Top 10 Movie Monsters Inspired By Real Life

“The Mummy” (1999) Today, many people associate Imhotep with Arnold Vosloo’s villain in the modern “Mummy” franchise. But it was legendary horror actor Boris Karloff who first brought him to the screen, in 1932. Both versions are loosely based on a historical figure. No, the real Imhotep was not a mummy who came back to life and killed people. In the 27th century BCE, Imhotep was a chancellor under Pharaoh Djoser, and may be the architect of his step pyramid. Over one thousand years after his death, Imhotep became the subject of a cult and was regarded as a demi-god. He was also seen as an Ancient Egyptian Renaissance Man of sorts, versed in a wide variety of subjects and writing various wisdom texts.

“The Host” (2006) Before receiving acclaim for his film “Parasite,” South Korean director Bong Joon-ho directed a monster movie called “The Host.” It follows a man whose daughter is kidnapped by a mutant fish. The premise is based on real events. Back in 2000, an American man named Albert McFarland, who ran the morgue in the US military base in Seoul, ordered employees to dump almost 200 bottles of formaldehyde down a drain that led to the Han River. This is the event that kicks off the film. The monster itself was based on an article that Bong read about a “deformed fish with an S-shaped spine” caught in that same river.

#8: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

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Various Written in 1886 by Robert Louis Stevenson, the Gothic novella “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” has inspired numerous movie adaptations. The original tale drew on a couple of real life cases. One was William Brodie, a Scottish deacon who broke into the houses of the rich and stole their valuables. He used the money to fund his gambling addiction. He was eventually hanged for his crimes. Another was Eugene Chantrelle, a personal friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, who was convicted of killing his own wife. Stevenson was fascinated with the dichotomy between outward good and inward evil, and he drew inspiration from these cases to craft the novella’s central character.

#7: The Demon

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“Verónica” (2017) This Spanish film from director Paco Plaza is one of the most acclaimed possession movies of the 21st century. It is also (supposedly) based on a true story. In the early 90s, a student in Madrid named Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro held a seance to contact her friend’s boyfriend, who had recently died in a motorcycle accident. After a teacher interrupted the seance, eyewitnesses reportedly saw a smoky apparition entering Lázaro’s nose. She soon began experiencing seizures and hallucinations, and in 1991 died in mysterious circumstances. Reportedly, a police report claimed that her house was haunted. It’s now known as The Vallecas Case, and it’s one of Madrid’s most famous stories of the paranormal.

#6: The Blob

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“The Blob” (1958) Known for Steve McQueen’s first leading role, “The Blob” is a classic B-movie from the late 50s. The titular monster consumes everything it touches in small town Pennsylvania, and it came to Earth inside a meteorite. Believe it or not, this thing has real world precedent. Back in 1950, four police officers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, discovered a mysterious blob of what looked like jelly, measuring six feet in diameter. This mysterious, gelatinous substance is known as star jelly, and reports of it date back to the 14th century. No one knows for sure what it is.

#5: Chucky

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“Child’s Play” (1988) Chucky actually has numerous inspirations. Believe it or not, none of them are human spirits trapped inside a doll. Writer Don Mancini wanted to comment on the flagrant consumerism of the ‘80s and was largely inspired by the Cabbage Patch Kids craze. Director Tom Holland (not the Spider-Man Tom Holland) also said that the design of Chucky was influenced by the My Buddy dolls of the mid 80s. In a surprising twist for the time, My Buddy dolls were marketed primarily at young boys. It’s been speculated that Chucky was also inspired by Robert the Doll, an allegedly haunted doll that’s supposedly terrorized its owners. He now resides in a Florida museum.

“Primeval” (2007) Starring Dominic Purcell, “Primeval” is an adventure-horror film about a team of journalists who set out to capture a giant man-eating crocodile. There are many monster films of its ilk, but unlike those, this one is based on reality. Gustave is an actual crocodile from Burundi, Africa, who is said to be over 18 feet long, weigh 2,000 pounds, and to have killed 300 people. He hunts the Ruzizi River and Lake Tanganyika. As in the film, a team did travel to Burundi to film and capture him, producing the 2004 documentary “Capturing the Killer Croc”. However, their experiences weren't quite as dramatic as in “Primeval.”

#3: Freddy Krueger

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“A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984) One of the most iconic slasher villains of all time, Freddy Krueger has a ton of different influences. He’s named after Wes Craven’s school tormentor, Fred Krueger. He was also inspired by a childhood event in which a man stopped outside Craven’s house and eerily stared at him through the window. But the basic idea behind the villain was sparked by an article about traumatized Hmong refugees in the US who suffered from horrific nightmares and refused to sleep. Some eventually died in their sleep, a phenomenon that was called Asian Death Syndrome at the time. It’s now thought to have been due to a genetic disorder called Brugada syndrome that leads to sudden heart attacks.

“Jaws” (1975) Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece was based on Peter Benchley’s novel of the same name. But he in turn was inspired by the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916. Nearly 60 years before Benchley’s novel was published, four people were killed by sharks off the coast of New Jersey. One other was injured, and this all occurred during a brutal heat wave in July. It’s believed that either a great white or a bull shark was responsible. This historic event inspired numerous aspects of Benchley’s story. For example, resort towns faced economic devastation by the resulting panic, and many people went on open water shark hunts to kill the offending creatures.

#1: Godzilla

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“Godzilla” (1954) This iconic movie was released less than a decade after the end of the Second World War, and that’s no coincidence. “Godzilla” might have been a monster movie, but it also had higher thematic ambitions. Born from nuclear radiation, Godzilla represented fears of nuclear holocaust. The Japanese experienced this firsthand in August 1945 when the US dropped atomic bombs on the cities Hiroshima and Nagasaski - killing up to 226,000 people, mostly civilians. Art director Akira Watanabe studied the scars suffered by survivors to create Godzilla’s skin. Hence also the monster’s atomic breath.