Random True Stories Of How Famous Horror Icons Got Their Start (13 items)

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  (#5) Sid Haig

  • 79

  Sid Haig had a long career in Hollywood prior to his passing in 2019, amassing over 70 film roles and over 300 roles on television. Haig began his acting at Pasadena Playhouse, the official state theater of California, where multiple stars of the 1940s and 1950s got their start. Also of note was Haig's performance as a drummer in The T-Birds in the late 1950s, releasing six singles that included the hit "Full House."

  Haig acted in multiple Blaxploitation films over his career, but his role as Captain Spaulding in director and writer Rob Zombie's House of 1,000 Corpses propelled him back into the collective consciousness of the horror world. The character made an impact and appeared in Zombie's movies The Devil's Rejects and 3 From Hell before Haig's passing. Even before that, Haig solidified his place in horror infamy with his role in 1968's Spider Baby as Ralph, an inbred child who wreaks havoc with his equally demented siblings.
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  (#7) Bruce Campbell

  • 60

  High school friends Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi lived in Michigan, bonding over their love of making short films in their childhood yards. After a youth spent making comedy shorts, horror shorts, and anything else they desired to film, the friends reunited as adults. In the interim, Campbell had worked a string of jobs, including driving a cab and working as a production assistant. In early 1979, Raimi wrote the short story that became the cult classic The Evil Dead, starring Campbell as hero Ashley Williams, a man trapped in a remote cabin with friends as an evil force takes over and dispatches them one by one.

  Campbell and Raimi went on to make more Evil Dead movies, with Campbell reprising his role in the series Ash vs Evil Dead from 2015 until 2018. Raimi directed all of the Campbell Evil Dead films before moving into mainstream cinema with 1998's A Simple Plan and the early 2000s Spider-Man trilogy. He returned briefly to his roots with 2009's Drag Me to Hell.
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  (#4) Wes Craven

  • 79

  Wes Craven brought horror into viewers' dreams with his classic series A Nightmare on Elm Street and its distinctive stripey-sweater-wearing villain Freddy Krueger; but before that, he directed adult films. Although Craven earned degrees from Wheaton College and Johns Hopkins University, in his thirties, he decided to branch out into film. Using pseudonyms, he dipped his toes into the business via adult films, including an undisclosed role in the making of Deep Throat.

  Luckily for horror aficionados, Craven pivoted with his gory debut The Last House on the Left in 1972, followed by The Hills Have Eyes in 1977 and A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984. Craven went on to redefine the horror genre with 1996's Scream, making the characters aware of all the rules to surviving a horror movie while fighting their own masked slayer.
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  (#12) Alfred Hitchcock

  • Dec. at 81 (1899-1980)

  Alfred Hitchcock's name is bound to come up any time horror films are a part of the discussion; he is the creator of macabre classics such as Psycho, The Birds, and the television anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Prior to that, he worked creating title cards presented during silent films and also made money a draftsman, advertising designer, and writer. 

  Hitchcock's filmography casts a long shadow on the work of filmmakers in all genres - not least of them horror.
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  (#8) John Carpenter

  • 71

  Prior to giving the world Halloween and Michael Myers, John Carpenter attended University of Southern California, where he made short films. His first, 1970's The Resurrection of Billy Bronco, earned him an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Subject Film. His move into full-length films started with 1974's cult classic Dark Star, then Assault on Precinct 13 in 1976, and then Halloween in 1978.

  Carpenter's contributions to sci-fi and horror continued with The Thing, The Fog, and most recently, The Ward in 2011. Carpenter's Halloween, however, shaped the formula for slasher flicks that featured mask-wearing creeps stalking teenagers.
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  (#3) Stephen King

  • 71

  King worked as a high school teacher and sometimes had short stories published in gentleman's magazines to help pay the bills. Although he already had three novels finished and sitting unpublished, King wrote Carrie to combat criticisms about his inability to write well-rounded female characters. After only writing three pages, King trashed the novel. Luckily Tabitha, his wife, fished the pages from the garbage and pushed King to finish.

  The rest is, of course, history, as King became a writer synonymous with the horror genre, publishing more than 60 novels and at least five non-fiction books. He's also directed a movie adaptation of his own short story, Maximum Overdrive, and seen multiple film, television, and mini-series adaptations of his works.

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