Entertainment
19 Gruesome Crimes That Have Been Influenced By 19 Epic Movies!

Movies are one of the most influential form of mediums we have around in this day and age. They may have positive or negative implications on their audience.

Recently in Chicago, a student enacted scenes from a popular erotica film called ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ with his unwilling girlfriend.

This wasn’t the first time scenes from movies were reenacted in real life. Some of these adaptations have ended terribly. Here is a list of movies that resulted in negative influence:

1) The Birth of a nation (1915)

An American source movie notorious for depicting African Americans in a negative light, this movie caused many riots where lots of men, women and children lost their lives. Most of the brutal murders were ritualistic headed by the Ku Klux Klan .

Source: rogerebert.com

2) The Collector (1965)

Source: pixgood.com

The movie influenced Leonard Lakes and Charles NG to abduct and murder 25 women. The men kidnapped women and kept them locked up to do their bidding. If they didn’t comply they would be murdered. This happened in the exact same way as was seen in the movie where the protagonist kidnaps a woman of his desire and keeps her locked in his basement as a ‘collection’.

3) A Clockwork Orange (1971)

This movie caused a lot of copycat crimes committed by people; this included a classmate stabbing another dressed as a Droog, another assaulted a prostitute to death and a girl was gang raped by a group singing the song featured in the film.

4) Magnum Force (1973)

In this movie, Clint Eastwood forced his victims to drink Drano, a drain cleaning agent. In reality, William Andrews too would force his victims to drink Drano. To his disappointed though, Drano was not sufficient to kill them, causing Andrews an immense of amount of frustration leading to a grisly massacare known as the “The Ogden Hi-Fi Shop Massacre”. He was put on death row and given the lethal injection for his crimes.

Source: blackracismandracehatred.blogspot.com

5) Taxi Driver (1976)

John Hinkley Jr tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan to impress real life actress Jodie Foster because he thought the character from the film had told him to do so…

Source: veteranstoday.com

6) The Deer Hunter (1978)

In the movie, the Vietnamese prisoners of war were forced to play Russian roulette. One of the soldiers is so affected that he decides to stay and repeatedly play the game for money. Mickey Culpupper shot himself in the head playing “Deer Hunter” and a man was captured and tortured in a similar way to the Viet-Cong scene depicted in the film.

7) Child’s Play (1988)

The movie Child’s Play inspired a crime in Manchester City, where a 16-year-old girl was burnt alive by a group of boys who chanted “I’m Chucky. Chucky wants to play” and even played a tape mimicking Chucky’s lines.

8) Robocop 2 (1990)

Nathaniel White butchered his first victim, the pregnant Juliana Frank, in a manner identical to RoboCop. After being arrested he said,

“The first girl I killed was from a ‘RoboCop’ movie… I seen him cut somebody’s throat then take the knife and slit down the chest to the stomach and left the body in a certain position. With the first person I killed I did exactly what I saw in the movie.”

9) The Program (1993)

In the movie, to prove his manliness, the protagonist lay down in the middle of a busy highway. Michael A Shingledecker Jr decided to do the same with his friend at night on a Philadelphia Highway. They were struck by a truck that did not see him. Michael died instantly while his friend was left critically injured.

10) Natural Born Killers (1994)

Source: thesun.co.uk

 

The killers admitted that the film had influenced them into killing people and was the source of their actions. Real life couple, Sarah Edmonson and Benjamin Darrus, murdered two people after watching the film. In another incident, a 14-year-old boy decapitated a 13-year-old girl who wanted to “Be famous like the natural born killer.”

11) Money Train (1995)

A scene in the movie involved an attendant in a New York subway tollbooth being set on fire. Soon after the release of the movie, a copycat filled a booth with lighter fluid and ignited it where the tollbooth attendant died.

12) The Basketball Diaries (1995)

In the movie, in one scene Leonardo Di Caprio is day dreaming about shooting people in his class room, in a black trenchcoat. This is re-enacted by Barry Loukatis, where he too wore a black trenchcoat concealing his weapons, and killed three classmates. After he finished, he smiled at the classroom and said,

“That sure beats Algebra, doesn’t it?”

Source: murderpedia.org

13) Scream (1996)

Thierry Jaradin, a truck driver, donned the scream costume and murdered his neighbour, Alisson Cambier. He stabbed her 30 times after being rejected by her. Two other teens stabbed their friend after watching the movie believing the occult was talking to them through the movie. The victim survived the murder attempt.

Source: moviepilot.com

 

14) The Matrix (1999)

Several killers, after watching the movien believed that they were in The Matrix. A Swedish exchange student Vadim Mieseges told the police that he’d been “sucked into the Matrix”. Tonda Lynn Ansley, who killed her landlady, believed she was in the Matrix, and likened the killing to a dream.

15) Wedding Crashers (2005)

In the movie, Owen Wilson spikes a person’s drink with Visine causing them severe diarrhea. Olga Louniakova found out that it also causes severe poisoning. Olga poisoned her supervisor and was found guilty of second degree reckless endangerment.

16) Old Boy (2003)

In 2007, a US student named Cho Seung-Hui killed thirty-two students of Virginia Tech University and injured seventeen others, in a shooting rampage that came to be known as the Virginia Tech Massacre. Prior to the incident, it is alleged he repeatedly watched the film Old Boy.

Source: chicagoreader.com

17) The Town (2010)

The Town, influenced many bank robbers to copy the techniques seen in the film to rob banks. In New York City, a group committed 62 robberies using techniques they’d seen in the film such as cutting the power supply, wearing miner hats to see in the dark and using bleach to destroy DNA evidence. Another crime in Nebraska had men in skull masks and even a nun-costume robbing a bank!

18) The Dark Knight Rises (2008)

In July 2012, at the screening of The Dark Knight Rises, James Holmes shot at 50 people killing 12 in the process. He claimed to be the Joker from the film series.

Source: cnn.com

19) 50 Shades Of Grey (2015)

Mohammad Hossain, after watching 50 Shades of Grey decided to recreate a scene from the movie. He tied up his classmate, beat her with belts, and kept punching her despite the victim crying and begging him to stop. He was charged with assault.

Source: time.com

 

It is important to stress that what happens in a movie is a figment of the script-writer’s imagination. It is NOT reality and should NOT EVER be tried at home!

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