Grab the popcorn and settle in for some frightfully fun movie trivia.
The Exorcist. Poltergeist. The Shining. Just thinking about these films is probably enough to give you goosebumps, and for good reason. The best horror movies stay with you long after the credits roll, leaving you jumpy when you’re home alone or something goes bump in the night. But whether you love scaring yourself silly all year round or only at Halloween, it’s worth remembering that these are just movies.
Even the ones inspired by true stories rely on plenty of movie magic and Hollywood money to deliver their scares. From on-set secrets and unforgettable performances to box office record breakers, these behind-the-scenes facts will make you see your favourite scary movies in a whole new light. Read on … if you dare.
1. The highest-grossing scary movie
As Halloween approaches, cinemas fill up with horror films, and it’s easy to see why studios love them. Compared with other genres, scary movies are generally cheap to make and often do very well at the box office. The highest-grossing horror film of all time is still 2017’s It, adapted from the Stephen King novel, which has taken more than US$700 million worldwide.
The genre is booming, too. 2026 has been a bumper year for horror, with new hits such as Obsession and Backrooms each earning more than US$400 million around the world.
2. The king of fear
No author has been adapted for the screen quite like Stephen King, whose stories have been turned into more than 100 films and TV series, starting with Carrie in 1976. Two of the most recent big-screen adaptations, The Long Walk and The Running Man, both released in 2025, are based on novels King originally published under his pen name, Richard Bachman. The Long Walk, published in 1979, follows a gruelling, last-man-standing contest between teenage boys, and was read by many at the time as a commentary on the Vietnam War.
And King’s story has come full circle: a brand-new series of Carrie, from horror director Mike Flanagan, premiered on Prime Video in October 2026.
3. The rise of Count Dracula
Hungarian-born actor Bela Lugosi set the standard for screen vampires with his 1931 portrayal of Dracula. More than 200 film and television versions of Bram Stoker’s story have followed, with many actors in the title role borrowing Lugosi’s distinctive accent. But Dracula wasn’t the first spooky ‘talkie’. That title goes to The Terror from 1928, one of the many lost films of the early 20th century; only its soundtrack is known to survive.
4. Silent screams
Horror on film goes back even further, to 1896, when pioneering French director Georges Méliès released Le Manoir du Diable (known in English as The Haunted Castle or The House of the Devil). The short silent film features eerie touches such as skeletons, ghosts and a bat that transforms into the devil.
5. Scares for every generation
Each era gets the horror films it deserves. Post-war anxieties fuelled a wave of monster movies such as Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) and The Blob (1958), while more recent hits tend to lean towards psychological horror that gets under your skin.
6. The elusive Oscar
The Academy has long been wary of horror. The Oscars have been handed out since 1929, but it wasn’t until The Exorcist (1973) that a scary movie earned a Best Picture nomination. Since then, only a handful have followed: Jaws (1975), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), The Sixth Sense (1999), Black Swan (2010), Get Out (2017), The Substance (2024), and most recently Frankenstein and Sinners (both 2025). Of these, only The Silence of the Lambs took home the top prize.
Horror did make Oscar history this year, though. Ryan Coogler’s vampire thriller Sinners earned a record-breaking 16 nominations at the 2026 Academy Awards, the most ever received by a single film.
7. A big win for scary stuff
Few horror performances have struck Oscar gold. But Kathy Bates was so convincingly terrifying as obsessive fan Annie Wilkes in Misery (1990) that she became the first woman to win Best Actress for a horror film, beating screen legends Meryl Streep and Anjelica Huston. In 2026, horror had another big night, with Michael B. Jordan named Best Actor for Sinners and Amy Madigan winning Best Supporting Actress for Weapons.
8. An unlikely inspiration
Ideas for horror films can come from anywhere, even a comedy routine. Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017) follows Chris, a young Black man who is terrorised by his white girlfriend’s family. Peele has said the film was partly inspired by a bit in Eddie Murphy’s 1983 stand-up special Delirious, in which Murphy jokes about why white families in films like The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist don’t just leave the house as soon as a ghost turns up.
9. Hollywood’s favourite witch
Made for around US$60,000, The Blair Witch Project (1999) went on to take about US$248 million worldwide, thanks largely to its clever marketing. The film was presented as real footage recovered from cameras left behind by three student filmmakers who had vanished in the woods. To add to the mystery, the unknown cast used their real names on screen, and were even listed as ‘missing, presumed dead’ on the film’s original IMDb page.
10. A Psycho secret
Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, directed more than 50 feature films, but few scenes are as famous as the shower murder in Psycho (1960). It lasts less than a minute on screen, yet took about a week to film and required dozens of camera setups. And because the film was shot in black and white, Hitchcock could get away with using chocolate syrup for the blood.
11. A familiar fear
Come Halloween, you might spot trick-or-treaters wearing the Ghostface mask, the white, screaming face worn by the killers in the Scream films. The first movie, released in 1996, opens with a teenager taking a chilling phone call from a stranger. It’s a nod to Black Christmas (1974) and When a Stranger Calls (1979), both of which feature versions of the spine-tingling twist that the calls are coming from inside the house. The franchise is still going strong: Scream 7 hit cinemas in early 2026.
12. The secret behind horror’s most famous mask
An even older franchise with another famous mask is Halloween, which began in 1978. Its masked killer, Michael Myers, appears in 12 of the films. His blank, expressionless face started life as a cheap Captain Kirk mask from Star Trek, which the crew of the first film spray-painted white. For years, William Shatner, the actor who played Kirk, had no idea his face had been used this way. When he found out, he said he was flattered.
13. Happier endings
Not a fan of being frightened? Horror also comes in gentler forms, from comedies such as Scary Movie to musicals such as Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. In fact, the makers of the 1986 film version of Little Shop of Horrors changed its ending to make it more audience-friendly. In the original version, the man-eating plant devours its owner, Seymour, and his sweetheart, Audrey. But after test audiences reacted badly, the final cut (spoiler alert!) sees Seymour electrocute the monster and live happily ever after with Audrey.
Source: RD.com
