Behind the Horror cover art

Behind the Horror

True stories that inspired horror movies

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Behind the Horror

By: Lee Dr Mellor
Narrated by: Adam Sims
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About this listen

Uncover the twisted tales that inspired the big screen's greatest screams.

Which case of demonic possession inspired The Exorcist? What horrifying front-page story generated the idea for A Nightmare on Elm Street? Which film was inspired by an 18th-century Japanese folktale?

Unearth the terrifying and true tales behind some of the scariest Horror movies to ever haunt our screens, including the Enfield poltergeist case that was retold in The Conjuring 2 and the serial killer who inspired Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs.

Behind the Horror dissects these and other bizarre tales to reveal haunting real-life stories of abduction, disappearance, murder, and exorcism.

Lee Mellor, Ph.D. is a criminologist, lecturer, musician, and the author of seven books on crime. He received his doctorate from Montreal's Concordia University after specializing in abnormal homicide and sex crimes. As the chair of the American Investigative Society of Cold Cases' academic committee, he has consulted with police on cold cases in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio, and London, Ontario. He resides in Ontario, Canada.

© 2020 Dr Lee Mellor © 2020 DK Audio

 Crime Entertainment & Performing Arts Film & TV History & Criticism Murder True Crime Disappearance Scary Haunted Exciting Entertainment Cold Case

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All stars
Most relevant
In part fascinating, in part infuriating. If you paid attention to the title and listened to the preview/early chapters you might expect a study of the parallels between true crime and horror movie classics. However, several chapters of the book focus on supernatural horror where the 'true story' isn't that, it's a load of nonsense pedalled by attention-starved charlatans, the delusional, or the intellectually challenged. A more representative title would be 'real-world stories' not 'true stories'. Where the book does deal with 'true stories', it's nothing short of riveting. It covers several masterpieces of cinema, recounts incredible true crime details, but most importantly does so in an incredibly well written and entertaining fashion. It will entertain you even if you're a movie fanatic and well read on true crime and mysteries. In parts I would give a 5, but given I had to double speed through some particularly boring and repetitive recounts of ghosts, ghouls, aliens, blah, blah, I have to cut it down to a high 3. Definitely worth a listen however, just have the skip button at the ready!

So nearly brilliant

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Great book especially on the early films and the 70s giving informative accounts on films such as the exorcist and poltergeist.

very interesting 👌

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I have to agree with a previous reviewer who said 'several chapters of the book focus on supernatural horror where the 'true story' isn't that, it's a load of nonsense pedalled by attention-starved charlatans, the delusional, or the intellectually challenged'. Thankfully, this is prefaced at the end of some of the 'stories' by the author providing evidence of the debunking of said nonsense.

The rest of the book was riveting. I loved finding out about the inspiration for various movies I have watched over the years. I just wish that the author/narrator had not continuously provided us with the metric conversion of all the distances and measurements mentioned throughout the book!! I think we Europeans can handle imperial measurements quite well without having to have the metric equivalent constantly added to the end. Very annoying!!

Good, but.....

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Interesting all though some could barely be called horror notably Jaws, act of nature rather than a serial killer. On the whole I enjoyed the book and narration.

Behind the horror

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Genuinely gripping and well researched oversight
Into what source material may have influenced/inspired some notable films.

Fascinating and Terrifying investigation into the sources of the movies we see

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