13 'cursed' horror films - from tragic deaths to mysterious 'haunted' sets
Horror films are designed to terrify, but sometimes what happens behind the scenes can be so much scarier.
For decades, some of the most frightening flicks to hit the big screen have been labelled 'cursed' by fans due to terrible things that happened during filming – and sometimes before it had even begun.
The Wizard of Oz, Apocalypse Now, and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote are all films rumoured to have been cursed due to several dreadful occurrences, from onset mishaps, injuries, and even worse.
Due to its chilling nature, horror cinema is automatically associated with gory and haunting happenings, so rumours surround several productions that the terrifying scenes onscreen seeped into real life.
To mark Friday the 13th, we look at 13 spine-tingling horror films that gave the cast and crew nightmares even when the cameras stopped rolling.
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Last year, Glenn Close's The Deliverance was hit by several strange instances one after the other that had fans scratching their heads and wondering if the set was haunted.
The cast and crew of the Netflix hit reportedly held 'prayer circles' after director Lee Daniels' dog died, and actor Mo'Nique was rushed to hospital.
'Mr. Daniels had me doing a scene, okay? And we're outside. It was just, the demon was supposed to be on top of the building, so they kept blowing this… I mean, at one point I'm like, 'Lee, do we have this shit because I can't breathe,'' she told SiriusXM.
'So when I got finished, right, my thyroid was a big… I mean, it was just sick.
'Oh, baby. I was like, 'What kind of s**t is this?' It was a lot of things happening with The Deliverance.'
Daniels also revealed his sister had been diagnosed with lung cancer two days after filming the chemotherapy scene with Close.
It's just the latest in a long line of horror films that have had stranger than fiction events surrounding the production…
The Exorcist is often cited as one of the scariest and greatest horror films ever made, but it was famously dogged with problems and freakish occurrences even before filming began.
Shortly before filming began on the 1973 possession horror, the set of Regan and Chris MacNeil's home burned down unexpectedly.
Further delays occurred when Linda Blair and Max von Sydow, who played Regan and Father Merrin respectively, lost close family members.
Things didn't get much better when filming began, with Linda and Ellen Burstyn, who starred as Chris, both sustaining injuries on set – Linda even fractured her spine during the iconic bed possession scene, an injury that had lifelong implications.
It has also been reported that one crew member lost a toe during filming, and another a thumb.
Across the production of The Exorcist, nine deaths occurred including that of Jack MacGowran, who played Burke Dennings.
Where to watch: BBC iPlayer, NOW TV, and Sky Go
Lucifer himself appeared to be trying to stop The Omen in its tracks back in 1976.
Two months before filming began, Robert Thorn actor Gregory Peck was struck by tragedy when his son took his own life.
Later, in October 1975, Peck was travelling to London to film The Omen when his aeroplane was struck by lightning – and bizarrely, this isn't the only disruption lightning would cause.
A few weeks later, producer Mace Neufeld was travelling to set when his aeroplane was also struck by lightning, and screenwriter David Seltzer also experienced the same occurrence.
When filming began in Rome, producer Harvey Bernard narrowly avoided being hit by lightning – proving once, and for all, that lightning can strike twice… and more.
A stroke of luck saw the crew avoid death when the charter plane they were set to use for an aerial shot was used by a group of businessmen, with the plane crashing and killing everyone on board.
The hotel the director, Richard Donner, had been staying in was bombed by the IRA the day after filming, and a zookeeper at the safari park where they filmed the baboon scene was killed by a lion, also the day after those scenes were shot.
A serious accident could have occurred on set when dogs used in a scene turned on a stuntman and could not be called off by their handlers.
But the most infamous tragedy that happened that is attributed to The Omen is that of Liz Moore's death.
She was the assistant and girlfriend of John Richardson, the film's special effects expert. The duo were involved in a car accident in the Netherlands in 1976.
While Richardson escaped the wreck largely unscathed, Moore was decapitated.
What makes it even more terrifying? The accident happened on Friday the 13th, and when John came to, he noticed a road sign that read 'Ommen, 66.6km'.
Where to watch: Disney Plus
Film fans have long suspected that 1982 horror film Poltergeist was cursed after supposedly using real, human skeletons in the first film, though this has never been confirmed.
Before the third Poltergeist film was released in 1988, four cast members had died, including Heather O'Rourke who played Carol Anne in the original production.
O'Rourke was just 12 years old when she died of congenital stenosis of the intestine complicated by septic shock on February 1, 1988, before filming of the third film wrapped.
In the same year that the first film was released, Dominique Dunne, who starred as Dana, was strangled by her ex-boyfriend, John Thomas Sweeney, in the driveway of her home.
She fell into a coma and died five days later on November 4, 1982.
Taylor actor Will Sampson died aged 53 from postoperative kidney failure in 1987, and Lou Perryman, who played Pugsley, was murdered by Seth Christopher Tatum in 2009 during a robbery.
Oliver Robins, who played Robbie Freeling, was also almost killed while filming a scene where a clown was attacking him, after the mechanical clown malfunctioned and the actor was being choked for real.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Prime Video, Apple TV, and the Sky Store
Actor Brandon Lee – who was the son of Bruce Lee – was fatally shot on the set of The Crow when a prop gun was accidentally loaded with a real bullet, which hit him in the abdomen and caused his death.
While that could easily be attributed to a freak accident, what makes it so much more creepy is the fact that he had apparently predicted his own death after having a premonition that he would die suddenly.
Brandon is said to have believed his family was cursed after his grandfather had angered a businessman who had put a curse on them.
His dad, Bruce Lee, also died at 32 after apparently having a premonition that he would only live half the time of his father, who died at age 64, due to the curse.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Prime Video, Apple TV, and the Sky Store
Twilight Zone: The Movie, released in 1983, suffered a terrible, tragic accident on set when three cast members were killed when filming the Time Out segment.
Actor Victor Morrow, who played Bill Connor in the film, and two child actors, who had allegedly been illegally hired, were decapitated, crushed and killed on set when a low-flying helicopter spun out of control.
The three were killed while filming a scene featuring heavy explosions when debris from the explosions flew 100 feet in the air and damaged the helicopter's rotor.
During the subsequent trial, director John Landis denied culpability for the accident, but admitted that the hiring of the child actors Myca Dinh Le, 7, and Renee Shin-Yi Chen, 6, was 'wrong.'
Landis, associate producer George Folsey Jr, production manager Dan Allingham, pilot Dorcey Wingo, and explosives specialist Paul Stewart were later acquitted on charges of manslaughter
Where to watch: Available to rent on Prime Video, Apple TV, and the Sky Store
The Ring Two, directed by Hideo Nakata, was released in 2005 and had some very strange phenomena take place that suspiciously mimicked the events of the film.
Nakata once revealed in an interview that water is used in the film to symbolize someone's evil spirit, and during production, the production office began flooding.
The film's set costumer Jeannine Bourdaghs witnessed a strange occurrence on the Universal lot in which a deer, reported to be six feet tall, ran at her.
She continued that if she had been 'six feet ahead', the deer would have ploughed into her at almost 100 miles-an-hour.
This is particularly spooky as in the film, there is a scene in which Samara (Daveigh Chase) attempts to kill Rachel (Naomi Watts) and Aidan (David Dorfman) with a deer.
Where to watch: NOW TV, Sky Go, and Paramount Plus
For a film about a cursed doll, you would probably expect some eerie happenings on set – but maybe not this horrific.
Both the first Annabelle film and its sequel, Annabelle Comes Home, had some very freaky stuff happen during filming, including light fixtures reportedly falling and the film's Annabelle doll moving on its own.
Producer Peter Sarfan told The Hollywood Reporter: 'We shot in this amazing, old apartment building near Koreatown, and we had some funky stuff go down.
'In particular, the first day that the demon was shooting in full makeup, we brought him up in the elevator. He walks out and walks around to the green room to where we're holding the talent, and just as he walks under, the entire glass light fixture falls down on his head. And in the script, the demon kills the janitor in that hallway. It was totally freaky.'
The doll itself is based on a 'real' haunted doll investigated by Ed and Lorraine Warren, who are fictionalised in these films as well as The Conjuring franchise.
In the sequel, Madison Iseman said that when she would enter the Warrens' bedroom set, she would find the Annabelle doll in different positions each time despite no one entering or exiting the room.
Star Mckenna Grace also reported experiencing a sudden nosebleed during rehearsals, and that one trailer had a strange power outage that the crew could not find the source of.
Where to watch: NOW TV and Sky Go
Rosemary's Baby centres on a pregnant woman who believes an evil cult wants to take her baby to use in their dark rituals.
But the stories that surround the making of the 1968 movie are enough to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
The most famous being the death of Roman Polanski's pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, who was brutally murdered by Charles Manson's followers a year after the film was released.
Producer William Castle also suffered sudden kidney failure after receiving hate mail about the film and apparently screamed 'Rosemary, for God's sake, drop the knife!' as he was being admitted to the hospital. He later died of a heart attack.
The composer, Krzysztof Komeda, also died of a brain clot a year after the film was released in a weirdly similar way to how Rosemary's friend, Hutch dies in the movie.
In another bizarre coincidence, Beatles star John Lennon was shot and killed outside the building in which Rosemary's apartment scenes were shot.
Where to watch: NOW TV and Sky Go
The ninth installment of the Amityville series, 2005's The Amityville Horror, focuses on the reported experiences of the Lutz family after they moved into a house in Long Island where Ronald DeFeo Jr murdered six members of his family in 1974, before they moved out just 28 days later after apparently being terrorised by the paranormal.
All six of the victims were found face down in their beds with no signs of a struggle, despite police finding that the rifle used to kill them had not been fitted with a sound suppressor and they hadn't been drugged with sedatives before their deaths.
None of the family's neighbours reported hearing any gunshots, and those who were awake at the time of the murders say they only heard the family's sheepdog, Shaggy, barking.
Ryan Reynolds, who plays George Lutz in the film, reported that he and members of the crew kept waking up at 3.15am every day, which was the time Ronald DeFeo Jr was said to have murdered his parents and four siblings.
Before filming began, a dead body of a fisherman also washed up on shore by the film set and the real Kathy Lutz also died during filming.
Where to watch: Prime Video and Freevee
There is a theme here of possession horror films seemingly being haunted, and that continues with the 2005 film The Exorcism of Emily Rose.
The film is loosely based on the true story of Anneliese Michel, a German woman whose family believed her to be demonically possessed.
When filming The Exorcism of Emily Rose, director Scott Derrickson revealed that stars Jennifer Carpenter and Laura Linney experienced some chilling supernatural activity.
Jennifer once claimed that a radio would inexplicably turn on in the middle of the night, which Scott confirmed to be true in an X post.
She said it would play one section of the Pearl Jam song Alice over and over again, repeating the lyric 'I'm still alive.'
'I thought about that when it happened, and two or three times when I was going to sleep my radio came on by itself,' Jennifer told Dread Central.
'The only time it scared me was once because it was really loud and it was Pearl Jam's Alive.'
She also said that 'Laura's TV came on a couple of times,' with Scott taking to social media to confirm the chilling story.
'This is true. Also, Laura Linney's radio turned on at night 3 times during production,' he said.
Life imitates art in The Innkeepers, Ti West's terrifying supernatural film about a haunted hotel on the brink of closure.
While filming The House of the Devil the cast and crew stayed at the Yankee Pedlar Inn, experiencing some strange phenomena during their time there.
The staff at the inn believed it to be haunted, which inspired Ti to create The Innkeepers.
During the production of the second film, people on set claimed that lights would switch on and off for no reason, doors would swing open and shut, and cast members would receive phone calls with no one on the other end of the line.
'Well I'm a skeptic so I don't really buy it. But I've definitely seen doors close by themselves; I've seen a TV turn off and on by itself; lights would always burn out in my room. Everyone on crew has very vivid dreams every night, which is really strange,' the director told IndieWire.
'The one story that is the most intriguing to me — In the film the most haunted room is the Honeymoon Suite. That's where the ghost stuff started in the hotel. The only reason I picked the room that I picked to shoot in, was because it was big enough to do a dolly shot. No more thought went into it other than pure technical reasons.
'So when we're finishing the movie, I find out that the most haunted room in real life, is the room I picked to be the haunted room in the movie. It could be a coincidence. It's weird that it happened that way.'
James Wan was rumoured to have shot hit 2010 film Insidious on cursed grounds when a number of terrifying things happened on set – and this continued into the sequel.
Insidious: Chapter Two featured a scene set in an abandoned hospital in which the ghost of a patient haunts a nurse after taking their own life.
It was filmed at Los Angeles' Linda Vista Community Hospital, a notorious haunted hotspot among the paranormal community.
Cast and crew members reported feeling nauseous while in the building and hearing a ringing sound without ever finding the source of the noise.
Saw creator James told Bloody Disgusting: 'I've never shot in Linda Vista. It's kind of funny because Leigh [Whannell] and I have always heard so much about it. For research on the first one, [Leigh] came here to do a bit of ghost-hunting. And I think a lot of that inspired us when we needed a hospital set.'
Whannell added: 'I've been here twice, after midnight with ghost hunters. We found these guys on the internet. We went to dinner with them and then they brought us here to Linda Vista, which I didn't know existed. The one security guard lets us in. More Trending
'We walk into this ostensibly abandoned hospital where all the equipment and files have been left as they were on the day it closed down. [Later on] I came here with my wife and we sat in the surgical room, which is supposedly the most haunted room according to these guys.'
The filmmaker said they sat in darkness for an hour trying to contact spirits, but experienced nothing.
He continues, 'A few months later her friend buys her a voucher to go see this psychic. And he basically asked her, 'have you been to this place recently?' And she said, 'we kind of went on this ghost hunt.' And the guy was like, 'you can never go there again. You came this close to taking something home with you.'
'He asked her if she had seen any blue lights, and she said that she had remembered looking up and seeing these little blue pin lights – she thought it was when you can't see anything and see all these shapes and colors [instead]. And he said, 'that was your aunt and your stepbrother holding them back [the spirits].''
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MORE: It's Friday the 13th so why not binge these 5 truly terrifying TV shows
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As Luke (played by Martin Freeman's son Joe) plots his escape, a former police officer, who has moved to the town for a quiet life, uncovers disturbing facts about the place, known as The Institute. Expect Stranger Things-style superpowers and the same kind of simmering discomfort as Stephen's previous TV adaptations, Castle Rock and The Outsider. Mr Bigstuff - Sky, July 14 Danny Dyer is back for a new series of Bafta winning comedy Mr Bigstuff Credit: ©Sky UK AFTER winning a Bafta for its first series, Sky's hit comedy returns for a second run, reuniting Ryan Sampson and Danny Dyer as brothers Glen and Lee. This time, the Essex duo navigate the Earth-shattering revelation that their dad might still be alive, sending the pair into a meltdown over how to locate him. Meanwhile, secrets threaten to tear the family apart. Expect a host of new characters, including Rula Lenska as the eccentric Rita, and Shaun Williamson playing a surprisingly angry children's entertainer. Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters - ITV, July 14 A brand new reality show will test the fears of celebrities when they dive with sharks WHAT better way to mark the 50th anniversary of the film Jaws than to challenge a group of ocean-phobic celebrities to dive alongside sharks? Filmed off the coast of Bimini in the Bahamas, this new reality format sees the group coming face to face with increasingly larger and more dangerous sharks. The high-stakes, five-part show will feature Sir Lenny Henry, Rachel Riley, Ross Noble, Ade Adepitan, Helen George, Dougie Poynter and Lucy Punch. From panic attacks to near-miss encounters with the apex predators, the celebrities will be pushed to their personal limits in what is sure to make fun viewing. Wednesday - Netflix, August 6 14 Addams Family inspired drama Wednesday is back for an eagerly awaited new series Credit: JONATHAN HESSION/NETFLIX HIT series Wednesday became Netflix's most-watched English-language series of all time, in large part thanks to Jenna Ortega's deadpan performance of the iconic Addams Family character. And after solidifying itself in pop culture with the help of a viral dance, there's little surprise the series is back, this time with a darker mystery. Wednesday returns to boarding school Nevermore only to discover there is a serial killer on the loose. Series two brings back fan favourites Morticia, Gomez and Pugsley, while fresh faces on the cast list include Steve Buscemi and Joanna Lumley. Uefa Women's Euros - ITV & BBC, from July 2 14 There is live sport to get excited about when the Women's European Championships kick off Credit: Getty THE BBC and ITV are sharing coverage of the Women's Euros in Switzerland as the Lionesses, captained by Leah Williamson try to retain their crown. BBC Sport will air half of the group-stage matches, including both England and Wales' games against the Netherlands, as well as three of the tense quarter-finals. Commentary and analysis will come from Gabby Logan, Jeanette Kwakye, Alex Scott, Ellen White, Jill Scott and Steph Houghton. The England v Wales clash on July 13 will be a big live draw for ITV. Both channels will simultaneously broadcast the final on July 27. Thursday Murder Club - Netflix, August 28 14 Screen legends Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan are set to feature in Thursday Murder Club Credit: Giles Keyte/Netflix RICHARD Osman's best-selling first book is hitting the box with a star-studded cast. The series follows sharp-witted retirees – ex-spy Elizabeth, former union activist Ron, retired psychiatrist Ibrahim and nurse Joyce – in a fancy village for old folks who meet to solve cold cases. But then they find themselves caught up in a current murder that happens on their doorstep – and like the nosy old folk they are, they get to work trying to solve it. With a cast list that includes Dame Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan, above, plus Sir Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie, David Tennant, Sir Jonathan Pryce and Tom Ellis, this one is not to be missed.
