American Horror Stories, Season 1, Episode 3, "Drive In," explores the notion of "cursed horror movies," films with a reputation for real-life tragedy interwoven with their fictional scares. Sometimes, this entails a troubled production or inexplicable things that happened to the cast and crew, while in other instances, it concerns the circumstances of the story itself and supposedly factual horrors lying behind all the make-believe. But whatever the cause, they give the film a reputation for being cursed.

Horror movies aren’t the only ones with a cursed reputation, but no other genre leans into that reputation quite so fiercely. Horror, in general, delights in blurring the lines between fact and fiction, akin to old campfire stories that supposedly "really took place." In fact, some of the greatest horror movies ever made carried the “cursed” label, though typically for far more mundane and explainable reasons than “Drive-In” delivers. But fans of American Horror Stories may still be interested in delving into some after watching the show's third entry, so here's a list of some of the most notable cursed horror movies.

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Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary’s Baby was the crowning achievement of legendary B-movie producer William Castle -- granting him artistic legitimacy after a career in the grindhouse -- and a staple of the horror canon for over 50 years. The cast and crew, however, subsequently suffered a series of tragedies. Star Mia Farrow’s husband Frank Sinatra divorced her after she refused to abandon the production, and Ira Levin, who wrote the novel on which the film is based, also witnessed the end of his marriage when the film was being produced. Composer Krzysztof Komeda suffered an accident several months after the film was released, eventually dying from his injuries. Castle himself was even hospitalized with kidney stones in 1969 and claimed he hallucinated Farrow’s character chasing him with a knife during his stay. Most horribly, though, was director Roman Polanski, whose wife Sharon Tate and unborn child were murdered by the Manson family in 1969.

The Exorcist (1973)

Regan talking to one of the priests from her bed

Many of the films on this list deal with Satan or the Devil, which makes it easier for people to associate them with real-life curses. The Exorcist was no exception, and much of the film’s furor entails the horrifying reactions to viewers seeing it for the first time. The film muddied the waters from the start with William Peter Blatty’s novel, which purportedly came from an actual case in which Jesuit priests performed an exorcism on a young boy. A fire destroyed the set of the film but mysteriously left Regan MacNeil’s room -- where the climactic exorcism took place -- untouched. And that wasn’t the end of on-set troubles, either. Both Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair were hurt during the production, suffering lingering injuries in the process, and actors Jack MacGowran, and Vasiliki Maliaros both died while the film was being completed. Though there was nothing unusual about the circumstances of their death -- MacGowran passed from influenza, Maliaros from natural causes at the age of 89 -- both played characters who died in the movie.

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The Omen (1976)

Like Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, The Omen concerned the birth of Satan and the arrival of Armageddon. And like Rosemary’s Baby, the filmmakers suffered a series of bizarre and sometimes tragic circumstances. Actor Gregory Peck’s son committed suicide shortly before shooting was scheduled to begin, and while Peck and producer Marc Neufeld were traveling by air -- separately, on different flights weeks apart -- their planes were struck by lightning. The film itself was troubled by accidents as well, including an incident where an animal handler brought in to wrangle a band of baboons was mauled to death by a tiger immediately after completing the shoot. The real reason for the film’s cursed reputation, however, was a car accident that claimed the life of effects artist John Richardson and his assistant Liz Moore that was eerily similar to a gruesome scene Richardson had worked on for the film.

Poltergeist (1982)

Poster for the original Poltergeist

Poltergeist doesn’t have a long list of strange occurrences like The Omen, but its cursed reputation stems from a pair of tragic incidents that took the life of two of its young stars. Heather O’Rourke, who played the series’ signature character Carol Anne, died at the age of 12 due to a congenital issue with her digestive tract, while Dominique Dunne, who played her older sister Dana in the first film, was murdered by her boyfriend when she was 22. Their comparative youth drew parallels to the film’s story -- which involved supernatural forces menacing Carol Anne -- and led to untrue claims, such as the film’s finale being shot with real skeletons.

The Crow (1994)

Brandon Lee from The Crow

The Crow was marred by the shocking death of star Brandon Lee in an on-set accident that cut his life short at the age of 28. And the incident matched the specifics of the film's plot a little too closely -- Lee played a murdered musician who returns from the dead to seek revenge on his killers -- and the whispers of a curse inevitably followed. Beyond the tragedy itself, the film’s reputation ties into a larger urban legend surrounding Lee’s legendary father Bruce that suggests that some kind of family curse killed both men. There’s no evidence to support such a rumor, though, and Bruce’s widow Linda Lee Cadwell maintains that both of their deaths were accidental and coincidental.

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