Horror Movies That Became Real

Queen of the Damned, the screen translation of the third installment in novelist Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles, bombed with critics upon its release in 2002—and left the source material's creator disillusioned by the adaptation, pained to see her work "mutilated" by the director and creative team. But while it failed to resonate with critics, audiences, or author, it struck a chilling chord with at least one viewer.

In 2003, 22-year-old Allan Menzies stabbed his best friend, 21-year-old Thomas McKendrick, to death and drank his blood after McKendrick had allegedly made a remark insulting the film and its main character, a vampire named Akasha, played by the late singer-songwriter Aaliyah Haughton. During his trial, Menzies stated that he "snapped" after hearing McKendrick's comment, bludgeoning him with a hammer "at least 10 times" before stabbing him and eating part of his skull. Menzies confessed that he was obsessed with the film, having watched it more than 100 times, and was under the impression that he needed to kill someone in order to fulfill his dream of becoming immortal just like Akasha. "At the end of the day, I knew I would have to murder somebody anyway ... if you did not murder somebody you could not become a vampire," Menzies told the court.

Menzies reportedly offered to plead guilty to culpable homicide in the killing of McKendrick, but only on the grounds of diminished responsibility. This was rejected, and Menzies was charged with murder on a unanimous guilty verdict. Judge Roderick Macdonald called the attack "savage and merciless, involving gratuitous and sustained violence of a most horrific nature," and stated that Menzies was a highly dangerous man. In November 2004, it was reported that Menzies took his own life in custody at Shotts Prison near Glasgow, where he was serving a minimum sentence of 18 years.

Director James DeMonaco's 2013 dystopian chiller The Purge took audiences on a disturbing ride through an alternate world where for one night every year, all illegal acts, including murder, are decriminalized. Not only did the film spur a franchise, with follow-ups Anarchy and Election Year seeing releases in 2014 and 2016, but it also gave rise to the perhaps less-popular definition of what it means "to purge": to remove a group of people considered undesirable from an organization or place in an abrupt or violent manner.

That's exactly what Johnathan Cruz did in May of 2016 when he brought the fiction to the forefront of reality, murdering three people during a four-day killing spree. At the time, Cruz's motive was unclear, with officials believing that the acts of violence were nearly (if not entirely) baseless and indiscriminate. It was only when police interviewed his acquaintances that it was revealed he had previously discussed going on "a deadly crime rampage"—a "purge."

In the midst of his Purge-inspired murders, Cruz also allegedly committed a robbery. He was charged with three counts of murder, robbery, intimidation, and criminal gang enhancement. In April 2017, Cruz accepted a plea agreement that gave him three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. Prosecutors dropped initial plans to seek the death penalty in exchange for Cruz pleading guilty to three counts of murder and the aforementioned armed robbery charge.

The 1965 psychological crime thriller The Collector, based on the 1963 novel of the same name by John Fowles, is shadowed by a laundry list of real-life crimes. In the film's source material, a lonely young man named Frederick Clegg brightens his dreary days in solitude by collecting butterflies and staring wistfully at an art student named Miranda Grey, never making a move on her because he's far too socially inept. His admiration spirals into obsession when he purchases a large country home, fits it with an underground cellar, kidnaps Miranda, and forces her to live there until she falls in love with him. Unfortunately for Miranda, her plans to escape, seduce, and kill Frederick are thwarted. She ends up dead, and Frederick starts hunting for another beautiful brunette to add to his "collection." 

Two men, Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, took Frederick's actions as a blueprint for their own twisted crimes. Lake abducted two teenagers in 1985 and kept his victims, Kathy Allen and Brenda O'Connor, trapped in a soundproof bunker, where he proceeded to rape, torture, and kill them. Lake was accompanied by his "associate" Ng, and the two men creepily referred to the abduction plot as "Operation Miranda." That same year, Lake committed suicide by ingesting a cyanide pill after being caught shoplifting. Ng was indicted on 12 counts of first-degree murder, which include the Allen and O'Connor killings. He's currently sitting on death row at San Quentin State Prison.

And now we arrive at a franchise made synonymous with unnecessarily violent gore and gross-out sequences of slow killings: Saw. Matthew Tinling, a 25-year-old man living in London, was one fan of the series, and brought it to life in 2012 when he murdered his neighbor, 45-year-old Richard Hamilton. In what's been described as a "savage and prolonged act," a clear copycat torture scene from Saw, Tinling stabbed Hamilton repeatedly and then sliced through his spinal cord—exactly as shown in the movie. The motivation for the monstrous murder? Tinling wanted Hamilton to hand over the PIN for his bank account. Hamilton ultimately did, and Tinling withdrew £240 (about $311 USD) to spend on crack cocaine.

Investigators found a Saw VI DVD in Tinling's bedroom after his arrest, an object used during the trial to indicate that Tinling was a fan of the franchise and was motivated by the scenes of torture.

Tinling was jailed for life, set to serve a minimum term of 30 years. Judge Timothy Pontius handed down the sentence, telling him, "You inflicted 17 wounds during the attack, the most serious of which was delivered specifically with the intention of severing the spinal cord to cause paralysis and death, exactly as you had seen on a DVD. Whether or not that was in Saw VI, or another in the series, doesn't matter. It was something you had seen and tried to imitate."

In 1994, 25-year-old Daniel Sterling attempted to murder his girlfriend of eight years after the two watched Interview with the Vampire together.

On November 17, Sterling and 23-year-old Lisa Stellwagen headed to the theater to see the film, which chronicles two adult vampires turning a young girl (Kirsten Dunst's Claudia) into an immortal creature like them. In the early hours of November 18, Stellwagen woke up to find Sterling staring at her. When she asked what was wrong, he responded that he was going to kill her and "drink her blood." Stellwagen reportedly fell back asleep—why she wasn't immediately alarmed remains unclear—but Sterling carried out the crime later that day, stabbing her seven times in the chest and back after which he "drank her blood for several minutes." Though Stellwagen luckily survived, Sterling insisted he was innocent, adding, "I was influenced by the movie. I enjoyed the movie. But I cannot sit here and blame the movie."