The cinema often makes us dream by telling us fabricated stories but it can sometimes happen that it is inspired directly or indirectly by real events to weave its scenario. We’re not going to talk here about biopics or real adaptations of historical facts, but about films that seem completely imaginary which nevertheless had something totally real as their starting point, even if you’ll see it, we’re moving away from it quite quickly.
1. Jaws
Obviously everything that takes place in the film is absolutely made up, but the starting point of the scenario does refer to a series of real shark attacks that occurred in 1916 in the state of New Jersey. At the time, a shark hunt had even been organized because it scared away tourists, which can be understood when there are four deaths in a few days on usually quiet beaches.
2. Cocaine Bear
No need to do twenty lines to explain the story, it’s about a bear who falls on a packet of cocaine, uses it without wanting to and starts bumping into people because he’s getting way too tough. The story, as silly as it is, however, is inspired by the real story of a bear having eaten coke lost in the woods by traffickers in the 80s, except that in the real story the animal is died shortly afterwards. It’s sad.
3. Love and Amnesia
The slightly silly romantic comedy with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore which shows a man trying to charm an amnesiac woman whose memory fades every morning is well inspired by the story of Michelle Philpots. Following an accident, this woman sees her short-term memory “reset” every morning and wakes up thinking it’s 1994. Her husband is therefore forced to summarize their whole life since then, which must be quite repetitive.
4. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The whole story of the film and its antagonist “leatherface” (leather face) is inspired by the life of the real serial killer Ed Gein (from whom the film Psycho is partly inspired). The man in question had killed a whole bunch of people and had made himself a skin mask but also lampshades and a lot of other unusual decorative objects that could have earned him the nickname Valérie Damidpeau. Sorry.
5. Tomb of the Fireflies
Still too few people have seen this film, and among those who have seen it, quite a few are unaware that it is inspired by the autobiographical novel by Akiyuki Nosaka. Suddenly this story which can definitely be qualified as one of the saddest in the world is indeed a true story, which is worse than anything to know. Sorry.
6. Destination finale
Yeah, this Destination finale the. The screenwriter of the very first film confessed he got the idea for the screenplay after reading a news item in which a woman had exchanged her plane ticket at the last moment because her mother had a bad feeling about the plane she had to take. Surprisingly the plane in question had crashed during its flight, which was enough to embroider the story of a good slasher on top.
7. Freddy, the claws of the night
Before you throw your plate of pot-au-feu in my face yelling that there’s no way Freddy was inspired by a true story, let me explain. In an interview given during his lifetime (the precision was not necessarily necessary you will tell me) the late Wes Craven had explained that the idea had come to him after having read a strange news item on a series of unexplained deaths of people who had horrible nightmares and refused to sleep before finally being found dead in their sleep. Now you can throw your plate at me.
8. Saving Private Ryan
Even if a lot of people know that there is indeed an authentic story behind that of the very fictionalized film, others are unaware of it, and others are not even aware that the film exists, for those at the limit I can mime it but don’t ask me for the moon either. Be that as it may, the story of the family, of which all the brothers had been killed except for the youngest whom the army is trying to bring home, is very real, two of the brothers were finally saved.
9. Jeepers Creepers
So no, the story of some kind of weird demon who butts people up isn’t real, but the introduction to the first movie is based on a true story. In this one we see the two protagonists seeing a driver throwing a corpse on the side of the road before starting to follow them. This story is inspired by a real anecdote from the 90s when a couple had seen a man (later identified as Dennis DePue) dispose of a corpse (later identified as that of Dennis DePue’s wife) on a bank. road (later identified as an ordinary road in the United States) before following them for a while and pulling off. Scary.
10. The Thing
The scene where the characters all test their blood one by one in an atmosphere of unbearable fear to find out if they are the host of “the thing” is actually inspired by AIDS. John Carpenter had declared that he had had the idea for this scene by modeling himself on the ambient psychosis of the time due to the AIDS epidemic, which gives a whole new meaning to this sequence.
11. Maniac
Here it is not necessarily the story but rather Tom Savini’s special effects which are “inspired” by real events. The extremely shocking 80s film indeed had this former war photographer’s talents as a special effects director, and as he himself had stated, he was completely inspired by the real life horrors he had seen to make some of the film’s most shocking scenes as realistic as possible, like the shotgun blast to the head.