During the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, it was a commonly held belief that when a man reached orgasm and expended his “vital fluid,” it took a day off his life.
The Cramps’ Lux Interior did a guest stint on an episode of the animated series Spongebob Squarepants in 2002, playing the singer of a band called the Bird Brains.
In June, two children were tied up and had duct tape placed over their eyes before they were aban- doned in the parking lot of an Illinois Walmart. When authorities tracked down the parents, they learned that the family believed “demons had overtaken [the children’s] bodies.”
The theatre featured in 2011’s The Muppets is the same set that was built for Universal Studios' Phantom of the Opera in the 1920s.
Twenty percent of inmates executed in Texas decline to make final statements.
The budget on Lucio Fulci’s 1990 film Demoniawas allegedly so low that the prop whisky that Grady Clarkson, who played the drunkard Sean, was given was made of watered-down tea. Furthermore, he was instructed to not actually drink it during takes, as they couldn’t afford to make more.
In August, Beverly Hills police found the driver of a hearse hunched over dead in the front seat of her vehicle, which was in the process of delivering a body to a funeral. Foul play was not suspected.
According to Horror Film Stars by Michael J. Pitts, actor Donald Pleasence – despite his many turns in genre films – was not a horror fan, but took the parts for “their considerable monetary rewards.”
Earlier this year, Sri Lanka put out a call for a new hangman, even though the death penalty has been off the books in that country since 1976.
Russian doctor and science fiction author Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov believed a state of youth could be achieved through regular blood transfusions. He died in 1928 after catching malaria and tuberculosis from the blood used in one of his experiments.
German police arrested a 52-year-old father in August on the suspicion that he blew up his daughter’s seventeen-year-old boyfriend’s apartment, killing him. The accused was also seriously injured in the blast.
Peter Cushing’s father didn’t want his son to go into show biz; as a result, the young actor got a job in banking, but quickly gave that up and returned to the theatre.
A 30-year-old Russian man hired a movie crew this summer to fake his own gory car crash death as an elaborate proposal stunt for his girlfriend. He says he did this because he “wanted her to realize how empty her life would be without me.”
COMPILED BY MONICA S. KUEBLER GOT A WEIRD STAT OR MORBID FACT? SEND IT TO: INFO@RUEMORGUE.COM BODY HORROR
THE MONSTER SQUAD’S GILLMAN ARTIST:Marshall Naim Khalil (atomiczombie.net)
“I was actually going to do a tattoo of a werewolf on [the
client] that day. But after I showed her some recent colour por- traits I had done from An American Werewolf in London, she said I could do whatever I wanted, so I jumped at the oppor- tunity to finally get to do one of my favourite monsters: Gillman from The Monster Squad. Soon we will be doing the rest of the movie’s monsters, starting with the Wolfman.”
HAVE A GREAT HORROR TAT? SHARE IT WITH US AT: INFO@RUE-MORGUE.COM RM12 See more of Jay’s work at jayfosgitt.com “ BLOOD FEAST (1963)