Ten Little Known Horror Movie Facts

Ten Little Known Horror Movie Facts:

�The character most frequently portrayed in movies is Count Dracula, the creation of Irish writer Bram Stoker (1847-1912). It's estimated the bloodthirsty Count has been represented on screen 174 times to date, while his closest rival, the Frankenstein monster, has made 121 appearances. Perhaps he needs to get a new agent?

�The longest horror movie title officially belongs to 'The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies', which was advertised as "The first ever monster musical". Sadly the title wouldn't fit on most cinema marquees, so it was alternatively named 'Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary'.

�When Dracula star Bela Lugosi died, he was buried in his Dracula cloak. More recently, dying horror star Vincent Price jokingly requested that his gravestone should bear the words 'I'll be back".

�The only performer ever to have won a Best Actor Oscar for his part in a horror film is Fredric March in the 1932 'Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde'.

�Sequels are 'in' at the moment, but the longest interval between a '1' and '2' picture goes to a horror title: 23 years separated Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) from its 1983 follow-up, though both starred Anthony Perkins.

�The great American horror star Boris Karloff was actually a Britain named William Pratt. He took his stage name from a sinister character he played in a silent movie.

� Horror movies have often used outrageous promotional gimmicks. 50's producer William Castle came up with the brainwave of wiring cinema seats to give patrons a small electric shock in screenings of his 1959 horror movie, 'The Tingler'. But it had to be discontinued after an irate truck driver ripped out the entire front row during a performance.

�The first ever 3-D film with stereophonic sound was a horror picture - 'The House Of Wax' (1953). Ironically, its director, Andre de Toth, could enjoy the sound but not the 3-D effect, since he was blind in one eye!

�A number of modern day superstars made their screen debuts in horror movies. John Travolta appeared as a devil-worshipper in 'The Devil's Rain' (1975), while Tom Hanks had his head chopped off and thrown in a fish tank in a slasher movie called 'He Knows You're Alone'. Johnny Depp launched his Hollywood career in 'A Nightmare an Elm Street'. And Clint Eastwood's first screen appearance was an unaccredited scene in 'Tarantula' (1955).

�The most filmed horror author is Stephen King, with 33 movie versions of his books to date. And that's not even counting the TV movies of King stories like 'The Stand' and 'The Shining'. Edgar Allan Poe comes close second with 29.

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