6. Scream (1996)
Inspired by: The Gainesville Ripper
Back in 1996, Wes Craven reinvented the slasher genre with Scream, which has since gone on to spawn its own massively popular franchise. Scream‘s ability to perfectly emulate slasher movies while simultaneously satirizing them sets it apart from other horror films, which is why its real-life inspiration is so much more surprising – particularly as the killer who inspired Ghostface is actually fairly high profile.
In 1990, Danny Rolling murdered five students in Gainesville, Florida over a period of four days. He later admitted to killing another three people earlier that year. What captured the imagination of Scream writer Kevin Williamson, though, was the way in which Rolling killed his victims. Each of them were murdered in their own homes with the same weapon – a knife – and then posed their bodies in odd ways in order to provoke shock.
Williamson was reading a news piece about the murders, when he noticed that he’d left his own window open. The two combined for a realization that it would be incredibly easy for someone to break in and harm him, and that is what inspired him to write a film about a masked killer terrorizing and infiltrating people’s homes in order to provoke fear and shock in the community.