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movies, Review

5 Movies Based on American Urban Legends

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Urban Legends are more modern day ghost or horror stories. We’ve always heard it from a friend of a friend without knowing entirely who we are talking about. Some are so famous it has become a part of our horror canon like the famous ghost stories of the past, showing the story telling is not a died out genre.

When a Stranger Calls
(1979 film and 2006 remake)

Urban Legend: Based on the legend of an unknown caller to the babysitter.

The film has developed a large cult following over time because of the first 20 minutes, now consistently regarded as one of the scariest openings in movie history.

The babysitter and the man upstairs — also known as the babysitter or the sitter — is an urban legend that dates back to the 1960s about a teenage girl babysitting children who receives telephone calls from a stalker who continually asks her to “check the children”. The basic story line has been adapted a number of times in movies.

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I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Urban Legend: The hook-handed man

Ah, the glorious 90’s. The beautiful teens caught up in a slasher horror movie in high school flicks era. How we miss it now. This created spin-offs and everything, ghost

The Hook, or The Hookman, is an urban legend about a killer with a pirate-like hook for a hand attacking a couple in a parked car. The story is thought to date from at least the mid-1950s, and gained significant attention when it was reprinted in the advice column Dear Abby in 1960. It has since become a morality archetype in popular culture, and has been referenced in various horror films.

The film centers on four young friends who are stalked by a hook-wielding killer one year after covering up a car accident in which they killed a man.

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Candyman (1992)

Urban Legend: Well, the Boogyman, Bloody Mary, and… the hook?

In the film series, he was portrayed as the vengeful ghost of an African-American man who was brutally beaten, mutilated and fed to the bees by having honey smeared on his body for a forbidden interracial love affair in the 19th century and would haunt and kill anyone who called the name of the Candyman before a mirror five times in a row

Based on the short story, “The Forbidden” by Clive Barker, the film follows a Chicago graduate student completing a thesis on the urban legends which led her to the legend of the “Candyman“.

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Willow Creek (2013)

Urban Legend: Bigfoot

Set in Humboldt County, California, Jim (Bryce Johnson) is a Bigfoot believer whose idea of a romantic getaway is to head deep into Six Rivers National Forest in Northern California, video camera in tow, trying to shoot his own Bigfoot footage at the site of the Patterson–Gimlin film. That 1967 fragment of footage purporting to show a Sasquatch striding along a dry sandbar beside Bluff Creek became a key artifact in the cryptozoology community and Jim dreams of nothing more than setting foot on the actual location where it was shot. His long-suffering girlfriend Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) agrees to tag along for the ride, despite the fact that she thinks Bigfoot has about as much chance of being real as leprechauns.

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Urban Legend (1998)

Urban Legend: Really. Just… Every-single-one

Urban Legend is a 1998 American slasher film directed by Jamie Blanks, written by Silvio Horta, and starring Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, and Tara Reid. So, the best of the 90s as you can see.

Its plot focuses on a series of murders on the campus of a private New England university, all of which appear to be modeled after popular urban legends. The film has been credited by both cinema and folklore scholars as being one of the first major films to redistribute the urban legends and folklore depicted within it to the public.

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The Hook-Man

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A Moonmausoleum original based on the well known Urban Legend

A couple parks their car on the local lovers lane. It’s in a small clearing in the forest, overlooking the small town. The guy insisted to drive around for a while as he manged to borrow his dad’s old veteran car for the evening. It’s supposed to be the date. They are slurping the remains of the soda and eating the popcorn from the movie.

“Did you like the movie?” the girl asks, engulfed in the movie they just saw, having some of the popcorn. It had been her choice, and the boy fell asleep halfway through.

“Sure,” the boy said, leaning into her. She pushes him playfully away.

“Yeah right, I noticed you fell asleep,” the girl says, throwing a popcorn at him playfully. He throws it back at her, just hearing her laughter.

“I’m awake now,” the guy says, kissing her.

The song from the radio ends, the news broadcaster taking over. It is a terrible radio station, local, but the only one they get a signal from her in this small town. The guy turns to the radio speaking in its slow and monotone voice.

“We report about the manhunt still ongoing for the convicted murderer and rapist, escaping from the mental institution. There are still no leads to his whereabouts. Noticeable features is his hook hand. Listeners are asked to report-“

“Enough of that,” the boys says as the news kills the mood, turning the radio off, putting on a playlist instead. The girl look around, uneasy after listening. She buttons one of her blouse button.

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“Hey, maybe we should just-“

“Come here,” the boy says, pulling her closer, kissing her, his hands trailing down her side. But she’s had it. The moment is passed.

“No, come on. Let’s just drive home.”

“But I only borrowed the car for this evening. I don’t know if he-“

“Don’t care! It’s creepy here.”

“It’s romantic.”

The girl crosses her arms over her chest. She’s made up her mind. The boy accepts defeat.

“Fine, fine.”

“We can ask your father again for the car another time,” the girls tries to negotiate with. The boy is not biting to her offer.

“Sure,” the boy mutters, trying to get the engine to work. It doesn’t. He tries again: Same result. The girl starts to get a creepy feeling, an uneasiness as if the darkness around them swells.

“Do you need any help?”

“What? No! It just has this special way to get it started. Just give me a second.”

Still, the car won’t start. The night is coming to life. The nightlife is starting to wake, to howl. The girl inhales, trying not to intervene. The boy tried the key, but the engine just gave a small puff, not wanting to start. The headlight flickering weak before dying.

“It doesn’t work,” the girl says. The boy ignores her.

“Maybe you should just try to-“

“I know how to start a car,” the boy says, loosing his patient and snapping back at her. She raises her hand, leaving him to it.

The car finally stars and the girl leans in to fix her lipstick. She turns when a shadow glides over the mirror.

He pushed the pedals to the floor, car screeching as they bailed out from the lane, leaving their date in a pile of dust. The girl clutched the handle above her head.

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“Did you just drive onto something?”

“No”

“Didn’t you hear it right now? It was like the car pulled on something?”

“Jesus, can you at least not whine about my driving? I’m taking you home, as you demanded, alright? Can you just not?”

They drive away out from the woods onto the highway. He turns back to the news on the radio, but it’s over. Just a slow ballad to fill the awkward silence is heard.

After driving for a while, both notices something is wrong. The boy curses, knowing this date went horrible wrong.

“Sounds like the tires,” the girl comments as they park the car at the side of the road. It is still far to the town.

“Let me have a look,” the boy says, not knowing much about cars.

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littlericher73

Studying the back tire at the passengers side, he can’t make it out. It is as if it’s slashed. They wont be able to drive it back home. He stands up, looking both ways, no car is out on the roads, the forest on both sides is motionless in the dead wind.

He goes to the passenger door, motioning to open it to tell her they would need to call someone to come get then. That is when he sees it, that is when he freezes.

“What is it?” the girl asked, noticing his face going pale. The boy held out the arm.

“Stay in the car. Don’t come out. Lock the door,” he said, staring at the hook hanging from the car door.

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How the TV-series Penny Dreadful is Influenced by Old Literature

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In honor of the new spin-off series, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (2020), we took a nostalgic look back to the awesome Showtime series that started it all. RIP Original series, you were cancelled all too soon.


Penny Dreadful is a British-American horror drama television series created for Showtime and Sky by John Logan. It ran for three seasons from 2014-2016.

Iconic Vanessa Ives (Eva Green).
An original character and
also some of the most well crafted ones.

Penny Dreadful is an old term used during the nineteenth century to refer to cheap popular serial literature. Sort of like pulp fiction. It was also called penny blood, penny awful, or penny horrible. It means a story published in weekly parts, with the cost of one (old) penny. The main plot of these stories were typically sensational, focusing on the adventures of detectives, criminals, or supernatural entities.

This is exactly what Penny Dreadful was, and what it payed homage to. So we found some old stuff the series borrowed or was inspired by. And there is A LOT. So get your cigarette on a stick and let’s go on some vampiric monster hunt with out pals.

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Frankenstein

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley (1797–1851) that tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a hideous sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. 

Harry Treadaway played Victor Frankenstein, an arrogant, reclusive young doctor whose ambition and research involve transcending the barrier between life and death. In this show, Dr. Victor Frankenstein likes to quote the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley’s second wife was Mary Shelley.

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Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a Gothic and philosophical novel by Oscar Wilde, first published complete in the July 1890 issue of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. Fearing the story was indecent, the magazine’s editor deleted roughly five hundred words before publication without Wilde’s knowledge. It is Wilde’s only novel.

In the series he was played by Reeve Carney. A charismatic man who is ageless and immortal. And this Dorian Gray had a great, but utterly confusing story line. Where his purpose in the show was to throw great balls and parties and have sex with absolutely every character.

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Frankenstein’s bride

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, Victor Frankenstein is tempted by his monster’s proposal to create a female creature so that the monster can have a wife: “Shall each man,” cried he, “find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone?”

In Penny Dreadful, the bride of Frankenstein is Brona Croft (portrayed by Billie Piper), an Irish immigrant with a dark past who dies of tuberculosis at the end of Season 1. In season 2, she is brought back to life with no memory after Frankenstein’s monster demands a bride and given the new name “Lily Frankenstein” by Victor. That last scene of her speech will haunt television forever.

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The creature

Often called John Clare. He was a labour poet in the mid 1800’s England. But if it is a reference to the creature is unclear. What is clear though is that the creature often is called Caliban as well, a character from Shakespear’s The tempes. Half human, half monster. In some traditions he is depicted as a wild man, or a deformed man, or a beast man, or sometimes a mix of fish and man, a dwarf or even a tortoise. Another connection from the creature to penny dreadful is Dorian Gray. In the preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde muses: “The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.”

In the series he was played with Rory Kinnear, and had long storylines without many of the characters, alone.

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Dracula

Dracula is an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. Dracula was a big influence from the start. From Mina being taken by him, the chase after Dracula and several character that appears in the series. Van Helsing included. But the series managed to make a twist of it all, and the influence of Dracula is almost as if just a eerily familiar setting and feeling of the series. He did however show up in series three in the flesh. Christian Camargo as Dracula, the brother of Lucifer who fell to Earth to feed on the blood of the living as the first vampire. In London, he takes the guise of kindly zoologist Alexander Sweet to captivate Vanessa.

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John Seward

In season 3 of TV series Penny Dreadful, Patti LuPone portrays Dr. Florence Seward, a female version of the character. It is originally a character from Dracula, a doctor in the insane asylum, He calls in his mentor, Abraham Van Helsing, to help him with her illness, and he helps Seward to realize that Lucy has been bitten by a vampire and is doomed to become one herself. He was in love with her and proposed to her, but was rejected. After she is officially destroyed and her soul can go to heaven, Seward is determined to destroy Dracula.

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a gothic novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1886. It is about a London legal practitioner named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde.

Dr. Jekyll (Shazad Latif) as a former classmate of Dr. Frankenstein’s.

Varney the vampire

Abraham Van Helsing gives a copy of Varney the Vampire to Victor Frankenstein, explaining that the story is more truth than fiction and that the mysterious creature the series’ characters are pursuing is a vampire.

Justine

Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue is a 1791 novel by Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, better known as the Marquis de Sade. Justine is set just before the French Revolution in France and tells the story of a young girl who goes under the name of Thérèse. Her story is recounted to Madame de Lorsagne while defending herself for her crimes, en route to punishment and death.

In Penny Dreadful she is the a homeless, brutalized young prostitute who becomes an acolyte to Lily played by Jessica Barden. In an interview with John Logan from the show, he also said the relationship between Justine and Lily was inspired by th Novella Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu

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Wolfman

Larry Talbot was the main character in the movie series the Wolfman from 1941 and onward. There are sequels, reboots and several other medias tied into this franchise. He has his own interaction with all the Penny Dreadful characters from Dracula, Frankenstein and so on in his own franchise as well.

In the TV series Penny Dreadful, Ethan Chandler’s real name is revealed to be Ethan Lawrence Talbot, and he suffers from the curse of lycanthropy. This version of the character is played by Josh Hartnett.

Hecate

Hecate Poole is the witch played by Sarah Greene and is Evelyn Pool’s eldest daughter. She is the witch who pursues Ethan Chandler in seasons two and three. She shares her name with the ancient Greek goddess of witchcraft and the moon. Like Ethan’s relationship with the moon and her witchcraft ability as a Nightcomer witch.

The unquiet grave

“The Unquiet Grave” is an English folk song in which a young man mourns his dead love too hard and prevents her from obtaining peace. It is thought to date from 1400. It is heard in the mansion of the Nightcomer witches.

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