With the unexpected success of Paranormal Activity, it’s not surprising that publicists for The Fourth Kind, which opens this weekend, are pushing the angle that “it really happened!” in their marketing campaign.
But this isn’t the first fantasy or sci-fi-themed project that’s acted as if its story was real.
The Blair Witch Project may be the most well-known, with its infamous (and wildly successful) pre-release viral campaign that had people wondering if maybe it really had all happened.
But there are plenty of other examples.
(And by the way, no, Cloverfield isn’t one of them. Like Blair Witch, it may have been filmed with hand-held cameras, but as far as I know, no one ever claimed or believed that a giant monster had destroyed New York City!)
The Saga of Darren Shan: Okay, so last month’s The Vampire’s Assistant turned out to be a complete bust, but it was based on the first three books in this teen series, written by Darren Shan. The main character in the books? Darren Shan, who claims the events that turned him into a vampire actually happened. By the end of the series, we learn exactly how he ended up human again: “Darren Shan,” the character, goes back in time to stop the younger version of himself from getting involved with vampires in the first place. His older “vampire” self then gives his “diaries” away (which are later published by his other self) and goes off to die.
Shadow of the Vampire: This 2000 movie has a clever premise: the star of the classic 1922 vampire film Nosferatu (an “unauthorized” adaptation of Dracula, and the source for the idea that vampires are killed by sunlight) was an actual, if disgruntled vampire. The cast and crew are told he’s a method actor who they will only ever see in full costume and make-up — and the vampire himself has only agreed to be in the film in exchange for the life of the leading lady, which the director has promised him if he finishes the movie. The film, which is only so-so, does such an amazing job matching certain scenes with the existing classic movie that you can’t help but wonder, “Hmmm.”
Almost Every Ghost or Exorcism Movie Ever Made: The Amityville Horror and Exorcist were both huge successes, and they both shouted at the top of their lungs that they were “based on a true story!” How true? How closely-based? Well, let’s not quibble over unimportant details, but rather point out that many, many ghost and/or exorcism stories since then have made the same claim: The Entity, A Haunting in Connecticut, Audrey Rose, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, An American Haunting, and on and on and on!
Communion: A True Story: Why would anyone possibly believe it when an established speculative fiction author writes a book like the 1987 novel memoir Communion: A True Story, in which the novelist author is the main character and he claims he was contacted by alien “visitors”? Uh, because they want to believe? To novelist author Whitney Strieber’s credit, he doesn’t claim they were “aliens” per se; he even allows they may have only existed in his mind. I guess that’s something.
The War of the Worlds: Two things made listeners believe that Orson Welles’ dramatic 1938 radio production of H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds was a real radio news broadcast: the fact that the hour-long production ran without commercial breaks, and that it was presented as a series of actual news bulletins. The widespread “panic” may have been overstated at the time by headline-hungry newspapers, but it’s undeniable that plenty of listeners were confused as to what they were really hearing. In any event, it made Welles a star.
Deadpool: Well, hey, this superhero’s catchphrase is “Breaking down the fourth wall brick by brick!” He’s definitely aware that he’s a character in comic book — aware of the yellow boxes of text, and even of things that happen in the “real” world outside of the comic book (or in other comic books), things that his character couldn’t possibly know about. Okay, so this doesn’t mean he’s “real” — it’s more that he might be insane — and it isn’t exactly what we’re talking about here. But it’s still really cool!
Gothic: How incredibly fantastic is it that the poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley and Shelley’s wife Mary were all friends? And how cool is it that in the rainy summer of 1816, forced to spend time indoors, they decided to entertain each other by telling ghost stories? The end result was the Mary Shelley classic Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus and The Vampyre, co-written by Byron and his doctor, John Polidori, considered the first actual work of “vampire” literature. The 1986 Ken Russell movie Gothic (again, just so-so) adds some visual panache to their stories, which is necessary (I suppose) for film. But the idea that Frankenstein and vampire stories were both born among the same people over the same few days? You can’t make that story any cooler than it already is!
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