A Big Collection of Movie Facts!

The physical appearance of the Creature was modeled after a likeness of the Oscar, the figurine awarded annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Ingmar Bergman watched this film every day on his birthday.

In one sequence Julie Adams' character is captured by the creature and carried into a cave. During the filming the stuntman misjudged where the side of the entrance was and accidentally struck Ms. Adams' head against the wall, knocking her unconscious.

Cinematographer Karl Freund achieved the effect of Dracula's hypnotic stare by aiming two pencil-spot-lights into actor Bela Lugosi's eyes.

Several famous elements often associated with Dracula are not visible in this film. At no point does Dracula display fangs. Also, the famous vampire bite mark on the neck is never shown either (though it is visible in the Spanish version).

When Bela Lugosi died in 1956, he was buried wearing the black silk cape he wore for this film.

The Monster in this film does not physically resemble Mary Shelley's character. It was make-up artist Jack P. Pierce who came up with innovations such as the Monster's flat head, the bolts through the neck, the droopy eyelids, and the poorly-fitted suit. Any future Frankenstein film that features any of these physical abnormalities is taking its inspiration from Pierce's make-up work.

The popular image of Frankenstein's monster as green-skinned was sourced in this film. Jack P. Pierce's applied a grayish-green greasepaint for the Monster's skin that appeared as a deathly pale gray tone on black and white film. This contrasted with the gray values of the normal characters in the movie. The one exception was the use of a much darker color on the Monster's exposed arm - representing dead, black flesh - prior to it being brought to life.

Edward Van Sloan (Dr Waldman) also makes an uncredited appearance as himself in the film's prologue, in order to warn audiences of what follows.

The first film to use the famous Castle Thunder sound effect.

In the opening and closing credits the cast list says "The Monster's Mate" followed by a question mark.

Elsa Lanchester was only 5'4" but for the role was placed on stilts that made her 7' tall. The bandages were placed so tightly on her that she was unable to move and had to be carried about the studio and fed through a straw.

"The Bride", the most obscure of Universal Studios' Classic Monsters, is on screen for less than five minutes and is the only "Classic Monster" never to have killed anyone.

Elsa Lanchester never receives on screen credit as "The Bride". The character is listed as being played by "?".

The sets were made out of paper, with the shadows painted on the walls.

Widely considered to be the first true horror film ever made.

Writer Hans Janowitz claims to have gotten the idea for the film when he was at a carnival one day. He saw a strange man lurking in the shadows. The next day, he heard that a girl was brutally murdered there. He went to the funeral, and saw the same strange man lurking around. He had no proof that the strange man was the murderer, but he fleshed the whole idea out into his film.

Christian evangelist Billy Graham claimed an actual demon was living in the celluloid reels of this movie.

Ellen Burstyn received a permanent spinal injury during filming. In the sequence where she is thrown away from her possessed daughter, a harness jerked her hard away from the bed. She fell on her coccyx and screamed in pain.

The statue of "Pazuzu" was accidentally sent to Hong Kong, before arriving on location in Iraq.

Director William Friedkin eventually asked technical advisor Thomas Bermingham to exorcise the set. He refused, saying an exorcism might increase anxiety. Rev. Bermingham wound up visiting the set and gave a blessing and talk to reassure the cast and crew.

On the first day of filming the exorcism sequence, Linda Blair's delivery of her foul-mouthed dialogue so disturbed the gentlemanly Max von Sydow that he actually forgot his lines.

In the scene where Regan is getting her brain scan, just before the machine starts, the shadow of a cross falls across her forehead.

In an interview, Jason Miller stated that he had a major verbal confrontation with William Friedkin after the director fired a gun near his ear to get an authentic reaction from him. He told Freidkin that he is an actor, and that he didn't need a gun to act surprised or startled.

The entire exorcism scene, from start to end, lasts 9 minutes.

In order to achieve the effect that Claude Rains wasn't there when his character took off the bandages, the director had Rains dressed completely in black velvet and filmed him in front of a black velvet background.

Although he has the lead in the film and his character is onscreen for 95% of the film, Claude Rains never actually "appears" onscreen until the very last moment.

Evelyn Ankers later recalled that during the filming of the final confrontation, she was required to faint, and then to stay on the floor until the fight scene between Lon Chaney Jr. and Claude Rains was finished. Ankers recalled that during one take, she stayed on the floor so long that the low-hanging chemical fog being used in the scene caused her to pass out. When the take was over, the film crew began rearranging the cameras and lights for the next take, not noticing that Ankers had not emerged from the floor. Finally someone on the crew realized that Ankers was missing, and she was pulled up from the fog and revived.

Many of the modern myths of werewolves originated from this film, such as a person becoming a werewolf through a bite, the only way to kill a werewolf is with a silver bullet, and changing into one during a full moon. These are original concepts created by writer Curt Siodmak.

Maria Ouspenskaya, who played the old Gypsy woman, was only six years older than Bela Lugosi, who played her son.

The first transformation takes place with Talbot in an undershirt (although he is fully dressed in a dark shirt once on the prowl). Only the feet transform on screen in six lapse dissolves. In the second transformation there are eleven shots - again of feet only. The third transformation features 17 face shots in a continuous dissolve.

'Ardath Bey' (the name Imhotep assumes after his exhumation) is an anagram of 'Death by Ra' (Ra is the Egyptian sun-god).

Boris Karloff was virtually unknown when he appeared as the creature in Frankenstein. He created such a sensation that when this was made, only a year later, Universal only had to advertise "KARLOFF....'The Mummy'."

So many layers of cotton were glued to Boris Karloff's face to create the wrinkled visage of Imhotep as a mummy that Karloff was unable to move his facial muscles enough even to speak.

Walt Disney refused to allow Alfred Hitchcock to film at Disneyland in the early 1960s because Hitchcock had made "that disgusting movie, 'Psycho'."

In the opening scene, Marion Crane is wearing a white bra because Alfred Hitchcock wanted to show her as being "angelic". After she has taken the money, the following scene has her in a black bra because now she has done something wrong and evil. Similarly, before she steals the money, she has a white purse; after she's stolen the money, her purse is black.

First American film ever to show a toilet flushing on screen.

If you look attentively you can notice that nearly every time a driver gets out of his car he does so through the passenger side, a seemingly odd behavior. This is due to the bench seating in older cars, and Alfred Hitchcock's desire to continue the shot without either moving the camera to follow the actor or having the actor walk between the car and the camera.

On set, Alfred Hitchcock would always refer to Anthony Perkins as "Master Bates".

According to biographers, Alfred Hitchcock himself had a troubled relationship with his own domineering mother who, as does Norman Bates with his mother, forced him to stand at the foot of her bed and tell her everything that had happened to him. Although the real relationship was not as disturbed as seen the movie.

The blood was Bosco chocolate syrup.

After the film's release Alfred Hitchcock received an angry letter from the father of a girl who refused to have a bath after seeing Diabolique and now refused to shower after seeing this film. Hitchcock sent a note back simply saying, "Send her to the dry cleaners."

Alfred Hitchcock received several letters from ophthalmologists who noted that Janet Leigh's eyes were still contracted during the extreme closeups after her character's death. The pupils of a true corpse dilate after death. They told Hitchcock he could achieve a proper dead-eye effect by using belladonna drops. Hitchcock did so in all his later films.

There is a popular rumor that Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey gave technical advice and portrayed Satan in the impregnation scene. This is false - LaVey had no involvement with the film.

Directed by Roman Polanski, whose pregnant wife actress Sharon Tate was murdered in 1969 by Charles Manson and his followers, who titled their death spree "Helter Skelter" after the 1968 song by The Beatles, one of whose members, John Lennon, would one day live (and in 1980 be murdered) in the Manhattan apartment building called The Dakota - where Rosemary's Baby had been filmed.

Mia Farrow does the vocals on the title-sequence lullaby.

According to Mia Farrow, the scenes where Rosemary walks in front of traffic were spontaneous and genuine. Roman Polanski is reported to have told her that "nobody will hit a pregnant woman."

The actress whose character, Pam, was hung up on a meat hook was actually held up by a nylon cord that went between her legs, causing a great deal of pain.

During the dinner scene towards the end of the film, when Leatherface cuts Sally's finger, he actually does cut her finger because they couldn't get the fake blood to come out of the tube behind the blade.

Director Tobe Hooper claims to have got the idea for the film while standing in the hardware section of a crowded store. While thinking of a way to get out through the crowd, he spotted the chainsaws.

Edwin Neal, who played the Hitchhiker, said that making the film was more miserable than his service in Vietnam and said that he might kill director Tobe Hooper if he ever saw him again.

Even in his lift boots, Gunnar Hansen could run faster than Marilyn Burns, so he had to do random things when chasing her through the woods (you'll notice in one head-on shot that he starts slicing up tree branches in the background).

Marilyn Burns, whose character was chased by Leatherface through the undergrowth, actually cut herself on the branches quite badly, so a lot of the blood on her body and clothes is real.