Random Horror Movies That Got People Jailed, Punished, or Officially Investigated (12 items)

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  (#1) Cannibal Holocaust

  • Ruggero Deodato, Luca Barbareschi, Robert Kerman, Gregory Snegoff, Edward Mannix, Carl Gabriel Yorke, Paolo Paoloni, Salvatore Basile, Ricardo Fuentes, Luigina Rocchi, Francesca Ciardi, Enrico Papa, Perry Pirkanen, Lucia Costantini, Lionello Pio Di Savoia

  Cannibal Holocaust has two claims to fame. First, it was one of the first found footage horror films. Second, it is consistently ranked as one of the most controversial films of all time. These two elements came together to create a firestorm for the film's director. Released in 1980, Cannibal Holocaust contained images so gruesome and realistic the Italian government tried director Ruggero Deodato for the murder of his lead actress, based on the footage.

  It was only when the stars of the film to plead Deodato's case (and prove they were alive) that the charges were dropped. The controversy surrounding Cannibal Holocaust has eclipsed the movie itself, and made it the most obvious choice for inclusion on this list. 

  See the creepy house where this all went down here.
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  (#2) A Lizard in a Woman's Skin

  • Stanley Baker, Alberto de Mendoza, Florinda Bolkan, Leo Genn, George Rigaud, Jean Sorel, Silvia Monti, Anita Strindberg, Franco Balducci, Ezio Marano, Ely Galleani, Penny Brown, Mike Kennedy

  When Italian director Lucio Fulci recruited Carlo Rambaldi in 1971 for his horror film A Lizard in a Woman's Skin, he never could have guessed Rambaldi's models would look so real the filmmakers would be brought to court. That's just what happened when Italian authorities caught wind of the film and, specifically, a scene depicting the violent death of a number of dogs.

  When the filmmakers were accused of animal cruelty, Rambaldi had to bring the fake dogs to court to avoid conviction. Rambaldi went on to do special effects for King Kong, design the head of the monster in Alien, and create E.T. for Steven Spielberg. 
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  (#3) Mark Twitchell's House of Cards

  You've heard this one before: a sadistic moviegoer is inspired by his favorite horror film and carries out copycat crimes and violence in the real world. In the case of Canadian filmmaker Mark Twitchell, it wasn't life imitating art. Rather, in Twitchell's sadistic mind, it was the other way around. 

  In 2008, Twitchell wrote and directed low budget horror film House of Cards, which included a scene in which a man is lured into a kill room and murdered. Weeks later, Twitchell recreated the scene from his script in real life, murdering Johnny Altinger in the same room used in the film. Police believe Twitchell wrote the script in an attempt to play out his murderous fantasies.

  Twitchell, now serving a life sentence in jail, maintains he didn't kill Altinger, and continues to fight for control of thousands of hours of footage seized by the police, so that he can someday edit his film and release it to the public.
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  (#4) Marla Mae

  For independent horror film Marla Mae, the truth behind the scenes was stranger than the fiction on screen. In 2015, an uneventful filming process in Washington State concluded with an interview with filmmakers and cast in a local paper. This article alerted federal agents that Jason Sange, a man convicted of armed robbery, had nabbed a lead role in the production.

  Stange used his own name during auditions, won the role, and went on to play a major part in the film, all of this after violating parole by abandoning his halfway house. The police re-arrested him after seeing his name and photo in the paper. Sometimes when that acting bug bites you, it sucks out your sense of reason. 
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  (#5) Guinea Pig: Flowers of Flesh and Blood

  What do you get when you mix Charlie Sheen and a guinea pig? An FBI investigation. In what sounds like a surreal, drug-addled joke, in 1991, Sheen watched a horror film so gruesomely realistic he believed it was a snuff film and called the FBI. The film, Guinea Pig: Flowers of Flesh and Blood, is a Japanese movie with extremely graphic violence, blood, and gore. Sheen turned his copy over to authorities, convinced a woman was actually murdered on screen. The filmmakers were forced to release a documentary, The Making of Guinea Pig, to prove it was all just special effects.

  Note to the squeamish: DO NOT image search this movie. Unless you wanna see a guy in a samurai helmet covered in blood licking a severed head. Which is the least disturbing thing about the film. 
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  (#6) Eldorado

  • Peter O'Toole, Daryl Hannah, Steve Guttenberg, Brigitte Nielsen, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Sylvester McCoy, Bill Moseley, Patrick Bergin, Jeff Fahey

  When making a horror movie, that old phrase rings true: nothing is certain but death and taxes. Every horror film has death and every production has taxes. When the maker of low-budget horror-comedy Eldorado tried to film the death without paying the taxes, he got himself in a lot of trouble with the British government.

  Producer Roger Driscoll falsified forms to inflate the budget of his film, claiming it cost £9 million ($13.8 million), which qualified it for £1.5 million ($2.3 million) in tax rebates and government funds. In fact, the film cost less to produce than the £1.5 Driscoll got back. Along with four conspirators, the producer forged documents and invoices to inflate expenses. He pocketed the money, spending it on crucial horror-related projects like his a hair transplant. Driscoll, whose entire professional life is a bizarre, sordid affair, was found guilty in 2013.

  Apparently the movie's not very good, either. According to UK paper The Telegraph, "Eldorado, you see, is weapons-grade awful. By turns toe-curling and wholly baffling, this is 116 minutes of laughable prosthetics, shifting sets and appalling CGI.
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  (#7) The ABCs of Death

  • Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Harold Torres, Erik Audé, Peter Pedrero, Takashi Nishina, Iván González, Matías Oviedo, Yui Murata, Vanja Lazin, Demo Tanaka, Chems Dahmani, Miguel Insua, Seminosuke Murasugi, Juanita Ringeling, Arisa Nakamura, Arata Yamanaka, Fraser Corbett, Dallas Malloy, Kyra Zagorsky, Joshua Diolosa, Tsuyoshi Kazuno, Darenzia, Eva Llorach, Sarah Bonrepaux, Pablo Guisa Koestinger, Lucy Clements, Hiroko Yashiki, Lee Hardcastle, Yoshio Komatsu, Hiroaki Murakami, Greg De Cuir, Naoko Takahashi, Kurumi Ochiai, Greta Martinez, Honoka Murakami, Je$$ica, Alejandra Urdiaín, Atsushi Hiroki, Hozake Yamada, M@tch, Sadashi Matsubayashi, Kim Richardson, Brenden McVeigh, Manon Beuchot, Martine Årnes Sørensen, Katsuyuki Miyake, Daisuke Sasaki, Xavier Magot, Tomomi Sugai

  When kids go to school to learn their ABCs, The ABCs of Death is probably not the most effective teaching tool. Nevertheless, Ohio substitute teacher Sheila Kearns screened the film for a high school Spanish class in 2013. Student complaints to the administration got Kearns convicted of disseminating materials harmful to juveniles and sentenced to 90 days in jail.

  No word on whether the kids learned anything from the morbidly hilarious lesson plan.
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  (#8) The Carnage Collection

  No one can pretend to be surprised when a film called The Carnage Collection comes under fire for its collection of carnage. After illegally downloading the film for her kids based on the picture of Santa on the cover (clearly disregarding the word carnage in the title, and the description "features multiple short stories of violence, gore, carnage, and horror"), a woman complained to authorities about the obscene content.

  Specifically, the flabbergasted mother had a problem with the part when a woman gets stabbed in the vagina, and another part when Santa says, "Suck my motherf'ing jingle balls." The movie was investigated as a potential snuff film, portraying actual violence to humans and animals. Once those charges were dropped, police held the filmmakers temporarily based on an old-school law banning the production of obscene material. 
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  (#9) The Films of Remy Couture

  In a genre as controversial and subversive as horror, is it a badge of honor if your work is so offensive it gets you arrested for moral corruption? That's what happened to Remy Couture, a special effects artist in Quebec, Canada. Couture posted some horror shorts on his website, Inner Depravity, in 2005 and gained worldwide attention.

  However, not all of the attention was positive; a complaint in Austria made its way to Interpol, and Couture was arrested and charged with moral corruption and the production and distribution of obscene material. Acquitted in 2012, Couture's case hinged on the jury agreeing Couture's work was not just obscenity but had true artistic merit. That seems like a very complicated way to earn your artistic merit badge.
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  (#10) Night of the Living Dead

  • Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley, Marilyn Eastman, Kyra Schon, Charles Craig, George Kosana, Russell Streiner

  Night of the Living Dead, George Romero's classic 1968 zombie film, is so scary a man used it to punish a child he babysat. So scary, in fact, his use of the film was considered a crime. Englishman Robert Bayliss, babysitting an unnamed 6-year-old girl in the early '90s, forced her to watch the film as a punishment for "behaving like a child" (which seems a little unfair, since she was a child). 

  In 2016, Bayliss, who confessed to a drinking problem at the time of the incident, was convicted on one count of child cruelty more than 20 years after the event. He received a suspended sentence, probation, and community service. 
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  (#11) The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

  • Marilyn Burns, Gunnar Hansen, Allen Danziger, Paul A. Partain, William Vail, Teri McMinn, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, John Dugan, Perry Lorenz

  Now more than 40 years old, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is still considered one of the scariest horror films ever made. If current audiences continue to fear the film, imagine how terrifying it was in the 1970s, when minds were yet desensitized by the countless horror films produced in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre's image. In fact, the movie was banned upon release in a number of countries.

  In Ottawa, Canada, in 1976, so-called "morality detectives" from the police department even forced the owners of two local theaters to suspend their screenings of the film, lest charges be brought against them. Oh, Canada.
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  (#12) Dudleytown Curse - The 49th Key

  Dudleytown was a Connecticut settlement in the 18th and 19th century, which many now consider haunted or cursed. Bad things seem to befall anyone associated with the town, with legends of ghosts, demons, and vanishings dating back centuries. The hardship that befell the crew of a horror film based on these legends is much more firmly rooted in reality. Police arrested eight filmmakers, in the process of shooting Dudleytown Curse - The 49th Key, for trespassing on the site of the old settlement, which is now private property.

  Is it a case of bad luck or did the Dudleytown curse strike again? Maybe they should've gotten some permits. Or maybe the ghosts cursed their permits? 

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