Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in ‘American Psycho’.
TV + Movies

3 Horror Movies That Have Inspired Monstrous Real Life Crimes

She was called “The Bride of Chucky” by the press.

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Horror movies are fun to watch because they give the viewer the thrill of a scary scenario from the safety of their living room. It’s all supposed to be pretend. But some sickos enact the violence they see in movies on real life victims.

The Child’s Play Franchise (1988-2009)

The original Child’s Play from 1988.

The sadistic possessed doll Chucky has been linked to several copycat murders.

  • The worst was the case of Martin Bryant, a schizophrenic Aussie who killed 35 people in 1996’s Port Arthur Massacre. His favorite movie was Child’s Play 2, and according to an ex-girlfriend of his, he had a habit of saying, “Don’t fuck with Chuck.”
  • In the horrific murder of two-year-old James Bulger—who in 1993 was kidnapped from a mall in England by two ten-year-old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, and then taken down to some railroad tracks where they bludgeoned him to death and stuffed batteries into his anus—investigators found that one of the killers’ parents had recently rented Child’s Play 3.
  • In 1992, a sixteen-year-old British girl named Suzanne Capper was tortured and murdered by six captors who reportedly screamed “Chucky’s coming to play” before attacking her and played a rave song that included sound bites from Child’s Play during the assault.
  • In 2015, a Russian woman named Elena Lobacheva was convicted of the murder of at least twelve men. A huge fan of the Child’s Play series, Lobacheva had tattoos of Chucky and Tiffany on her arms and was called “The Bride of Chucky” by the press.

Scream (1996)

  • The first killing linked to Scream occurred in 1998, when a teenage boy in California murdered his mother, Gina Castillo, by stabbing her dozens of times with knives and a screwdriver.
  • In 1999, a pair of British boys received a six-year sentence for the nonfatal stabbing of a friend they’d committed after watching Scream and thinking that the movie had told them to kill her.
In Scream 2, Mickey wants to be caught and tried for his crimes so he can stage a dramatic “blame the movies” defense.
  • In 2001, Belgian trucker Thierry Jaradin stabbed his neighbor Alisson Cambier with two kitchen knives 30 times, killing her. He was wearing a Ghostface costume during the murder.
  • In 2006, a 16-year-old high school student, Cassie Jo Stoddart, was housesitting for her aunt when two boys she knew from school murdered her. Police found video evidence of a movie the boys had been making about the murder, including footage of Cassie in school days before the crime was committed. Both boys blamed “peer pressure” and said they were inspired by the movie Scream (1996) as well as the perpetrators of the Columbine High School tragedy. 

American Psycho (2000)

Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.
  • Canadian serial killer Paul Bernardo was rumored to keep a copy of Bret Easton Ellis’s book by his bed and referred to it as his “bible.”
  • In 2004, South Florida middle schooler Michael Hernandez killed a classmate and told police that the character of American Psycho protagonist Patrick Bateman was a major inspiration for his crime.
  • In 2012, Canadian psychopath Luka Magnotta filmed himself murdering his male lover with an icepick while a song from the American Psycho soundtrack played in the background.
  • Finally, in 2014, a Hong Kong-based man named Rurik Jutting filmed himself murdering two Indonesian women in his apartment. Jutting confessed to being a huge fan of both the novel and the movie versions of American Psycho.