The 25 Worst Things Actors Had To Do For Horror Movies

Anyone who says making movies is easy is a liar. 

Film sets are tough places. Everyone has a very specific job and never enough time to do it. Budgets are usually tight. Filmmaking equipment doesn't always like to behave. Actors are asked to strip their souls bare while surrounded by an entire crew. There is no such thing as a truly breezy film shoot.

So what happens when you add gallons of fake blood, performers buried in complex monster costumes, and an artistic desire to create something scary and upsetting? You get horror filmmaking, baby. 

Every film set has stories of things going wrong or going unpleasantly, but the ones from horror sets tend to grab the imagination firmly between two hands and squeeze until its skull cracks and its eyeballs bulge. And because horror fans (perhaps more than any other fan base) like to know how the bloody sausage gets made, stories of what actors had to endure while making classic and not-so-classic horror movies tend to endure, ready to be told and retold, ad infinitum.

So, without further ado, here are some of the worst or most difficult things actors had to do for horror movies.

Bill Skarsgård did an excellent job bringing Pennywise the Dancing Clown to life in Andy Muschietti's "It," and made fans of Tim Curry's iconic performance proud. That said, he also potentially scarred some kids for life and had a tough time dealing with that.

In a 2017 interview with ... well, Interview Magazine, Skarsgård talked about the experience of terrifying small children as part of his job. "It's a really weird thing," he said, "'If I succeed at doing what I'm trying to do with this character, I'll traumatize kids.'" For the most part, as long as he was on set and suited up, ready to go, Skarsgård tried to stay in character. Then, one day, they were filming a scene with all these child extras who hadn't seen him yet. Accompanied by their parents, no less.

"Some of them were really intrigued," he said, "but some couldn't look at me, and some were shaking." He continued, adding:

"This one kid started crying. He started to cry and the director yelled, 'Action!' And when they say 'action,' I am completely in character. So some of these kids got terrified and started to cry in the middle of the take, and then I realized, "Holy s***. What am I doing? What is this? This is horrible."

All in a day's work, I suppose. (Ariel Fisher)

Actor Tony Todd is a horror legend for several reasons, but there's nothing quite like his performance as the creepy and classic villain in 1992's horror epic "Candyman." That being said, Todd had to deal with some hazardous conditions with bees (Candyman's signature) while shooting the film — from which he was able to make a sizable buck. 

"I negotiated a bonus of $1,000 for every sting during the bee scene," Todd told The Guardian in 2019. "And I got stung 23 times. Everything that's worth making has to involve some sort of pain. Once I realized it was an important part of who Candyman was, I embraced it. It was like putting on a beautiful coat."

That insane number of stings means Todd walked away from the "Candyman" set — where he was often covered in bees on his face and even in his mouth — with a $23,000 bonus. Not too shabby for the star, but probably still less than that performance was worth. If you've seen it, you know it was a masterpiece. (Lex Briscuso)

Captain Rhodes is one of the great villains in George Romero's zombie movies — a violent and unhinged example of human rage unshackled from civilization. He deserves his brutal, iconic death scene, where a crowd of the undead literally tear him in half and feast on his guts. But actor Joseph Pilato certainly didn't deserve what went down during the making of the scene. The pig and chicken guts used to create Rhodes' innards and organs were stored in a refrigerator ... a refrigerator that was accidentally left unplugged, with the animal parts left to bake in the Florida sun for weeks. When someone finally noticed, it was too late. They had to shoot. 

During the many hours it took to stage the scene, many crew members were able to keep their distance or at least wear a mask (although many felt physically ill while shooting the scene). But Pilato? The poor actor had to endure being literally covered in rotten animal pieces, under hot film set lights. Before his death in 2019, he claimed he could "still smell them to this day." Knowing this makes Pilato's performance, where he famously yells for the zombies to "Choke on 'em!" as they devour his intestines, all the more impressive. (Jacob Hall)

Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead" may be a low-budget horror masterpiece, but making the O.G. cabin in the woods monster movie was no picnic. Raimi and long-time collaborators Rob Tapert and Bruce Campbell set out to make a new experience in terror, maxing out credit cards, begging relatives for financing, and shooting their movie in a ramshackle cabin in the middle of the Tennesee wilderness. Crew members and actors kept quitting. Money kept running out. The cabin had no running water or heat. With all of that, it was pretty easy to look exhausted for the camera.

In an interview with The Columbus Dispatch, Campbell was pretty blunt about the experience: 

"From the beginning to the end — they were all low points. You were in a cabin that had not been occupied in decades, and had no power (or) running water; no sewage; no nothing. It was kind of like camping out for 12 weeks, but meanwhile you're trying to do a movie. There wasn't much acting required: You were cold, you were miserable, you were covered in blood. Some actors have to run around in circles, do push-ups, slap yourself in the face to get ready. We were miserable all day long; we were good to go."

Movie fans may argue it was worth it, but we can't say we'd be in a rush to go through that. (Danielle Ryan)

Gunnar Hansen has cemented his place in cinema history for bringing Leatherface to life in Tobe Hooper's horror masterpiece "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." As is often the case, Hansen was an artist who suffered for his art, even if he didn't set out to be the suffering artist type. The movie was filmed in Texas in the summer in the midst of sweltering heat. It was also made on a shoestring budget, so the cast all wore the same clothes each day during filming. In Hansen's case, that meant a whole lot of sweat collecting in all those clothes — and that mask — during the production. Speaking to Yankee Magazine in 1987, Hansen recalled "Sometimes shooting sessions dragged on for more than 26 hours. Since we all had only one set of clothes for the movie, it was too much of a risk to get them washed; the colors might change." 

With that, being in close proximity to the other cast members became challenging because, as one can imagine, things got smelly. "After a few weeks of shooting, it was a little more than 'fright' that made us keep our distance from each other," Hansen recalled. But all of that sweat and suffering etched them into the pages of horror history. (Ryan Scott)

Actual blood and gore is rather unhygienic and tends to hold up poorly on long filming days. For this reason and a few others, film productions generally avoid using the real thing and instead opt for substitutes like corn syrup and — in the case of Netflix's 2018 horror movie "Apostle" — mashed-up bananas. "Someone would come on with a giant paint brush in between takes and just slather on another layer. And off we go!" star Dan Stevens recalled in an interview with Vulture – creating a mental image that is arguably even more gross than him being covered in real viscera.

Director Gareth Evans went all-out with the blood and gore in "Apostle," including a scene where Stevens' character loses several fingers to a meat grinder before grappling with his basket-headed would-be executioner. The sequence took three days to film and, since the on-camera gore was made from mushy bananas, Stevens told Vulture that over time it "really started to hum [British slang meaning 'stink'] and the vileness of the scene amped up."

Being smeared in smelly mashed-up bananas was actually a high point of the "Apostle" shoot for Stevens, at least compared to a scene where he had to swim through the drainage ditch of a slaughterhouse — the "offal trough," as he refers to it. "You know, it gets pretty cold in Wales," said Stevens. "And some of that water was not heated, but the banana was nice and warm." (Hannah Shaw-Williams)

"The Birds" is one of the most rightfully famous horror movies of all time, but the story of how it was made is a horror story unto itself. Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock was a notorious prankster at best and an abuser at worst, and he firmly set his sights on star Tippi Hedren while filming this tale of nature gone amuck. In addition to dealing with Hitchcock's vague direction ("Because I tell you to" was her motivation for one scene, apparently), she endured genuine physical trauma while filming the movie's climax. 

Despite being told fake bird props would be used for the finale, the actual shoot involved live birds being literally thrown at Hedren by crew members. Hedren endured this torment for five long days, until one bird sliced her face (barely missing her eye), leading the actress to collapse and break down in tears. Only a doctor's order for immediate rest saved her from additional torment, even as Hitchock himself pushed back against the doctor. "Are you trying to kill her?" the doctor reportedly asked. And from the sound of things, that could have very well been the case. (Jacob Hall)

2011 saw the remake of the 1985 vampire classic, "Fright Night" with Colin Farrell stepping into the role as the seductive and dangerous vampire, Jerry Dandridge. Vampire movies are known to be bloody, and this remake is no exception. However, as the bloopers of "Fright Night" would showcase, Colin Farrell had a bit of a rough time with one of the blood gags on set. Farrell's Dandridge attacks an unsuspecting victim played by Christopher Sarandon, the original Jerry Dandridge in 1985's "Fright Night," in a cameo role. 

During the scene, however, the tubing rigged on Sarandon to squirt blood worked a little too well, and shot high-pressure fake blood directly into Farrell's throat. The crew heard what they thought was the rigging making a terrible gurgling sound, but in actuality, the sound they heard was Farrell choking on the blood and desperately trying to push air through his mouth to breathe as it filled with bloody liquid. Thankfully, he was okay and able to laugh about the incident after the fact, and "Fright Night" fans were gifted a killer scene between the two Dandridges. (BJ Colangelo)

Imagine being encased by latex, in North Carolina's heat, for multiple hours a day on a film set where high-powered lights and other production elements increase temperatures. That was Ted Raimi's curse during his scenes as Henrietta in Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead II," where he played a historian's demonically-possessed wife. Ted's body sweated literal buckets of salty runoff into the deadite's full-body costume, which was reported to collect liters' worth of bodily liquid. Don't believe me? Watch carefully when Henrietta spins around over Annie's head, and you'll see perspiration dripping out of the monster's ear and info frame. 

You have to wonder what childhood abuse Ted inflicted unto Sam Raimi, his brother and director, that would justify such torment. Or you could outright award Ted a "Brother Of The Year" trophy for broiling day after day just to give Sam the perfect take. At least special effects guru Gregory Nicotero was reportedly available to pour Ted's sweat into Dixie cups, so the actor wasn't sloshing around in his self-produced stanky stew. (Matt Donato)

Willem Dafoe had to run lines with a mouth full of dirt while shooting Robert Eggers' "The Lighthouse," but it seems that Robert Pattinson may have had it a touch worse to get into character as Ephraim Winslow. In a 2019 interview with Esquire, Pattinson said because he was playing "a mad person, it means you can sort of be mad the whole time. Well, not the whole time, but for like an hour before the scene."

Pray tell, Esquire, what does he mean by this? Well, dear reader, according to this interview, in his scenes where he's supposed to be drunk on kerosene, Pattinson said he was "basically unconscious the whole time."

"It was crazy," he continued. "I spent so much time making myself throw up. Pissing my pants. It's the most revolting thing. I don't know, maybe it's really annoying."

Not so sure I'd describe that as "annoying," per se, but revolting sounds about right. That said, it seems the majority of his Method approach is a reaction to the pressure of his early immense fame. He explained:

"For a long time you're very self-conscious in the street. You're hiding a lot, so [on set] you have an excuse to be wild. It's like being an adrenaline junkie. And also, when you don't know how to do something, why not just run headfirst into a wall? See what happens. I haven't got any other ideas."

Some of his ideas on "The Lighthouse" included all of the above, as well as spinning in circles to throw himself off balance, and putting a rock in one of his shoes. None of that holds a candle to the discomfort of rehearsals, however. Or long walks by the sea. Dafoe interviewed Pattinson for Interview Magazine, asking him "Do you remember when we were being sprayed with that water and it stung so bad?" "That's the closest I've come to punching a director," Pattinson replied:

"However much I love Robert [Eggers], there was a point where I did five takes walking across the beach, and after a while I was like, 'What the f*** is going on? I feel like you're just spraying a fire hose in my face.' And he was like, 'I am spraying a fire hose in your face.' It was like some kind of torture. It definitely creates an interesting energy. [Laughs]"

(Ariel Fisher)

While "IT Chapter Two" might not be as roundly beloved as its predecessor, an increased budget allowed them to go bigger with some key sequences. Namely, a scene in which adult Beverly, played by Jessica Chastain, gets covered by 4,500 gallons of blood near the film's climax in what is one of the bloodiest scenes ever put to film. Fitting that such an honor belongs to a Stephen King movie. The scene in question takes place as Pennywise is making the Losers face their biggest fears, and Bev winds up submerged in blood in a bathroom, which Chastain actually had to do for hours on end. 

It wasn't cake for the filmmakers either, as filming the scene was complex and required the construction of three interconnected sets to make it work, logistically. Chastain, speaking to Vanity Fair, said "It was really disgusting." She added, "It's like slime, and it was up my nose, in my ears, and stuck on my eyeballs. I kind of did have some little fears." But she also said she was "happy to do it." Commitment. (Ryan Scott)

John Carpenter's "The Thing" is one of the chilliest cold-weather flicks in the horror genre, and that's due to temperature authenticity. Alaska and British Columbia represent the frigid exterior shots of research facilities, but indoor settings took Carpenter's production back to Los Angeles' 100-degree heat waves. There was a brief consideration to film in refrigerated units — think gigantic meat lockers — but their walls and ceilings didn't provide enough space. Instead, the team amassed as many portable air conditioners as possible and closed off the stage so that temperatures would dip below thirty degrees Fahrenheit. Actors didn't need to pretend their characters are frozen to the bone because they're legitimately shivering under costume warmth. 

Carpenter called upon movie magic to counter California's blazing rays with a manufactured tundra that surely pleased everyone present for shooting each day. It's a good thing Kurt Russell took that year to grow out his bushy beard and insulating hairstyle, for more reasons than his character's iconic look. (Matt Donato)

It's not easy to apply fake tattoos that will stand up to the punishment of filming without becoming smeared or faded. But Robert De Niro felt that his tattoos in Martin Scorsese's 1991 thriller "Cape Fear" were so important to the character of Max Cady that he was willing to go the extra mile in order to make them look good. De Niro was tattooed with vegetable dyes, which had to be touched up during filming but otherwise remained on his body for several months before the organic ink was eventually broken down. 

According to a blog post by Temptu, the make-up company behind the tattoos, their application took an hour and a half and "De Niro got so deep into character that we had to actually increase the size of the tattoos about 10% due to the additional muscle he had gained."

Not all of De Niro's tattoos in "Cape Fear" were fake, though. The black panther tattoo seen on his right bicep is real, and can also be spotted in Scorsese's 1973 film "Mean Streets." (Hannah Shaw-Williams)

In the years since the release of "The Shining," much has been revealed about the horrendous working conditions for all the cast and crew of the film, but none were as extensive or as exhausting as what happened with actress Shelley Duvall. In an attempt to get a more "authentic" performance from Duvall, director Stanley Kubrick unexpectedly cut her lines to throw her off, kept her isolated and waiting for long periods of time between scenes, criticized every choice or acting impulse she had for Wendy Torrance, and ordered the crew to follow suit, even being quoted in the documentary "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures" as directing crew members "Don't sympathize with Shelley." 

Kubrick hit peak viciousness during one of the most iconic scenes of "The Shining," the baseball bat confrontation on the stairs, where Kubrick shot the scene with a world-record setting 127 takes. The skin on Duvall's hands was shredded raw from gripping the bat, and she cried herself hoarse and became dehydrated. She was so stressed her hair began falling out. Shelly Duvall's portrayal of Wendy Torrance made her a horror legend, but it's a performance that came at the expense of her mental and physical well-being. (BJ Colangelo)

Florence Pugh made herself known to the world through her impressive and haunting performance in Ari Aster's sophomore feature, "Midsommar" — and she really left her emotions onscreen while shooting. In March 2021, Pugh revealed via Instagram that she went through an incredibly difficult shooting process alongside the various Hargan women with whom she shot that intense crying scene. She wrote:

"Truly, these women made this scene possible. It was TERRIFYING. As terrifying as it was to watch, it was to read and know we had to do it. I love these girls so much. I'm not a big crier, so going through that with them was true safely and love and respect. It only happened because I had them. We all looked at each other before we started rolling and knew it would be hard. And awkward. And strange. And unnatural. We knew it wouldn't be pleasurable. But by the end we would roll in each other's laps and cry and allow our bodies to keep heaving. I remember the first take being so long, much longer than is displayed in the film that you all watched. When Ari said cut, we all clung on to each other's arms and dug our nails into each other's palms and wept. Sobbed. Heaved. I remember it being really hard to stop."

It's clear the emotional output paid off in spades — but there's no doubt that kind of traumatic reenactment can mess around with your psyche. (Lex Briscuso)

Maybe difficult shoots are just a part of the "Evil Dead" backbone, because the star of Fede Alvarez's 2013 remake, Jane Levy, endured physical and psychological torture to bring her character Mia to life. She told Yahoo! Movies that the hardest part was being buried alive; she had a plastic bag around her head with an oxygen tube behind her ear. Sometimes she would lose air and have to dig herself out. "That was a hard day," she said. No kidding.

Other things Levy had to do? Pretend to cut her tongue in half, vomit on someone's face, fall down a hill, crawl through a swamp, crash a car, rip her own arm off, and get assaulted by a demon tree. By the end of filming, which was mostly shot chronologically, Levy had "nothing left." The actress has been candid about not really wanting to return to the franchise, so it's no surprise she wasn't part of "Evil Dead Rise." (Danielle Ryan)

Few films go harder than Ruggero Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust." The groundbreaking 1980 horror flick caused a hellacious controversy upon its initial theatrical release due its exhibition of what many believed to be actual documentary footage of a film crew being slaughtered by an indigenous tribe in the Amazon rainforest. Say what you will about the movie, Deodato sells the snuff-film aesthetic by filming (via hand-held 16mm film cameras) repugnantly real acts of animal cruelty, while getting convincingly frazzled and terrified performances from his actors.

Obviously, no actors were killed during the principal photography of "Cannibal Holocaust," but they were absolutely harmed. Robert Kerman called Deodato a "sadist" who preyed upon the most vulnerable members of the cast and crew, particularly the indigenous Colombian performers. Co-star Carl Gabriel Yorke claimed the production had "a level of cruelty unknown to me," particularly when Deodato asked him to shoot a pig on camera (Yorke refused). When Francesca Ciardi objected to topless nudity in one of her scenes, Deodato dragged her off set and harangued her until she complied. For the most part, it was Deodato's wanton killing of animals that wore down the cast — some of whom weren't fairly compensated once the shoot was over (the Columbian actors weren't paid at all). Deodato's was ultimately arrested and charged with obscenity (he was cleared). He was also briefly accused of having killed his actors, but, no, he merely tortured them. (Jeremy Smith)

"Abigail" takes the "From Dusk Till Dawn" approach, in which it starts as one movie and violently transforms into another. A group of misfit criminals kidnap the titular 13 year-old girl (Alisha Weir) while waiting on a ransom, only to discover that the asset they've been paid to watch over is actually a vampire with razor sharp teeth and incredible ballerina skills. If there's anything this film has in common with Matt-Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett's other work, it's blood — and lots of it.

The pair, otherwise known as Radio Silence, have brought the gory goods to "Ready or Not" and their "Scream" movies, but when it came to "Abigail," the actors were getting so doused in the red stuff that they felt the need to atone for the messy shoot:

"All of our movies are bloody. [But] I would say that this is definitely the most bloody. We spent a lot of time apologizing to our actors on this movie! I mean, blood is in the DNA of a vampire movie, and the amount of blood work in this one is... It's pretty extreme!"

They weren't kidding either. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, the Radio Silence duo revealed that they used over 7,000 gallons of fake blood. That's a lot when you take into consideration the pool of dead bodies, sunlight combustions and profuse amounts of blood vomit that coated this ensemble from head to toe throughout the shoot. (Quinn Bilodeau)

It's a given that when you step onto the set of a Sam Raimi horror movie, things are likely to get really gross really fast. "The Evil Dead" star Bruce Campbell endured years of being the director's plaything, but it was time for some new blood to step up when it came time for 2009's "Drag Me to Hell." Enter Alison Lohman as Christine Brown, a bank loan officer who quickly learns that screwing over a vengeful old witch comes with its own set of yucky consequences.

In a Shout Factory featurette, Lohman spoke about how while there were sequences that were fun to shoot, anything involving fluids was cause for sanitary concerns (via Entertainment Weekly). Both her and actress Lorna Raver found it slightly uncomfortable when they had to perform a scene where Mrs. Ganush's salvia-dribbling mouth had to leak into Christine's. "He just really likes to see his actors tormented," says Lohman.

There's also the matter of the retch-inducing scene where Lohman receives a vomit spray of maggots. A lot of them went straight into her mouth, which the actress found really disgusting. "Thanks for reminding me," said Lohman when the behind the scenes clip resurfaced on X. She revealed through further responses on that post that it not only changed how she looked at bugs, but that she had to do the scene several times over. Yuck. (Quinn Bilodeau)

"Hereditary" scarred an entire generation of horror fans, so it's not hard to imagine that actually filming the movie was a harrowing experience of its own. That's especially true for Alex Wolff, who has claimed to have suffered from a certain kind of PTSD ever since playing Peter, son of Toni Collette's Annie Graham.

Peter ultimately becomes a vessel for the demon Paimon by the film's end, but his journey towards fully-fledged possession is just about as horrific as you can imagine. Aside from being indirectly responsible for decapitating his own sister, at one point, under the influence of Paimon, Peter slams his own face into his school desk, breaking his nose. As it turns out, that scene in particular was more realistic than you might expect, with Wolff giving the performance everything he had and injuring his arm and ankle in the process.

It's no wonder, then, that "Hereditary" left Alex Wolff scarred in more ways than one. The actor spoke to Vice about his experience shooting the film, saying "I don't think you can go through something like this and not have some sort of PTSD afterwards." The actor claimed to not remember certain shooting days, and revealed some troubling post-shoot problems. "When I started talking about it, all these flashes with all this disturbing s**t I went through sorta came back in a flood," he said, claiming that his experience kept him up at night and led to "a habit of emotional masochism." (Joe Roberts)

"The Green Inferno" might not be director Eli Roth's most successful horror movie, but it was by far the most dangerous one to film. The story follows a group of student activists who visit the jungle to stop a petrochemical company from displacing the native tribes, only to realize that the locals they're trying to protect are cannibals. The shoot also required the cast and crew to travel to a real jungle, where they were exposed to everything from poisonous spiders to bullet ants to freak weather conditions. Lorenza Izzo suffered the most, as she almost died while filming a canoe scene.

In an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Roth explained that his star nearly drowned, but her real-life anguish was captured on-camera. In his own words:

"Thank God no one got killed, but we had many close calls, like when Lorenza Izzo almost drowned in the river during a take — and yes, we used it in the film. We had a safe word for her to yell, but it was so loud [that's when] she was screaming it at the top of her lungs, none of us heard her. When you see her clinging to the rock screaming, that's real."

Roth added that most of the acting that takes place on the screen was his actors' real emotions, as the dangers of the jungle freaked them out. The shoot also led to everyone getting sick, but, thankfully, they all lived to tell their stories. (Kieran Fisher)

Tobe Hooper's 1982 haunted house movie "Poltergeist" has long been considered cursed, largely because of the deaths surrounding its production. The film's young star, Heather O'Rourke, passed away from toxic shock at the age of 12, and Dominique Dunn, her co-star, was murdered only a few months after the film was released. Some horror fans have theorized that "Poltergeist" was cursed because it used real human skeletons during a swimming pool sequence wherein Diane (JoBeth Williams) had to bob around in the water with several wet, rotting corpses.

It seems that, yes, "Poltergeist" used real skeletons in that scene. Williams has talked about the skeletons in the past, recalling her incorrect assumptions about the skeletons being made of rubber or plastic. It wasn't until she had already done the scene that Williams learned the skeletons were real, provided by Carolina Biological, a science and laboratory supply company. Williams said she was in a goop-filled pool for five days to film the sequence, all while real human bones floated around her. 

The fact that the skeletons were real was confirmed in actual court testimony given by makeup artist Craig Reardo, deposed in a suit brought against "Poltergeist" producer Steven Spielberg. Reardon said that the skeletons came from India, and that he and the other FX technicians dressed up 13 of them to look more zombie-like.

Williams was naturally creeped out. It seems that the use of real skeletons was, for a long time, common in Hollywood. The practice has, thankfully, stopped. (Witney Seibold)

Director Tom Six could never work again and have earned his place in cinema history as the man behind the true shocker that is "The Human Centipede (First Sequence)," or simply "The Human Centipede." The 2009 movie about a mad doctor who sews three unfortunate souls together from mouth to anus, resulting in a creation that delivers on the film's title, became an instant "you have to see it to believe it" entry in the horror canon. It also resulted in two sequels, with "The Human Centipede 2" initially being banned in the U.K. It's that level of shock and awe. It turns out, Six made all of that shock value feel rather real on set.

"For the surgery scene, I was amazed at how realistic everything looked. Ashlynn [who played Jenny] and I became briefly convinced it was a snuff movie and that we really were going to be made into a human centipede," Ashley C Williams, who played Lindsay, said to The Guardian in 2020. "Fortunately, that wasn't the case."

It's that real, gritty feel anchored to something so vile and unbelievable that turned this gross entry in the torture porn sub-genre into something of an unlikely, controversial pop culture sensation. For an up-and-coming actress, appearing in a bizarre piece of cinema that could even be momentarily confused for a real snuff film equates to one of those, "Did I just ruin my career?" moments. But Williams is complimentary of the experience saying that "Tom was lovely to work with" in that same interview. (Ryan Scott)

There are few cinematic experiences as harrowing as Andrzej Zulawski's "Possession," a supernatural portrait of a dissolving marriage. Zulawksi drew from his own painful divorce and there is a raw bitterness infused in every scene that was apparently also felt on set. Zulawksi would allegedly manipulate the actors to bring them to heightened states and provoke intense reactions, especially star Isabelle Adjani, who played Anna, an unhappy married woman who has been cheating on her husband Mark (Sam Neill) while he was away, working as a spy. In an interview, Adjani noted that while she felt the film was "amazing to do," she was "bruised, inside out" and that she felt as if Zulawski pushed her too far "into his world of darkness and his demons." She also pointed out that she was fairly sure no female lead ever worked with him twice, which is a pretty harsh indictment. 

Adjani's performance is one of the greatest of all time and the nightmarish subway scene where she goes through the throes of her possession is unforgettable, but the experience was deeply painful for her. On the director's commentary for the film, Zulawski even mentions her suicide attempt after filming because she was so shaken, but he remains extremely dismissive of her feelings. While "Possession" is excellent and Adjani deserves recognition, no one should ever be pushed to that brink for a movie role. (Danielle Ryan)

"The Blair Witch Project" is scary enough before you consider the fact that the actors were tormented while they filmed the found-footage project. Directed, written, and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, this low-budget sensation follows film students Heather, Mike, and Josh (played by Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard) as they trek through the woods to find the truth about a local figure known only as the "Blair Witch," and what they find is truly horrifying (anyone who's seen the movie knows that the proverbial boogeyman stays out of sight for the entire runtime, leaving it up to the audience's imagination). The process of making this movie, though, was apparently just as horrifying.

In an archived feature in Rolling Stone, Myrick and Sánchez revealed that they put Donahue, Williams, and Leonard through hell during filming. Producer Gregg Hale told the outlet that he took inspiration from his own military training to basically condition the performers: "If we've physically and mentally abused them enough in the process of getting them up to those intense moments at the end, then they'd be able to tap into emotional places that they wouldn't otherwise be able to tap into. We did keep them isolated, we harassed them at night, we deprived them of sleep, we made them move a lot during the day. Then at the end, we slowly fed them less and less, and they never knew what was happening. They were always off-balance." 

According to the piece, the actors were given scant directions as to where to go, small amounts of food, and just hung around in creepy, dark woods waiting for the filmmakers to (authentically) freak them out. This does not sound fun. Unfortunately, it created one of the best and most influential low-budget horror movies in cinematic history. (Nina Starner)