All Of The Urban Legends Featured In The Movie 'Urban Legend'
The 1998 Urban Legend movie is an underrated classic, filled with the type of spooky stories kids tell around a campfire, and/or at slumber parties. Each of the kills in the movie is inspired by a famous urban legend, like “The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs.”
Some of the urban legends in the film might be more familiar than others. For example, most people have heard the story of the babysitter who begins receiving threatening phone calls from a strange man. After contacting the police, who trace the call, they discover that the call is coming from inside the house. Each story has its variations and flourishes, while some have much darker endings than others. “The Killer in the Backseat,” “The Kidney Heist,” and “Bloody Mary” are just a few of the other legends touched upon in the film.
The killer in the back seat
In the movie: Pendleton University student Michelle Mancini (Natasha Gregson Wagner) is killed when an unknown intruder decapitates her from the backseat of her car. A gas station attendant (played by Child's Play icon Brad Dourif) tries to warn Michelle, but she thinks he is the one to be worried about, so it just results in a struggle, and the cops arresting him for the murder. Just before the dean gets killed, he checks the backseat of his to make sure no one was there. The killer also tries to murder Natalie and Paul (Jared Leto) the same way, later on in the movie.
The legend: Also known as “High beams,” it is a common tale in the United States and the United Kingdom. It involves a woman driving alone, who notices a strange car or truck driving behind her. The driver will flash high beams at the woman, tailgate her, and sometimes even bump into her car.
When the woman finally gets home, she realizes (too late) that the driver was only trying to warn her that there was someone in the backseat. He flashed the high beams every time the killer sat up to attack the woman, to scare him back into hiding.
The kidney heist
In the movie: Brenda tries to steal Natalie’s kidney in the end of the movie to avenge her boyfriend, the man Natalie and Michelle killed by running off the road. However, she is interrupted, first by campus police officer Reese (Loretta Devine), and then by Paul.
The legend: The legend is about a drugged traveler, who awakens in a bathtub full of ice, and missing his kidneys, after a night out of drinking. Some versions say that traveling businessmen were specifically being targeted and drugged so that their organs could be harvested and sold on the black market. Other versions involve going home with someone you met in a bar, and then waking up with your organ missing.
The legend can be traced as far back as 1991, when a man in Turkey claimed his kidney was stolen at a hospital, but in actuality, he had sold his kidney, and was upset with how much he had been paid for it.
The boyfriend's death
In the movie: While Damon Brooks (Joshua Jackson) attempts to “comfort” Natalie Simon (Alicia Witt) following the death of Michelle, by bringing her out to a bluff in his car. She rejects him, and when he steps out of the car to pee, a figure in a hooded parka attacks him, and hangs him from a tree. The same rope tied to Damon is tied to the car, and he’s hanging right above it, so a frightened Natalie can hear his feet hitting the roof of the car. Thinking it’s the killer climbing on the car, she hits the gas, inadvertently ending Damon’s life faster.
The legend: There are many versions of this, but one of the more popular American ones is that a guy and a girl are at a lovers’ lane-type location, parked under a tree. When they try to leave, the guy realizes the car is out of gas, and leaves to find help. He tells the girlfriend to stay inside until he gets back, no matter what.
Most stories say she stays hiding in the car over night, despite getting freaked out when she heard scratching or tapping on the roof of the car. In the morning, the police arrive, and tell her to get out of the car, but not to look back. At the last minute, she does anyway, and sees her boyfriend has been hung from a tree branch above the car, and was either scratching at the car for help, or his lifeless feet were tapping on the car. Some versions say the boyfriend has been decapitated.
Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?
In the movie: Natalie is used to her goth roommate Tosh Guaneri (Danielle Harris) having loud sexual encounters in their shared room. So when she hears what is actually struggling, she assumes it is another romantic rendezvous, and not puts in her headphones, but she doesn’t even turn on the light. The next morning she finds Tosh has been strangled to death, and that the killer left a message on the wall, written in blood.
The legend: A version of this story dates all the way back to 1871, per Snopes. One of the most common versions features a college student who is out late studying, and returns to her dorm room to pick up something she forgot on her desk. Not wanting to disturb her roommate, she didn’t turn on the lights when she came in. The next time she returns to her room, she finds her roommate dead, and a note written in lipstick (or blood) on the mirror, that said, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?”
Another one has a young woman who lives alone, aside from her dog, who sleeps on the floor beside her bed at night. The woman is woken up by strange sounds in the middle of the night, but reaches down for her dog, who licks her hand. That reassures her, and she goes back to sleep. However, when she wakes up, she finds that her dog has been brutally murdered, and the killer left a note that read, “Humans can lick, too.”
High beams gang initiation
In the movie: Natalie confesses to Brenda Bates (Rebecca Gayheart) that she and her high school friend Michelle (who is killed at the beginning of the movie) were put on probation after causing a fatal car accident with an infamous urban legend. They turned off their headlights, and followed the first driver to flash his lights at them. However, Brenda took it too far, and accidentally ran the young driver off of the road, killing him.
The legend: The legend says that prospective gang members get initiated by driving around with their headlights off at night, and then killing the drivers of cars who flash their headlights at them to help. It seems to date back to the 1980s, when someone said the Hell’s Angels in California were inducting members that way. Some stories say the supposed gang member initiates turn around and run their target’s car off the road, while others say they follow the car, and then shoot the driver.
The legend gained traction in 1993, and quickly spread thanks to the help of e-mail forwards. Some stories say the warnings originated from a D.A.R.E. police officer in Houston, Texas. The story has been told across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and England, and there have actually been a number of times government agencies shared the warning (before quickly retracting it as a hoax).
Bloody Mary
In the movie: “Now what exactly happens when I say Bloody Mary five times?” Brenda asks Natalie. The pair then go stand outside of Stanley Hall at Pendleton University, which is rumored to be haunted, because it was the site of a massacre in 1973. Brenda says it five times, and Natalie once, before they are both pranked by Damon.
The legend: This one is a ritual that must be said in a mirror, preferably in the dark. Some versions require candles, in different numbers and placements. Some involve spinning, and taking a glance at the mirror with each turn. However, they all require chanting someone’s name, whether that be Bloody Mary, Mary Worth, or in other versions, Candyman. You have to say the name into the mirror a certain number of times (three seems most common, but others say five or 13) to summon the entity.
There are also different versions of what occurs when the chanting is complete, and the “mirror witch” appears. Some say she kills the one who spoke her name, while others say that person goes mad, or gets scratched in the face. Sometimes the story even has the witching dragging one of the girls into the mirror with her. Sometimes, Bloody Mary is said to grant wishes, but only after the that person has done her evil bidding.
Murder scream in "Love Rollercoaster"
In the movie: A creepy guy at a party tells Sasha the “fun fact” that the scream in “Love Rollercoaster” was a real woman screaming as she is being murdered. Later, the killer attacks Sasha in the studio, so she sort of enacts the legend because her screams were broadcast over the radio.
The legend: Some versions of this legend say that the scream in the Ohio Players song was sampled from 9-1-1 calls or recordings of patients from an institution. The woman involved varies, with some calling her an unknown victim, others a cleaning lady, a girlfriend of one of the group members, or the model from the cover art of the album featuring “Love Rollercoaster,” Honey.
Other rumors claim a woman was murdered in a building next door to where the band recorded the single, or that one of the band members killed one of his girlfriends in the studio. One of the more outrageous rumors claimed the platform the model from the album cover was sitting on was made from a material that reacted chemically with the honey she posed with, and fused her skin to it. When she pulled herself from the platform, she had ripped the skin off of her legs. So she marched into the recording studio, threatening the band, until their manager killed her in the control room, and that’s how her scream ended on the record. One of the band members, Jimmy “Diamond” Williams, debunked the rumor, saying the screams came from Billy Beck. He acknowledged that people were asking if they “killed a chick in the studio.” However, he said, “The band took a vow of silence because that makes you sell more records."
Pop Rocks and soda
In the movie: Professor Wexler (Robert Englund) asks Brenda to eat Pop Rocks and drink soda at the same time. She refuses, citing the rumor that that’s how Little Mikey died. Damon volunteers to do it, and falls to the ground, foam coming out of his mouth… in a prank. Later, the killer uses this idea (with more dangerous ingredients) when forcing Parker to consume cleaning chemicals.
The legend: Ingesting the combination of Pop Rocks candy and Pepsi (or just soda in general) results in the person’s stomach exploding, and them dying a horrible death, as evidenced by what happened to the kid who played Little Mikey in the famous “Mikey likes it!”Life cereal ads.
However, John Gilchrist, who played “Little Mikey” was still alive (as of 2012), and joked about it, saying, “The folklore is that I ate Pop Rocks, the exploding candies, and I drank a soda, and my stomach blew up.” The rumors were so pervasive that General Foods (maker of Pop Rocks) took out full-page ads in 45 major publications, reached out to school principals across the country, and even sent the inventor of the candy on the road to tell people that the worst Pop Rocks and soda can do is produce a non-fatal burp. The rumors persisted, however, and in 1983, the company stopped marketing the product.
Spider eggs in bubble gum
In the movie: This urban legend is only briefly mentioned in the movie, when Parker is making fun of Natalie for thinking that the urban legend-inspired killing spree was real. He says, “What's next, placing spider eggs in Bubble Yum?”
The legend: This urban legend was said to be started by kids in New York or Chicago, around the late 1970s or early 1980s. Bubble Yum was released in 1976, and before that all bubble gum had been quite hard, and required a lot of chewing to get to a point where you could blow bubbles. Kids started saying that Bubble Yum contained spider eggs, spider legs, or spider webs because it was so soft. The rumors were so bad that the parent company actually spent over $100,000 to battle it, placing full-page ads in newspapers with headlines like, "Somebody is telling very bad lies about a very good product.”
The Babysitter and the man upstairs
In the movie: Professor Wexler tells a version of this urban legend in class, before calling down a volunteer to try out the Pop Rocks and Pepsi legend. His story ends with the police tracing the call not only back to the same house, but specifically to the room the children under the babysitter’s care were sleeping. Brenda insists this actually happened to girl in her hometown. Parker later tells the story again, when he gets a taunting phone call from the killer.
The legend: The gist of this one is that a babysitter receives menacing phone calls while alone with the children, and upon investigation - the police trace the call - realizes the calls are coming from inside the house. There are many variations of the legend, with endings of varying brutality. In some, the babysitter and the kids get saved by the police in time. In others, the children are dead, but the babysitter is saved. In the bleakest versions, the babysitter and the children die.
What the killer says on the phone also varies, from just laughing maniacally to making threats, and asking the question, “Have you checked the children?” There are also versions where there are two babysitters, and one goes upstairs to check the children. The other one goes to call for her, after learning where the taunting calls originated, but sees she's already been attacked, and is trying to crawl her way down the stairs to warn her.
Slasher under the car
In the movie: This is how the villain kills the dean of the college, hiding under his car, and then slashing his Achilles tendon. When Dean Adams (John Neville) tries to crawl away, he gets run over by his own car, and impaled by a row of tire spikes.
The legend: This legend most often is set in a shopping mall parking lot. The protagonist is always a woman, and the antagonist is always male, whether a thief, murderer, and/or rapist. The story goes that men hide under women’s cars, and when they arrive back, arms full of shopping bags, the perpetrator slashes their ankles so the women can’t run away. In most versions, the man steals the woman's purse and drives off in her car, though some tellings end in murder.
In some variations, the culprit is a teen or a gang member trying to become initiated. The storyteller often says that this happens so frequently that they could never cover each one, to explain why the attacks are not being reported in mainstream media. This legend apparently dates back to the 1950s, but has persisted for decades. In 1991, Chicago police set up a hotline so worried citizens could get the facts, and they received one 400 calls in the first four days alone.
Old lady dries dog in microwave
In the movie: When Parker gets a taunting phone call during his party, he thinks he knows what they're going to say, and starts talking about the urban legend where “the call is coming from inside the house.” Unfortunately that was the “wrong legend,” as the killer explains, “This is the one about the old lady who dries her wet dog in the microwave.” Parker runs downstairs and opens the microwave to find the bloody remains of his beloved dog, Hootie.
The legend: The legend starts out weird enough, claiming an old lady uses her oven to dry off her wet dog or cat after walking in the rain. Her son or daughter buys her a microwave oven, which is unfamiliar technology to the old woman, and when she puts her pet into it to dry it off, the poor thing dies (and in more grisly versions, explodes).
Variances of the urban legend feature different pets, like parakeets or guinea pigs, and different ways in which the animal got wet (from a bath, getting caught in the rain, etc.). The microwave version has been around since at least 1976, but there’s an even older tale (with a wood-burning oven) that dates back to 1942.
The original publication of this article is on Ranker.
