Halloween Festival of Lists: October 20: TWENTY Random Horror Facts

 1) Stephen King's addiction to drugs and alcohol was profound enough that when he was finally clean in 1987, he found the manuscript for Cujo and had to re-read it to recall what it was about, as he literally couldn't remember much about writing it at all because it was written under the influence.

2) Edgar Allan Poe served two years in the Army but was court-martialed and promptly discharged.

3) George Romero had a cameo in The Silence of the Lambs as one of Hannibal Lecter's prison guards.

4) Bruce Campbell kicked Chuck Norris right in the balls once.  A week later, Chuck sent Bruce a fruit basket thanking him for the honor.

5) Rumor has it that Jamie Lee Curtis is a hermaphrodite (someone born with both male and female sex organs, usually has male organs removed and is raised as a female). She has never commented on these rumors, but someone with this condition apparently cannot have children.  Jamie and her hubby have two adopted kids.

6) H.P. Lovecraft died in 1937 but didn't have a headstone until 1977 when fans of his pitched in to buy him one.

7) John Carpenter named the character of Laurie Strode (Halloween) after his first girlfriend.

8) Alfred Hitchcock was honored with a U.S. Postage stamp in 1998.

9) Dario Argento's hands are almost always the gloved killer's hands in his films.

10) Vincent Price attended the opening night of the first production of Richard O'Brien's "The Rocky Horror Show", the stage musical that was the basis for "The Rocky Horror Picture Show".

11) Cassandra Peterson (a.k.a. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark) was badly burned by boiling water at age five and had several skin grafts.  Not that you can tell now!

12) Lucio Fulci was broke at the time of his death.  Dario Argento paid for his funeral.

13) After writing Jaws and realizing it painted the shark as a heartless villain, Peter Benchley became a huge advocate for the preservation and conservation of sharks, in particular the Great White.

14) When asked about education, Quentin Tarantino quoted:  “When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them ‘no, I went to films.’”

15) It is said that Wes Craven worked in pornographic films as an editor, writer and director before he had success in horror.

16) Besides writing Psycho, author Robert Bloch wrote over twenty novels and hundreds of short stories. It is he, not Stephen King, who originally quoted "I have the heart of a little boy; I keep it in a jar on my desk."

17) Bela Lugosi was offered the part of the Frankenstein monster but declined it, paving the way for Boris Karloff.

18) Christopher Lee has been in over 275 films since 1947.  This is a Guinness book world record holder for most film acting roles ever.

19) Ruggero Deodato was arrested after his film Cannibal Holocaust was released, and was forced by a judge to produce the actors from the movie because they were feared dead.

20) Janet Leigh's body double for the shower scene in Psycho was ironically stabbed to death in 1988.