2010 marks the 50th Anniversary of “Psycho” and the 100th Anniversary of the very first film version of Frankenstein. Fast Company recently rounded up these twelve tidbits of horror film history:
1. “JAWS” is still the number one horror movie ever of all time with a worldwide gross of $470 million.
2. 37 Stephen King scary stories have been made into feature films.
3. Jamie Lee Curtis starred in six horror movies between 1978 and 1981, earning the nickname “The Scream Queen”.
4. 189 horror movies were released in 1972, the most prolific year in Hollywood for the genre.
5. The first horror film, the 1896 French short “Le Manoir Du Diable”, is 2-minutes long.
6. The first movie based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was 16-minutes long.
7. The nightly wage for a zombie in 1978 was $1 ($3.35, adjusted for inflation), according to an extra who played one in that year’s “Dawn Of The Dead”.
8. 4267 Roxbury Street, the house in Simi Valley, California, where “Poltergeist” was filmed, was last sold in 1979 for $143,500 ($431,247 today). Zillow estimates the home’s current value at $573,500.
9. The real-life Wisconsin grave robber and killer Ed Gein, who disembodied and skinned his victims in the 1950s, inspired three villians: Psycho’s Norman Bates, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Leatherface, and The Silence of the Lambs’s Buffalo Bill. Only one orror film has ever won an Oscar for best picture: The Silence of the Lambs, in 1991.
10. The 12-part “Friday The 13th” film series has grossed a total of $380,637,525 at the U.S. box office, making it the top horror franchise in history. (Only 5 of the 12 movies were released on Friday the 13th.)
11. The 6-part “SAW” series has grossed $370,203,890. The release of “SAW VII” on October 29 should push the franchise into the top-earner spot.
12. Count Dracula, the most-often portrayed character in horror, has been featured in 162 films.
