RedHanded - DAY 7: Cursed Films (ShortHand’s 13 Days of Halloween)

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

In the last 13 days before Halloween, a different ShortHand will rise from the archives for 24 hours only – before disappearing back into the vault. Get exclusive access to every ShortHand episode ad free only on Amazon Music Unlimited.--For almost as long as we’ve made films, we’ve made horror films – but what happens when the terror isn’t just on screen? Movie-making lore is riddled with stories of bizarre accidents on set, creepy coincidences and even murders, all of which can give rise to cult followings and, in some cases, rumours of a curse over the whole production. From Indian ghosts to demonic hauntings, we run through a ShortHanded historical horror archive and investigate whether these sinister events were the result of supernatural curses, coincidence or just bloody good PR. Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, Please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600, to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Scams are everywhere. On your phone, in your inbox, even on your television screen. Looking at you, Tinder Swindler. What is it about scams that has pop culture so obsessed? Maybe it's because it could happen to anyone. Or maybe it's because we're all so deeply fascinated by the psyche of someone who can lie with ease, cheat with no guilt, and convince the world that they are who they say they are, even when they're not. Scamfluencers is a weekly podcast that takes you into the world of deception, sharing the stories of today's most notorious scams.

Like the recent episode of Natalie Cochran, the pharmacist Fem Fetal. It seemed like she had it all. A good job, loving husband, and two kids. But behind the scenes, Natalie was scamming friends and family using fake contracts, fake government emails, and she even faked cancer. But when the wall start closing in, she'll do anything to keep the lie alive until someone ends up dead. Listen to scam influencers now, wherever you get your podcasts. Scams are everywhere, on your phone, in your inbox, even on your television screen. So what is it about scams that has pop culture so obsessed? Maybe it's because it can happen to anyone. Or maybe it's because we're all deeply fascinated by the psyche of someone who can lie with ease and cheat with no guilt.

Listen to scam influencers now wherever you get your podcasts. Hello there, spooky listener. It's October, our favorite time of the year. And so to celebrate and give you all a well-deserved treat, we're bringing you the 13 days of Halloween. Short-hand edition. Usually, every single week over on Amazon Music, we release brand-new episodes of our bite-sized sister show, shorthand. It's like red-handed's little friend. Where we delve into all sorts of fascinating topics.

From hell in different religions, Haitian voodoo, the death of Edgar Allan Poe, Qatar's syndrome, Japan's suicide forest, and so much more. And this Halloween, from the 19th of October to the 31st of October, we are going to be pulling out 13 of our most terrifying episodes of Shorthand to drop straight into your red-handed feed every single day. But beware. Each episode will only be available for 24 hours.

So get listening or abandon or hope. Enjoy. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hi, everybody. This is another topic of which I am deeply fascinating. As a shithouse horror movie fan, that I am, who refuses to watch any good films but has watched every single fucking terrible B-side horror movie ever made. If you are like me, this is right up your alley.

And if you're not like me, but you like curse things, this is still right up your alley. I have to make a confession. Uh-huh. I absolutely, unreservedly, hate the word movie. Oh. I can't stand it. I never knew this about you. No, I know.

Six and a half years in. I've been waiting to tell you. And I never knew you hated the word movie. I prefer to say film. Is it one of your things of like how you hate it because it's like a lazy English word? Because it's like a movie. It's like a talkie and then the movie. It's like, come on.

Like, let's confront what it is, you know? But then is film not just as bad because it's like, oh, it's literally what it's on. I just prefer it. fine so you can say movies throughout this I chant do you know what that's great because then we don't even have to try and use a the thesaurus in this country it's fairly reasonable especially in the north to be like oh should we go to the pictures never say that in front of an american because they will laugh you down the road what do they say the movies oh they say the movies yeah and i was like oh should we go to the pictures and my friend was like okay elizabeth taylor yeah i guess like down here

we don't really say pictures but if somebody said it to me I wouldn't be like it wouldn't land weird on my ear I almost think it's like quite a more old-fashioned way to say should we go to the cinema I'd say go to the cinema I would say go to the cinema I think my mum says pictures yeah I would say cinema I probably said it when I was a child but that's because my mum says it anyway now we've got that out of right I'm so glad we spend so long writing really tight succinct intros for these episodes so I'm just going to get inundated with Instagram voice notes of people saying the word movie. Anyway, if Fred handed his testament to anything, it's that people love a sinister story. People have loved swapping grim tales since time immemorial and it's the reason that we both have

jobs. And almost as soon as we started to make films, we started to make horror films. But what happens when the terror isn't just on screen? Film law is full of stories of bizarre accident, shocking coincidences and even murders. All of which give rise to urban legends and bloodthirsty cult followings. And these sinister associations are no bad thing for filmmakers. It's like when the FBI wrote that letter to NWA for straight

out of Compton and Dre was like, thank you so much. You've just sold millions more records. Myths about films being cursed can build hysteria around upcoming releases, inevitably getting bums on seats. So we're going to take you through some of the most famous examples of

films that were plagued by disaster, causing many to believe that They were truly cursed. And we're going to ask the question. Were these creepy events a result of real curses? Coincidence? Or was it just really good PR? Here is the shorthand.

So we begin our curse footage through horror history with possibly the most famous cursed film of them all. William Friedkin's The Exorcist. And what makes The Exorcist so infamous? Well, because literally everything that you could possibly imagine going wrong in the production of a film went wrong and then some. In fact, the shit that went down during the making of this masterpiece

is arguably more unbelievable and terrifying than the film itself. Like how? As soon as filming began, a bird flew into a circuit box and started a fire that burned down almost the entire set of the house's interiors. But strangely, the only part of the set that was untouched by this fire was the bedroom, the one used for filming the exorcism scenes. Now this madness was enough to spook the makers of the film into hiring an actual Jesuit priest to bless the set in the hope of preventing any further otherworldly chaos

but it turned out that that priest wasn't priesting quite hard enough because seemingly all his blessings did was just piss Pazuzoo off even more because things only got a whole hell of a lot worse after that a number of people involved with the production or their relatives actually died during filming During the first week, Linda Blair's grandfather died. After the first day, the director's brother died, and the actor playing the Night Watchman,

the crew member responsible for the aircon on the set, and the assistant cameraman's newborn baby, all died too. And if that's not creepy enough for you, how about the fact that a suspected serial killer even appears in The Exorcist? In 1972, Friedkin went to the NYU Radiology Department and watched radiologists carry out a procedure called a cerebral angiogram, which was used to take an x-ray of pictures of the blood vessels inside people's brains. At the time, a cerebral angiogram involved sticking a needle into a patient's artery,

which would then cause blood to spray out. And watching that was disturbing enough to make Friedkin put that exact procedure in his film. He even asked the radiologist and his team to be in the production. This included a young man named Paul Bates. Bateson, a neuro-radiology technologist. Little did Friedkin know when he hired Paul Bateson that Paul Bateson would go on to be dubbed the bag murderer. I've also heard him called the trash bag murderer, or the trash bag killer.

Trash, terrible names. Yeah, it's not great. So in 1977, five years after the release of The Exorcist, the body of a man named Addison Veril was discovered in Bateson's apartment. Ferrell was a film industry journalist for variety and had been beaten and stabbed to death. A few weeks later, Paul Bateson was arrested and made a full confession. At the time of his arrest, the police had been investigating

a series of unsolved murders of gay men in the West Village area of New York, all with a similar MO. The unidentifiable victims had all been chopped up, placed in bags and dumped in the Hudson River. Although we do have to say there was never any hard evidence linking Bateson to the trash bag murders. But a lot of people do suspect that he was responsible. And he at least killed one person.

Yeah. And he's like in the fucking exorcist, like touching the little girl. Mm. Like, ew, no. Freakin actually paid Bateson a visit in prison, and he claimed that Baineson confessed to having murdered numerous other men. Freakin would say that. He would, wouldn't he?

In the end, Bateson was sentenced to 20 years for murder. that he was never convicted of any others. That's despite allegedly being offered a shorter sentence by the police to officially confess to all of the murders. So given the fire, the deaths of people close to the film, the bag murderer, plus countless stories of fainting audience members and rumours that screening the film would haunt the theatre forever. All of this undeniably helped The Exorcist become one of the most successful films in cinematic history.

But, were these things really the work of the devil? Probably not. In fact, a PR agent who worked on the film actually got in touch with Linda Blair years later and the curse took another hit. The agent revealed that because Warner Brothers never believed the Exorcist was going to do well, they had hired her, the PR agent,

to cause a buzz around the movie, using reports of faintings and ambulances parked outside movie theatres. The fire, yes, was an accident, and Bateson was just a piece of shit. As for the deaths, tragic and as spookily timed as they were, they were just coincidental. The next cursed film in our lineup is the 1976 horror classic The Omen. Do you know which cathedral is in the opening shot?

Oh. It might not be the opening shot, but it's the cathedral where they go. No. It's in Guilford. Oh, there you go. Yeah, it's very brutalist and horrible. Anyway. We're not going to say, spoilers, because if you are pissed off that we've ruined a 50-year-old film,

you need to talk to someone that's not me. The film's plot is very straightforward. An American diplomat, played by Gregory Peck, and his wife, Catherine, not played by Gregory Peck, are desperate for a baby, so they decide to adopt one. They end up with little baby Damien, and Damien's nanny hangs herself. Then, around the age of five, Damien pushes his newly pregnant mum off a balcony. More and more people around Damien begin to die in spectacular ways

until his dad finally realizes that he's only gone and adopted the Antichrist complete with a 666 engraved in his little head Yeah I mean Gregory Peck Outstanding actor And the Omen, you know what? It like had its time Yeah It's just when you watch it back now you're like Gregory

I'm like no I'm not being fair Like it is a good film It just hasn't stood the test of time Like I think The Exorcist has No, I think I agree with you, though. How hard is it to kill a planet? Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene. Are we really safe? Is our water safe? You destroyed our town. And crimes like that, they don't just happen. We call things accidents. There is no accident. This was 100% prevent. They're the result of choices by people, ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime. These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet, stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us, and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry. App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices?

Hi, I'm Mr. Ballin, the host of Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries. And each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain. Miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened. And cases so baffling, they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show. Listen to Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. But, scary it is, but it was the madness that took place off camera

that is the real scary stuff. In one of the aforementioned spectacular deaths in the film, a lightning bolt breaks off a spear from the top of the church, which then falls and impales a priest. Coincidentally or not, a year before the film's release in 1975, Gregory Peck's plane was struck by lightning. On its own, that isn't that uncommon. But then, the movie's executive producer, Mac Neufeld's plane, was also struck by lightning just a couple of weeks later.

So what I hear you ask is just a coincidence. But there's more. A plane carrying the movie's writer, David Seltzer, was then also struck by lightning. And while they were filming in Rome, the movie's producer, Harvey Bernhard, just barely missed getting hit by a bolt of lightning too. That's four separate incidents

of lightning strikes involving four different people, all of whom were working on the omen. I heard, and again, I don't know whether this is true or whether it was a very clever PR stunt orchestrated by Mel Gibson. But in The Passion of the Christ, during the filming of that, apparently the actor who played Jesus got struck by lightning three times. Oh, I have watched an episode of River Monsters

where the cameraman gets struck by lightning. Yeah, you feel so sorry for him. He's just standing there, filming Jeremy Wade, like in the water looking for some fish. and then suddenly the camera just drops and then it cuts to like when they found another camera to pick a start filming again

and this poor guy's just like looking days because he just literally got struck by lightning and he just looks a bit like I think I need to go home now so maybe River Monsters is cursed At one point Gregory Peck was meant to be filming an action scene for the Omen but when it was delayed

the private jet that Peck was meant to be on was no longer needed the following day that same jet hit a flock of birds shortly after takeoff and crash killing everyone on board. And this is even weirder. The plane, on its way down, hit a car and killed everyone inside the car.

And who was in that car? The pilot's wife and kids. That's fucking crazy. But then also, it did happen just shortly after takeoff. Did the wife just drop him off at the airport? I know it's horrible. It's horrible, but it's like, is that? Everyone's like, oh my God.

But it's like, she was probably dropping him off. work. It's so sad. And it just gets worse, because at one point, the Omen Special Effects designer, John Richardson and his fiancé Liz Moore, were driving through the Netherlands together when they too were involved in a horrific car crash. Richardson only had some minor injuries, but Moore wasn't so lucky, and that's putting it very mildly because she was decapitated by a tire that smashed through the windscreen. And this has made all the more creepy, because if you've seen The Omen, you'll remember that there is a scene where a character is decapitated by a falling sheet of glass as he's driving. Now listen, car accidents happen all the time.

I know that. I believe you when I hear you screaming at your phone as you listen to this episode. But Richardson and Moore's car crash not only took place on Friday the 13th, 1976, but it also happened right next to a street sign that read 66.6 kilometres to the city of Oman. Allegedly. I have never in my life. Allegedly. In all of my years of driving in many countries in which I have driven.

Have I ever seen a point six kilometers away? Why would you bother? I mean, the only thing I can think is, right, the Americans don't use kilometres. Yes, that's true. So was the sign in miles and somebody's done a quick conversion, which could turn out at a point six. And then they say, it's like the whole Nero thing.

Well, it's like the number of the B six, six, six, six. And then they just like added it up wrong or like did his name wrong. So no, I think there wouldn't have been a sign in kilometers anyway in America. So that's the only thing I can think of. But yeah, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. But if you ask me, the film's cut. And now we've got the 1983 sci-fi horror that is Spielberg's The Twilight Zone. I was going to do the sound

I can hear it in my head I can't do it out loud because I am tone deaf you do it I don't think I don't know what it is it's like I similarly can hear it in my head but I don't want to do it wrong

I need to hear it out loud again oh yeah okay that wasn't what I was hearing in my head but now that makes sense cool anyway whatever it's kind of like a xylophone version of a slowed down

on Jaws the Sharp from Chores. Yes. Quite. So, the 70s were truly the wild west of Hollywood film making, where almost anything went. And directors behaved with almost absolute impunity. Go and listen to our episode on Raw. Oh my God, yeah.

I mean, that was in the 80s, but Twilight Zone came out in the 80s. And yes, Raw would have started production in the 70s. So yes, truly, they were doing whatever the fuck they wanted. There is no doubt about that. And this era did give us some of the greatest films ever made. but when taking risks, as basically all of them did, quite a lot of shit went wrong. Yeah, I feel like we don't need to look at these old and timey spooky films and be like,

oh my God, all these things happen. It's because people were so reckless in the 70s. And they were certainly reckless on the set of the Twilight Zone, which witnessed one of the most tragic accidents in Hollywood history. This one's really sad, actually. The Twilight Zone film is an anthology, so it's four stories. in one film. It was directed by George Miller, Stephen Spielberg, Joe Dante, and John Landis. John Landis's segment was called Time Out. It's a story of a man who hates Jewish, black and Asian

people, who's then forced to live several different lives, one of a black man being hunted by the KKK in 1950s, Alabama, another one being a Jewish man surviving in Nazi-occupied France, and the last one, a Vietnamese man escaping Americans during the Vietnam War. It was during the filming of the Vietnam War segment when the tragedy unfolded. The scene involved the lead actor, Vic Morrow, carrying two child actors being rescued during an air raid as a helicopter flew overhead. Pyrotechnic simulated the explosions. But one of the fireballs accidentally hit the helicopter, which caused it to crash on top of Morrow and the two kids. Renee Shin-Yi Chen and Micah Dyn.

Six-year-old Renee was crushed by the right side of the helicopter, which then turned over and the blade decapitated morrow and seven-year-old Micah. It was horrendous, and it was made especially worse when you learned that the two child actors had been hired illegally and the studio hadn't even been following basic child labour laws. Infuriatingly, none of the directors and producers, or even the studio went to court for this, but huge changes were made to the laws around film safety as a result,

So I guess that's something. Now, a lot of people try to say that this was the result of a curse, but that just cheapens, in my opinion, the tragedy of what really happened. Because in reality, it's caused by the stupidity and criminal negligence of the people that were in charge. Yeah. And now, we've got the scariest of them all. The 1939, fucking hell. 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz.

Oh, my God. I know. When was World War I? 17. I don't know anything about World War I, and I'm keeping it that way. What even happened in World War I? I explained it to you. I refuse to remember. Okay.

A lot of people truly believe that the production of the whimsical, lighthearted, acid trip of a film was cursed. And there are a number of reasons why some of them are true, some of them are false. So we're going to separate fact from fiction for you once and for all. Yes, it is true that there were numerous accidents during filming that almost cost cast members their lives. Two actors, playing The Winged Monkeys, fell from a massive height when their harnesses broke and they almost died. The Wicked Witch of the West stunt double badly burned her leg after a broomstick explosion. This was 1939, let's remember. Special effects were very new and very full of fire, so nothing too creepy just yet. But then, multiple people were hospitalized.

mysterious and sudden illnesses, which has to be the sign of a curse, surely. Well, no, because it was found, and this is just so 30s of them, that the makeup was what had been causing the mysterious illness. They had painted the tin man's face with pure aluminium dust, which led to the original actor being hospitalised for nine days under an oxygen tent and eventually quickly replaced. Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch, got burns from her makeup, which was made from copper.

Just tick some lead on her face while you're at it. I mean, do you know what? They probably fucking did. So that like explains away the whole illness situation. And some of you may be thinking, well, what about the story of the munchkin who hanged himself on set?

Sorry, that's just an urban legend. It is not real. The rumor started because some people think that in the scene where Dorothy, the scarecrow, and the tin man are skipping down the yellow brick road singing, we're off to see the wizard, you can see a figure hanging from a tree in the background. But this figure is likely one of the exotic birds that the producers had borrowed from the LA Zoo, and the rumour only started in 1989 after the 50th anniversary of the film. And it doesn't even really look like a person.

I've seen it. It doesn't even make any sense. No. So, yeah, not true. And another rumour that's probably also untrue is that according to Al Jean Harmets, author of the book The Making of the Wizard of Oz, is that actors playing the Munchkin's molested 16-year-old Judy Garland.

Uh, yeah, probably not true. She didn't like the Munchkin actants. They drank a lot, apparently, and they scared her. But none of the cast or crew ever heard or saw anything, ever heard a whisper about a Munchkin assaulting, Judy. In reality, the most sinister thing about the making of The Wizard of Oz is how Judy Garland was treated by the studio. She was only 16 when she was filming The Wizard of Oz

and the film execs fed her uppers and downers so that she could work incredibly long days and she stayed addicted to drugs her whole life. But even before then, she was suffering from depression and eating disorders and she tried to kill herself a lot of times. Eventually, Judy Garland died of an accidental overdose in 1969, just 47 years old. I didn't know she was that young.

Oh. So, moving on, our penultimate entry is Poltergeist. A film that many people believe is cursed by murderous, restless Indian ghosts. Let's get into it. The film's plot goes as follows. A middle-class family moves into a house in California that's built on top of a Native American burial ground, and ghosts abduct their young daughter.

Now, this young daughter is played by 12-year-old Heather. O'Rourke, who tragically died before completing the second movie after doctors misdiagnosed her with Crohn's disease when what she actually had was intestinal blockage, which is so dangerous. Crohn's is no joke, man. No, Crohn's is no joke, but that's not what was wrong with her. And you can die of an intestinal blockage like so, so quickly. And that's exactly what happened. So then in 1982, the year that the original poltergeist was released, Dominic Dunn, who played

the elder sibling, Dana, was murdered. The 22-year-old had been dating chef John Thomas Sweeney, but she ended things after he started to get violent. After the film's release, Sweeney turned up at Dunn's house, begging for her to take him back, and when she refused, he strangled her to death, and in the end, Sweeney served just three years. O'Rourke and Dun's deaths led to a bizarre urban myth about the swimming pool scene in the film. In this scene, Diane Freeling, the mother of the family, is dragged into a swimming pool by a demonic force. When she tries to escape, the pool suddenly fills with mud and a bunch of human skeletons from the burial ground beneath the house.

According to Jo Beth Williams, the actress playing Diane, these skeletons were not plastic. They were real human bones. That's so much harder. I know. And if you believe the conspiracists, these skeletons were stolen from India, and sold to the production company and it was their angry ghosts that had caused the death and murder of O'Rourke and Dunn.

Regardless, Indian skeletons or not, the case for this film being cursed is quite thin. But finally, we come on to the Crem de la Crem of horrific movie-making tales, a film that both invented and defined a whole genre. The Italian director, Ruggiero Diodonte, made what's been described as the most controversial movie in history.

His 1980s exploitation film, Cannibal Holocaust. Have you seen it? I've seen enough. I haven't seen it. I've seen more than enough. I tried to watch it. It's disgusting. It's horrible.

I don't want to watch it. But I have seen multiple long-form reviews that basically play you everything you need to know. And I know the entire plot line of Cannibal Holocaust. And I also know all the horrible shit I'm about to tell you. So prepare yourselves. Because although Cannibal Holocaust isn't regarded as a cursed for in the supernatural sense of the word,

its very existence cursed the careers of every actor who appeared in it. So its release led to both a national outcry in Italy and diadato being charged with multiple counts of murder. But let's start with the film itself. Cannibal Holocaust tells a story of four documentarians who go missing while investigating a cannibal tribe in the Amazon basin. Their fate is revealed through some discovered spools of tape, revealing the atrocities that they both suffered

and importantly committed and a lot of people say that Cannibal Holocaust is the very first ever found footage film false, not true the first ever found footage film that we know about is the final broadcast it's not Cannibal Holocaust I won't give it to them because this film is fucking trash

so the four missing documentarians made up of three men and a woman are played by Gabriel York Francesca Kiadi Perry Perkikin and Luca Barberesi The footage itself shows intense stomach churning scenes of murder, castration, six real animals being killed, and two, gang rapes. Do you remember when we were on tour and you were like,

do you want to go and get some breakfast? I was in a minute, I'm watching Bloomed on. I was like, okay, I'll just wait then. It was like seven in the morning. Whatever you've got to do, man to get through tour. Yeah. So yeah.

And I love the best bit about that is also that you couldn't get the TV in your room to work. So you were just watching it on your phone. Like, yeah, I'm just, I'll be down for breakfast in a bit. I'm just watching Bone Tomahawk on my phone. You're so weird. It's hilarious. And actually, I tried to re-watch it on my TV at home and it's really boring. So I was just like, what was I doing?

It's not even a good film. That's amazing. That's amazing. So, Bon Tom Ork and Cannibal Holocaust. Not exactly fun for all the family. But in many ways, the making of Cannibal Holocaust was almost as disturbing as the film itself. The budget was just $100,000, so the director led his crew and a group of completely unknown actors into the town of Leticia, Colombia, near the borders of Peru and Brazil.

Filming in the humid and unpredictable conditions of the rainforest, Deodato hired local tribes people to play the cannibals. We don't really know if the locals were aware of exactly what they were taking part in. Actually, it turns out that the Indigenous girl that Diadato used in a gang rape scene was actually only 14 years old in real life. And according to Dea Dada himself, this girl didn't even know what the film was. He just communicated with her via an interpreter that three men would get a bit rough with her, but none of it was real.

And like I said, I've seen some of this particular scene. and the expression on the poor girl's face is definitely one of genuine terror and confusion. Because not only did she not know what this film is, she didn't know what a film was full stop. So like when she's being told, it's just acting. That concept didn't even exist in her mind. So all of the actors taking part in the scene

were against doing it as well. But Diadato insisted. And when Francesca Chiardi, who plays Faye, refused to show her breasts on camera, Diadato led her away from the crew and screamed at her until she cried and gave in. Needless to say, this was not a union gig. Diadato sidestepped a ton of the usual bureaucracy

that would have gone with filmmaking even back then and it allowed him to create something with even more fucked up sequences. Because like we said, the film included real-life animal killings, which is basically the only thing that Diadato has ever copped to saying that it was stupid of him to have done it. And just in case you're wondering, What animals die in this included actors using knives to kill a cotee.

And if you don't know what that is, basically think of the squirrel from Ice Age. Also, a tarantula is killed, a boa constrictor, and two squirrel monkeys. But possibly the worst killings involved the actor, Perry Perkinan, who was forced to decapitate and dismember a live turtle and then remove its entrails. Jesus. And that is in the fucking film. And unsurprisingly, that scene had such a profound effect on Perkinan, that he quit acting altogether

and nobody ever heard from him again after they finished shooting. The film also showed Luca Barberesi shooting a pig in the head with a 22 cannibal rifle at point-blank range, which led to animal rights groups calling him to be murdered. When Cannibal Holocaust was released

on the 7th February 1980 in Milan, it was pulled from screens just 10 days later and Diodata was arrested and charged with obscenity. And it's literally because they couldn't figure out how he had done some other things in the film. So in Cannibal Holocaust, there's like a scene of a woman who's like impaled on a spike and they're like they literally couldn't figure out how he had done that

so they were like yeah murder he must have killed him and in the lead up to the film's premiere Diadato had marketed Cannibal Holocaust as though it were a real snuff film and after a French magazine in 1981 suggested that some of the deaths in the film were real Deerato found himself facing murder charges apparently he'd even included a clause in all of the actors' contracts which prevented them from appearing in any film's commercials

or any media for a whole year after the film's release, so that people would believe they were actually dead. Yeah, it's why he chose four unknown actors. Like Blair Witch. Yeah, and then basically, kind of even forbid them from like going outside the house. Wow. For a while after, so people genuinely thought he's killed these people. This is a fucking snuff film.

So having to backtrack and now prove that the movie wasn't actually real found footage, Diodato and the cast spoke out and demonstrated in court how some of the special effects actually worked. so the murder charges against Diadatta were dropped but he was still sentenced to four months parole along with the cinematographer and producers for animal cruelty many of the cast and crew described Deerata as abusive remorseless and incredibly cruel and the controversy surrounding the film

the murder charges and it being banned in over 50 countries was of course used in its marketing and PR just like all of the cursed films before and after it because whether or not you believe in film curses you can't deny that they make for a much spookier cinema-going experience. Yeah. Not the Cannibal Holocaust is ever getting played in a cinema.

Yeah. Rough stuff. Yeah, but none of them really cursed, it would appear. Apart from the omen, I'm quite convinced by that one. Yeah, there's some bits in there that are like, oh, that's quite strange. But, yeah, I think really all you need to know is that directors have massive God complexes and are constantly on an ego trip, as they will do anything. I mean, if you go and listen to it, I know we've talked about this podcast before,

But it's so good, it deserves another shout-out. Go listen to Inside The Exorcist, Inside Psycho, Inside Jaws. They are Wondry Podcasts. But we were shouting about them before. They're really, really good. And in that, you will get to grips, like, even to a small extent, like the lengths that some of these directors are willing to go to. And also, go listen to our episode, like Hannah said, on Raw.

You don't really need to believe a film is cursed when you've got an ego maniac at the hell. All sorts of crazy shit is going to happen. And if you're William Freakin, you never do anything ever again. It was the only thing you wanted to make. So that's it guys. We hope you enjoyed it and we will be back next time with some more things.

Or will we? Yes, we can trashily obliged to. Bye. It's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Alina Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly. And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy.

The stories we cover are well researched. Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group. With a touch of humor. Shout out to her. Shout out to all my therapists out of years. There's been like eight of them. A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. That motherfucker is not real.

And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tail of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the way back machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes. You should tune in to our podcast. Morbid. Follow Morbid on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad free by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Thank you.