50 Fun Facts About British Horror Films

In Shaun of the Dead, which pub do Shaun and his friends choose as their refuge from the zombie outbreak?

The Winchester is Shaun's favourite pub, and the rifle mounted above its bar, which he and Ed had argued about, proves to be in working order.

In 28 Days Later, activists free laboratory chimpanzees infected with a virus that is known by what name?

Rage was conceived as a biological contagion rather than anything supernatural, a metaphor for road rage, air rage and other everyday aggression.

An American Werewolf in London, a British-American co-production, won the first-ever Academy Award in which category?

Best Makeup was a brand-new category at the 54th Academy Awards, and Rick Baker took it for transformation effects that changed the face of horror makeup in the 1980s.

Which British horror star called The Wicker Man, in which he played Lord Summerisle, the best film he ever made?

Christopher Lee was so keen to see it made that he worked on the production without pay, hoping to break free of his image as a Hammer regular.

Which actor played the vampire hunter Van Helsing for Hammer and later Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars?

Peter Cushing claimed George Lucas first approached him to play Obi-Wan Kenobi, and only cast him as the Death Star's commander after the two met.

The lead Cenobite of the 1987 British horror Hellraiser, played by Doug Bradley, became known by which nickname?

Pinhead was known simply as the Lead Cenobite at first, yet Doug Bradley went on to play him in seven sequels.

In Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, a grieving couple played by Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland travel to which city?

Venice draws the couple because John has been hired to restore an ancient church there, just as a serial killer is at large in the city.

Shaun of the Dead opens a loose trilogy by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg named after which ice cream brand?

Cornetto ice cream appears in each film in a different flavour, and the strawberry one here is red to match the blood and gore.

Which Harry Potter star played the widowed lawyer Arthur Kipps in Hammer's 2012 ghost story The Woman in Black?

Daniel Radcliffe helped make it the highest-grossing British horror film in 20 years, with the biggest US opening in Hammer's history.

Which British director made the 2002 hit 28 Days Later, shooting most of the film on small digital cameras?

Danny Boyle's crew closed streets for only a minute or two at a time, usually on Sunday mornings, to film a London with nobody in it.

Although The Descent is set in the Appalachian Mountains, its cave interiors were built at which British film studio?

Pinewood Studios housed the whole network of caverns and tunnels, because the filmmakers judged a real cave too dangerous and too slow to shoot in.

Which 1960 British film about a murderous cameraman drew reviews so hostile that they derailed Michael Powell's career?

Peeping Tom later won a cult following and a critical reappraisal, and the British Film Institute now ranks it among the hundred greatest British films.

The 1960 film Village of the Damned, with its glowing-eyed blond children, adapts which John Wyndham novel?

The Midwich Cuckoos was first meant to be filmed in California, until MGM moved the production to its British studios in 1959.

In The Wicker Man, Sergeant Howie flies to Summerisle shortly before the islanders celebrate which festival?

May Day is when Howie, searching for a vanished girl, steals the costume of Punch the Fool to slip into the islanders' parade.

The 1961 British ghost film The Innocents, starring Deborah Kerr as a governess, is based on which Henry James novella?

The Turn of the Screw reached the screen by way of a 1950 stage play by William Archibald, which was also called The Innocents.

Which actor plays Jim, the bicycle courier who wakes from a coma in a deserted hospital, in 28 Days Later?

Cillian Murphy's Jim wakes in St Thomas' Hospital and finds the normally bustling streets around Westminster Bridge and Piccadilly Circus empty.

Which Polish director made his first English-language film, Repulsion, in London with Catherine Deneuve as a manicurist?

Roman Polanski had only recently moved to Britain from Poland, and neither he nor his star was fluent in English during the shoot.

Which American horror star played a Shakespearean actor who murders his critics in the British film Theatre of Blood?

Vincent Price reportedly counted it a favourite among his own films, because he had always wanted the chance to act in Shakespeare.

The 1945 anthology Dead of Night, remembered for its ventriloquist's dummy, was a rare horror from which British studio?

Ealing Studios was known mainly for comedies, yet the film's circular plot inspired Fred Hoyle's steady state model of the universe.

The Curse of Frankenstein shocked critics in 1957 as the first Hammer horror film to offer audiences what?

Full colour let the film linger on blood, surgery and severed body parts, a break from the black-and-white suggestion of the earlier Universal monster movies.

Which Hollywood star plays an alien who drives around Glasgow luring men into her van in Under the Skin?

Scarlett Johansson's pick-up scenes were unscripted and filmed with hidden cameras, and most of the cast had no acting experience.

Neil Jordan's 1984 British film The Company of Wolves, co-written with Angela Carter, reworks which fairy tale?

Little Red Riding Hood had already inspired Carter's 1979 short story The Company of Wolves, which she adapted for radio before the film.

Ken Russell's The Lair of the White Worm, starring a young Hugh Grant, is loosely based on a novel by whom?

Bram Stoker's 1911 novel disappointed Russell, who mixed in the English legend of the Lambton Worm to make his film.

Which British actor, later Proximo in Gladiator, had his first leading film role in Hammer's The Curse of the Werewolf?

Oliver Reed's werewolf prowls 18th-century Spain only because Hammer had unused Spanish sets to hand; the novel it adapts is set in Paris.

Neil Marshall's Dog Soldiers pits soldiers against werewolves in the Scottish Highlands, but where was it shot?

Luxembourg offered tax deals and ready crews, so it stood in for Scotland in Marshall's first feature as a director.

In Rose Glass's 2019 British horror Saint Maud, the devout title character works in which profession?

A nurse who could not save a patient, she renames herself Maud, becomes a devout Catholic and takes private palliative work in an English seaside town.

The 2020 British horror Host, filmed during a Covid lockdown, unfolds entirely on a group call in which app?

Zoom was also how the film was made: Rob Savage directed remotely while the actors ran their own cameras, lighting, sound and stunts.

Hammer's 1955 hit took a BBC serial about which scientist and respelt its title to flaunt an X certificate?

Bernard Quatermass led The Quatermass Xperiment, which dropped the E from Experiment to exploit an adults-only rating that other studios were nervous of.

Which British comedy film series spoofed Hammer's gothic chillers in 1966 with an entry subtitled Screaming!?

Carry On Screaming! was the twelfth of the 31 films in the series, a send-up of the Hammer style made while the real thing was still popular.

In the 2017 British horror The Ritual, four friends hiking in memory of a dead companion get lost in which country?

Sweden's Kungsleden trail is where the friends set out, though the film's old-growth forest was really shot in Romania's Carpathian Mountains.

The 2021 British horror Censor is set amid the 1980s panic over violent VHS films known by which nickname?

Video nasties were the target of a campaign led by Mary Whitehouse, and the film's heroine works for the British film board in 1985, at the height of the row.

In the 1976 British-American chiller The Omen, what is the name of the ambassador's son revealed as the Antichrist?

Damien is swapped in at birth by the ambassador, played by Gregory Peck, who hides from his wife that their own baby has died.

The Wicker Man, Witchfinder General and The Blood on Satan's Claw are often called the founding trio of which subgenre?

Folk horror owes that grouping to Mark Gatiss, who popularised the term in his 2010 BBC documentary series A History of Horror.

Which cult musical was shot at Oakley Court, a Gothic country house seen in several Hammer films?

The Rocky Horror Picture Show also reused props and set pieces from old Hammer productions, whose style its plot and setting echo.

Hammer joined Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers for a 1974 film mixing its vampire formula with which other genre?

Martial arts scenes in The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires were choreographed by the Hong Kong studio, which was unhappy with how the British director handled them.

In the 1971 British film The Abominable Dr. Phibes, the vengeful organist models his murders on what?

The plagues of Egypt guide each killing, and Phibes wears an amulet bearing a Hebrew letter for every plague as he works through them.

Which London-born star of Hollywood's Frankenstein returned to Britain in 1933 to make the horror film The Ghoul?

Boris Karloff, born William Henry Pratt, had left England in 1909, and worried that his brothers would disapprove of his macabre fame.

Which star of 1960s television gave a last screen performance in Edgar Wright's 2021 horror Last Night in Soho?

Diana Rigg died shortly after production ended, and the film is dedicated to her memory and to that of her castmate Margaret Nolan.

Which Liverpool-born author made his directing debut with Hellraiser, adapting his own novella The Hellbound Heart?

Clive Barker moved into directing because he was displeased with how earlier films had handled his material.

In Remi Weekes's 2020 film His House, a refugee couple haunted in their new English home have fled which country?

South Sudan's war follows the couple to England in the shape of an apeth, or night witch, that haunts the walls of their new home.

Don't Look Now, the 1973 chiller starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, adapts a short story by which author?

Daphne du Maurier was so pleased with the film that she wrote to its director to congratulate him on capturing the couple's relationship.

Which American author paused work on his own book to help write the 1961 British ghost film The Innocents?

Truman Capote took three weeks off from In Cold Blood to rework the script, adding the Freudian symbolism that runs through the film.

Which British company, sometimes mistaken for Hammer, specialised in anthology horrors such as Tales from the Crypt?

Amicus was founded by two American producers and, unlike its period-loving rival, usually set its stories in the present day.

Which director made The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy among his 29 films for Hammer?

Terence Fisher spent years as a film editor, on hits such as The Wicked Lady, before he directed the gothic chillers that made the studio's name.

The 1957 British horror Night of the Demon, directed by Jacques Tourneur, adapts which M. R. James ghost story?

Casting the Runes was loosely adapted by Charles Bennett, who sided with the director in a losing fight to keep the demon itself off screen.

Which honour was Hammer given in 1968 for its contribution to the British economy?

A Queen's Award to Industry was presented on the steps of the Castle Dracula set, in the middle of filming Dracula Has Risen from the Grave.

In Hellraiser, which object does the hedonist Frank Cotton buy in Morocco and use to summon the Cenobites?

A puzzle box said to open a realm of otherworldly pleasure, it is finally used by Kirsty to banish the creatures by reversing the moves that open it.

Which future Late Late Show host starred with Mathew Horne in the 2009 British comedy Lesbian Vampire Killers?

James Corden was cast after the director saw him in The History Boys, and later called the film quite embarrassing.

Hammer's 1966 sequel Dracula: Prince of Darkness is notable because the vampire Count never does what on screen?

He does not speak a word, only hisses: the star said he refused the lines he was given, while the screenwriter insisted he never wrote any.

Which actor plays nearly every male villager who torments Jessie Buckley's widow in Alex Garland's 2022 film Men?

Rory Kinnear plays the landlord, the vicar, the pub owner, the police officer and more, so one face stares back from the whole village.