1. Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd starred in the 1973 horror film, Satan’s School for Girls before they worked together as Charlie’s Angels.

2. David Copperfield, the magician and ex-beau of supermodel Claudia Schiffer, appeared in Terror Train along with scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis.

3. Prana Films, the company that produced the 1922 silent film horror classic, Nosferatu, declared bankruptcy after the film’s release to avoid paying copyright infringement costs to Florence Stoker, the irate widow of deceased Dracula novelist, Bram Stoker.

4. Wes Craven, the director of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, says that Freddy Krueger was named after a kid who bullied him in school. His appearance was based on a hobo who scared the horror master when he was a child.

5. The original title of Hellraiser, horror writer Clive Barker’s directorial debut, was Sadomasochists from Beyond the Grave.

6. Daria Nicolodi was Dario Argento’s long-time partner. She collaborated with him on a number of his films including the classics Deep Red: The Hatchet Murders and Suspiria. She is also the mother of Asia Argento.

7. John Landis directed An American Werewolf in London. He wrote the screenplay for the film when he was only 19. He would go on to direct one of the most famous - and expensive - music videos of all time, Michael Jackson ’s Thriller.

8. The apartment on Prospect Avenue in Washington, D.C. where many of the scenes of The Exorcist were filmed, was once inhabited by William Peter Blatty, the author of the novel on which the film was based. He lived there while a student at Georgetown University.

9. Linda Hamilton was moonlighting during her stint as Vicki in Children of the Corn. She was working on The Terminator at the same time.

10. The fake blood used in the original Dawn of the Dead was created from a mixture of food coloring, peanut butter and cane sugar syrup.

11. The house used in Rob Zombie’s House of 1,000 Corpses was the same house used in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

12. Leatherface, the terrifying character from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre films, is based on a real-life serial killer, Ed Gein. Gein liked to dress up in the skin of his victims. This habit also inspired Thomas Harris, the writer of The Silence of the Lambs. His Buffalo Bill character did the same thing.

13. Cary Elwes, who starred as Larry, an unwitting player in the Jigsaw puzzle killer’s game from the 2004 film, Saw, has played a serial killer himself. He was Ted Bundy in The Green River Killer and the unlikely murderer in Kiss the Girls with Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman.

14. Sigourney Weaver was nominated for an academy award as Best Actress - her first nomination - for her portrayal of Ellen Ripley in the 1986 sci-fi / horror classic, Aliens, the sequel of the 1979 original Alien.

15. Charles Lee Ray, the name given to the maniacal killer whose soul comes to inhabit a doll we all know better as Chucky, from the Child’s Play movies, is a combination of three horrifying - and real-life murderers. “Charles” comes from Charles Manson, “Lee” from Lee Harvey Oswald and “Ray” from James Earl Ray.

16. Stephen King supposedly wrote the part of Amanda in Cat’s Eye with Drew Barrymore in mind. She was a family friend of the King’s who loved cats. Drew once said that, ‘at night, Stephen would tell the best scary stories ever’.

17. Adrienne Barbeau was married to horror master, John Carpenter, from 1979-1984. She appeared in The Fog, Escape from New York, Someone’s Watching Me and Creepshow during that time.

18. Johnny Depp and Patricia Arquette both appeared in Nightmare on Elm Street films. Depp was Glen in the original Elm Street and Patricia, sister of Rosanna, David and Alexis, starred in the 3rd installment, which is also known as Dream Warriors.

19. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a silent film created in Germany during the tail end of World War I (1919). It is credited as the first modern-horror movie.

20. In the year 2000, the Library of Congress in the United States declared the 1928 horror film, Fall of the House of Usher, which is based on the Edgar Allen Poe story of the same name, as ‘culturally significant’. It was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

21. Mario Bava, the director of the 1960 horror classic, Black Sunday (La Maschera del Demonio) is the father of Lamberto Bava, who directed the Demons´ films. He also worked with Dario Argento on his 1980 film, Inferno.

22. Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t have to audition for her role as Kim Hammond in Prom Night (1980). She won the role based on her previous horror film work which included Halloween, Terror Train and The Fog.

23. In Psycho the 1960 film starring Jamie Lee Curtis’ mama, Janet Leigh, chocolate sauce was used to simulate the blood in the shower scene. Hitchcock stabbed a melon with a knife to create the slashing sounds.

24. Little Shop of Horrors (1960) is the fastest film ever shot. Roger B. Corman, a producer behind a multitude of B-movie classics, used the camera himself. Each scene was shot in one take. Filming was completed in two days and one night.

25. Poltergeist was directed by Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), not Steven Spielberg. Spielberg was a producer of the film, however.

Hostel, the second feature film from Director/ Writer Eli Roth, is a gore-heavy, sex-filled ultra violent opus that follows two American college students and their new European friend on a backpacking trip across Europe.

The film begins in Amsterdam, where the guys party, dance, and engage in more than a few activities that are illegal in America and most parts of of the world. Eventually the three friends decide to go to Slovakia in search of making out with some attractive girls. They find what they were looking for at a particular Hostel, but they also find something they weren’t looking for … Death.

I absolutely love Cabin Fever, the other film that Eli Roth directed, so I was really looking forward to Hostel. I had read plenty about the movie, and I had a vague idea of what to expect when I walked into the theater, but for the most part I had no idea what it was going to be, I just assumed it was going to be good. I mean, with both Roth and Quentin Tarantino working together, it has to be great, right? Well, not completely …

One of the main complaints that people have about this movie is the amount of sex and violence in it. Well, to be rather frank, neither of those two things happen to bother me in the slightest. I am a large horror buff, and I’ve seen plenty of gore and sex on celluloid. What bothers me is not the nudity or gore, it’s the lack of real direction and pacing that bugs me.

The first half of Hostel consists of three very annoying frat boys getting high and having sex. The characters in Cabin Fever were pretty annoying too, but the movie was more about characterization, and the pacing was not extremely slow in that film. In Hostel, you really just don’t care about what is going on during the first forty five minutes or so. It isn’t until things start to get violent that the movie really takes off.

And I must say, there is some mighty gruesome gore here. If you are very squeamish, I recommend staying away from this film. I’m a fan of this kind of thing, but I know this just goes past what a lot of people can tolerate. The violent half of the film is the really good part, so if you are not fond of violence, you are unlikely to appreciate this film at all.

As soon as the violence starts, the acting gets better, the cinematography gets sharper, and the overall essence of the film becomes far more serious and ominous. Fans of horror will certainly love the second half of the movie, but I have my doubts about whether or not the average viewer would appreciate it.

All in all, Hostel is a good film. But the first half of it is very tedious, and it most definitely takes away from what could have been an amazing film. If you’re looking for some sex and violence, this is your film, but if you’re looking for much else, I recommend you pick up a copy of the director’s first film.

Let me know what you think of this movie by adding your comment below.