, a masked serial-killer psychotherapist, and the studio cut nearly an hour before release.

The Exorcist III (1990) is based on which novel by William Peter Blatty?

The studio forced a new exorcism ending onto the finished film, and Blatty later blamed the sequel title for scaring off audiences burned by Exorcist II.

In the 1990 Chucky sequel, which corporation manufactures the Good Guy dolls?

The climax in the doll factory ends with Chucky mangled by the assembly line that made him.

Stir of Echoes (1999), starring Kevin Bacon, is adapted from a 1958 novel by which writer?

It had the bad luck to open weeks after The Sixth Sense and was largely written off as the other ghost movie of 1999.

In Fallen (1998), Denzel Washington's detective hunts a demon with what name?

The demon passes between bodies by touch, and taunts him by having each new host sing the same 1960s song.

In Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs (1991), what do the intruders break in to steal?

Craven drew partly on a late-1970s news story about Los Angeles burglars who stumbled on children locked in a house.

Who directed Wolf (1994), starring Jack Nicholson as a publishing editor turned werewolf?

Ennio Morricone scored it and Elaine May contributed uncredited writing; it grossed $131 million.

In the Mouth of Madness (1994) closes an informal three-film John Carpenter series known as what?

Sam Neill's insurance investigator hunts a missing horror novelist; The Thing and Prince of Darkness came before.

Which actor plays occult detective Harry D'Amour in Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions (1995)?

It was D'Amour's first screen appearance, drawn from Barker's story The Last Illusion in Books of Blood Volume 6.

Mimic (1997) was the English-language directing debut of which filmmaker?

Its genetically engineered insects, bred to kill cockroaches, evolve to hunt humans; Mira Sorvino starred.

Ravenous (1999) draws on the Donner Party and which real 'Colorado Cannibal'?

Guy Pearce's exiled captain meets Robert Carlyle's cannibal at a Sierra Nevada outpost in the 1840s.

In which city's natural history collection does the creature rampage in The Relic (1997)?

Production was originally planned for New York's American Museum of Natural History before moving to Chicago.

Anaconda (1997) follows a documentary crew led by a snake hunter on which river?

Jon Voight's hunter menaces Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube and Owen Wilson in the US-Brazil co-production.

In Disturbing Behavior (1998), the mind-controlled model students are known as what?

X-Files director David Nutter made the film, which nods to The Stepford Wives and suffered heavy MGM cuts.

In Idle Hands (1999), what part of stoner Anton Tobias becomes possessed and starts killing?

The title plays on the saying that idle hands are the Devil's playthings; the film bombed with $4.2 million.

Which actor made his film debut in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)?

The seventh Halloween film ignored the Thorn Trilogy and reunited Jamie Lee Curtis with her mother Janet Leigh on screen.

Who plays Tiffany, Chucky's former lover whose soul ends up in a doll, in Bride of Chucky (1998)?

Ronny Yu directed the fourth Child's Play film, which turned toward self-referential parody.

Which Italian composer wrote the score for Wolf (1994)?

Columbia released the film on June 17, 1994; Jim Harrison and Wesley Strick wrote the screenplay.