Movies based on a true story

Inspired by Ed Gein, Norman Bates was a Wisconsin man who was arrested in 1957 for committing two murders and digging up the corpses of countless other women who reminded him of his dead mother. He was found to be insane and spent the rest of his life in a mental institution due to his obnoxious dual personality and this story became the genesis for psycho.

The novel “The Exorcist” was inspired by an article about an exorcism performed on a 13-year-old boy in Mount Rainier, Maryland in 1949. The story’s details have been muddled through the years in order to protect the family but the exorcism was performed in St. Louis. Evidence points to the boy’s behaviour not being nearly as outrageous or supernatural as was portrayed in the film.

The murder spree that makes up the plot of Terence Malick's classic debut film, 'Badlands,' depicts the real-life actions of Charlie Starkweather, 17, and his young girlfriend, Caril Fugate, 14, who together killed ten people in Nebraska in 1957. The story of Starkweather and his murderous spree throughout the heart of the American countryside has become legitimate folklore for decades, and it has inspired plenty of homages in art and pop culture.

The original 1974 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' was inspired by the notoriously demented serial killer Ed Gein, who killed two victims and proceeded to use the skin and bones of the deceased to make household furniture, skin masks and all sorts of other disturbing memorabilia.

'The Exorcism of Emily Rose' is based on the case of a German Cathoric girl name Anneliese Michel, who suffered from epilepsy in Germany over 40 years ago. While horribly suffering through her vicious fight against the epileptic seizures that would take hold of her, two priests saw a far more sinister force at play. The priests believed Anneliese was possessed by the devil. To combat the possession, the priests treated the girl to four-hour exorcisms on 67 occasions for the span of 10 months. Ultimately, Anneliese's body succumbed and she died due to starvation, which led to the courtroom battle lines that were drawn in 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose.'

It is the story of three friends who have the gross misfortune of getting tangled up with a sadistic backpack killer in the Australian Outback. The movie is very loosely based on two notorious Australian serial killers: the notorious backpack killer Ivan Milat and fellow Aussie murderer Bradley John Murdoch.

The film is based on a self-proclaimed nonfiction book describing what George and Kathy Lutz experienced during their four weeks in the house. Based on the story of George and Kathy Lutz, who buy a house where a man named Ronald DeFeo, Jr., shot his family to death a year before. While there, they experience a series of supernatural occurrences. Many people have encountered similar circumstances over the years and thus this movie gains its credibility.

Based on the legend of the Bell Witch, in Tennesse in the 1800s.

David Fincher's brilliant 'Zodiac' chronicles the legendary real-life terror that consumed the Bay Area as the mysterious and terrifying Zodiac Killer amassed victims in the San Francisco area between 1968 and 1972.

Based on the Parker family, in Connecticut in 1986.

Inspired by Ed Gein, Norman Bates was a Wisconsin man who was arrested in 1957 for committing two murders and digging up the corpses of countless other women who reminded him of his dead mother. He was found to be insane and spent the rest of his life in a mental institution due to his obnoxious dual personality.

'Open Water,' a little indie film that made a box office killing on a miniscule budget, told the story of a couple who were accidentally left for dead in shark-infested waters after a scuba diving mishap. In reality, Tom and Eileen Lonergan did, in fact, get left behind, having to tread the horrifying, desolate waters off the Great Barrier Reef in 1998. The Lonergans were never seen again, but 'Open Water' posits that sharks were responsible for their ultimate demise.

A series of shark attacks that plagued the New Jersey shore in 1916 inspired Peter Benchley to write it all. Over a 12-day period in July of that year, five people were attacked, four of whom died. A seven-foot-long great white shark was killed on July 14, and its stomach was found to contain human remains.

'From Hell' makes a hypothesis that Jack the Ripper was actually the Royal Family's physician concealing a scandal that the family would desperately want to keep hidden. In reality, Jack the Ripper (self-named because of his fondness for ripping his name from newspapers covering his crimes) did haunt the streets of London, killed women, was never caught, and - much like the Zodiac Killer - became a serial murderer of mythic proportions over the years.

Sergei Eisenstein's classic silent film based on a mutiny that occurred in 1905 during the Tsarist regime when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers

The movie was inspired by the legend of Alexander “Sawney” Bean, a Scottsman of the 15th or 16th century who reportedly headed a 40-person clan that killed and ate over 1,000 people, living in caves for 25 years before being caught and put to death.

Phyllis Haver plays Roxie Hart in this silent film based on the 1926 play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins, which was inspired by the stories of Belva Gaertner and Beulah Annan, jazz babies on death row

The fear that consumes a West Virginia town in 'The Mothman Prophecies' is absolutely based on reality. After a Point Pleasant, WV bridge collapsed into the Ohio River in 1967, terrified townsfolk started coming forward to report they had seen a massive, red-eyed, black-winged "mothman" haunting the bridge far in advance of its collapse. The legend of the "mothman" spread, and people throughout the world had claimed to see the same creature at other notable disaster sites.

Sweeping French epic recounting the early life and career of Napoleon Bonaparte, from his boyhood through his successful invasion of Italy

As tens of millions of living New Yorkers can readily verify, Son of Sam was a real-life serial killer who caused mass hysteria in the city between 1976 and 1977. Killing six victims and wounding seven others with a .44 Caliber, Son of Sam was ultimately determined to be David Berkowitz.

Berkowitz confessed to the eight shootings responsible for all the victims. He claimed that he had been ordered to kill by a neighbor's demon-possessed dog named Sam. Years later, Berkowitz changed his confession to say he was only responsible for two of the shootings that resulted in three deaths and four wounded victims, and the rest were committed by members of a Satanic cult to which he belonged. In 1977, Berkowitz was convicted on all counts and sentenced to 365 years in prison.

'Monster,' the harrowing tale of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, earned Charlize Theron an Academy Award for her mind-blowing transformation into a woman who was convicted of killing seven men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. The narrative of 'Monster' is very much rooted in factual events, including Wuornos claiming that each man who was murdered had tried to rape her while she was on the job as a prostitute. Wuornous was executed in Florida by lethal injection in 2002.

Passion and politics in the court of Czar Nicholas II