[Music]
hello internets welcome to film theory
the show that believes we have nothing
to fear but fear itself
well that and D monetization now as
anyone who's ever watched me play a
horror game can tell you I'm a pretty
big scaredy cat but here's the thing
I'll get startled for a moment but it's
pretty rare that horror movies stick
with me and keep me from getting sleep
at night because 99% of the time I can
just rationalize that it's a movie sure
great white sharks or genetically
mutated great white sharks or
prehistoric super great white sharks are
scary in the moment but their movies are
works of complete fiction and while you
certainly got some slasher movies based
on real-life serial killers I deal with
psychotic people all the time my job is
on the internet after all boom ching
know what's really unnerving to me is
that little voice in the back of your
head that says that supernatural
phenomena might actually be true which
is why the conjuring movies tend to be
so terrifying because not only are these
films well shot psychological horror
pieces but because they claim to be
retellings of real events if you're not
familiar the conjuring universe includes
two main series titles about haunted
houses and demonic possessions
- Annabelle movies about a doll that's
haunted because I mean just look at the
thing and now the nun which is about a
demonic nun whose eyes seem to indicate
an advanced case of jaundice well the
truth about the Annabelle movie should
be taken with a grain of salt and the
nun should be taken with like a kilo of
salt the conjuring and its sequel are
actually pretty interesting
you see Edie and Lorraine Warren the
main characters are the real names of
the real ghost hunters who claim these
are real cases where these things really
happened and that got me thinking about
two things number one that I don't have
nearly enough holy water in my house and
number two just how true are these ghost
stories I mean these movies are creepy
as all get-out and you're telling me
they're real how worried do I actually
need to be are they real insofar as ed
and Lorraine claimed these to be true
stories are they actually supported by
real evidence
are they true stories or are they true
stories so today not only do I want to
explore
the conjuring gets but also how true a
story needs to be for it to claim that
it's based on a true story so turn off
the lights and don't turn around to see
that shadow crawling up behind because
today we're looking for the scariest
thing of all becomes possessed by the
key this is the story of the first
conjuring but how much of that is real
well for starters Ed and Lorraine Warren
were really the top demonologist and
medium duo of the era can't really
imagine how many people were actively
competing with them for that title but
regardless they had a laundry list of
famous paranormal investigations under
their belts including ones that inspired
movies not in the conjuring franchise
like The Amityville Horror and Haunting
in Connecticut one of those cases was
indeed a spirit named Bathsheba haunting
the Perrin family whose names weren't
changed for the film in interviews
Andrea Perrin the oldest child did say
that the movie captured the essence of
what they were going through she's been
upfront about witnessing her mother's
exorcism and has gone on record to say I
thought I was going to pass out my
mother began to speak a language not of
this world
in a voice not her own her chair
levitated and she was thrown across the
room whoever the spirit was she
perceived herself to be a mistress of
this house and she resented the
competition my mother posed for that
position
the father Roger had similar things to
say she was possessed her entire body
was distorted and it lasted several
hours and
demonized her now of course those are
just interviews it's easy enough for
people to lie the Bathsheba bit on the
other hand gives us something to work
with according to Andrew Perrin mrs.
Warren came into the house knowing
nothing she stepped into the kitchen and
said I feel a dark presence and her name
is Betty this is where fact and fiction
get tough to distinguish I did some more
digging and in the area where the Perrin
family lived there definitely was a
woman named Bathsheba Sherman who lived
there in the mid 19th century but it
doesn't appear that she lived in the
same house as the parents and there's
definitely no hard evidence that she was
a witch it appears that three out of her
four children died young but this was
also a time when agitated babies were
prescribed gin and opium to help him
calm down so suffice it to say that
losing a few kids in the 1800s wasn't
exactly proof of witchcraft
apparently the rumors of Bathsheba's
witchcraft started when an infant
mysteriously died in her care killed by
a large sewing needle that was impaled
into the base of the skull but there are
no records of any charges against
Bathsheba that actually stuck it's
unclear how seriously people took these
rumors considering she was buried in the
town cemetery next to the graves of her
children which doesn't seem like
something a Christian community would do
for someone who was thought to be a
Satanist that said for Lorraine Warren
to walk into the house and come up with
the name Bathsheba is interesting and
awfully specific until you consider that
the Warrens were brought on to the case
in the first place by a local paranormal
group meaning that they very well could
have been fed the local legend before
meeting the parents so overall the
people the place in the details of the
haunting appear to be real even if the
actual ghosts in witches might not be
you would expect the sequels and
spin-offs of the conjuring to have much
less basis in real events but that
doesn't seem to be the case the
conjuring 2 is based off the Enfield
poltergeist case in England in the 1970s
which again the Warren's investigated in
this one
Janet Hodgson the second oldest of four
children finds herself possessed by the
spirit of an elderly man bill Wilkins
who states that he wants to reclaim his
home
Jannetty all right
miss Bell welcome and I'm 72 yes oh and
unlike in the first conjuring that isn't
just a scene from the movie but real
life the BBC made a documentary about
the alleged haunting and investigators
have lots of audio of 11 year old Janet
Hodgson sounding more like a hundred
year old coal miner who smokes like a
chimney
is anybody there no it takes a while but
listen long enough and she eventually
identifies herself as an old man named
bill Wilkins who died of a brain
hemorrhage in a very specific chair in
the house this is a nice story made up
by the kid right well maybe until you
consider that bill Wilkins son Terry
listened to the recordings and
identified the voice as sounding very
much like his father's and that the
cause and place of the death were
correct and if that wasn't creepy enough
the events that caused the Warrens to
get involved in the first place are
pretty irrefutable in both the movie and
in real life a police woman gets called
to the hodgson home in the 70s and says
that she saw chairs sliding across the
floor going so far as to sign an
official affidavit to say as much most
of the time these ghost stories it's the
family who has something to gain by
lying it's hard to say how a third party
police officer called in to investigate
would benefit from doing something like
that over a period of the next 18 months
more than 30 people including neighbors
psychic researchers and journalists said
that they saw heavy furniture moving on
its own accord and objects being thrown
across the room now if you'll excuse me
I'm just gonna turn all the lights on in
the house and grab myself a crucifix or
five and that's gonna be a big heaping
helping a nope no no no no go when it
comes to Annabelle and Annabelle
creation these movies are based on a
real spooky dowel that the Warrens
investigated before the events of the
conjuring movies according to the
demonologist a book that chronicled
cases taken by Ed and Lorraine Warren
the Annabelle doll had been a gift but
began to move on its own
written notes and move objects around
the room the dowel itself is even under
glass at the Warrens occult Museum in
Connecticut's still haunts to this very
day multiple visitors who've broken the
warning of don't touch the glass and
taunted the doll have had horrific
traffic accidents happen to them as they
drive home but don't worry that draught
you feel going up your spine isn't from
the dowel it's from the cold hard
rejection the local news guy gets when
he asks his co-anchor to go see the doll
with him maybe next time you can go to
the museum with me and we can no no no
absolutely not sure if there is enough
money in the world that is one cold
shoulder now it's pretty clear that the
one thing all these movies have in
common is that the way that their
stories resolve themselves isn't quite
reality the parens apparently continue
to live in their farmhouse with spirits
in the basement for over a decade
Janet's possession by Bill Wilkins was
investigated countless times with the
ultimate conclusion being that the whole
Enfield poltergeist was a combination of
some simple furniture pranks and girls
talented in ventriloquism real-life
doesn't wrap up into neat little
packages the way the movies do but the
facts of the cases the people involved
and the events described even if they
were hoaxes are all mostly what happened
so at this point here's my question is
that enough to call these trees stories
I mean we have explicit laws in place
that outright prevent false advertising
is there a threshold for how much truth
has to be in a work of fiction before
you can call it true or at the very
least based on a true story well let's
consider a couple of cases another
horror movie The Strangers also claimed
to be inspired by true events the story
is about three masked home intruders who
show up at a house and proceeded to
torture the family there for no reason
and what was the truth behind that one
the screenwriter once got a knock on his
door from some stranger's who were
committing robberies in the neighborhood
that's it and then there's the opening
text from the Blair Witch Project in
Fargo two movies that flat out state
that the events that you're about to see
are either real or recreations of what
really happened so what were the true
stories behind both of those two films
nothing not a zip bupkis both of those
stories were in
hi early made up the movies said they
were real and they totally got away with
it
although it should be mentioned that
tons of people were fooled into thinking
that the Blair Witch Project was
completely true huh the 90s when people
assumed that what they saw on the
Internet was real oh wait they still do
that today
so how movie is able to get away with
this well most advertising statutes in
the u.s. are regulated by the Federal
Trade Commission but most of those rules
are predicated on ensuring that products
don't make misleading health claims or
misrepresent what the consumer is gonna
tangibly receive movies don't apply to
either of those even if they did the
Federal Trade Commission doesn't do that
great of a job of enforcing these
statutes like say when Apple was
advertising their iPhone 3G as twice as
fast half the price but neither of those
things were true when people sued for
the ads being misleading Apple's
response was shocked that consumers
would actually believe their claims
quote plaintiffs claims are barred by
the fact that the alleged deceptive
statements were such that no reasonable
person in plaintiffs position could have
reasonably relied on or misunderstood
Apple's statements as claims of fact yep
there was no way I could have
misconstrued those giant words in all
caps as being factual statements about
your new product in an episode about
poltergeists and hauntings I swear the
scariest thing in it is what would breed
so anyway movies can say they're true
completely lie and be ignored by the law
but here's the twist movies that are
only partially true are actually much
more vulnerable to lawsuits this is
mostly because fictional characters and
their fictional families can't sue you
but the real people you portray in your
film just mine for example in the denzel
washington biopic the hurricane in which
a championship boxing contender is
wrongfully convicted of murder
Washington's character hurricane Carter
fights another boxer named joey
giardello in the movie hurricane Carter
beats up Jared ello but loses the fight
because the judges were prejudiced
against him because he was black this
didn't sit very well with the real joey
giardello who was still alive and
litigious when the movie came out in
1999 he sued the makers of the movie for
portraying him as incompetent and
damaging his legacy with the judge from
the fight calling the film's depiction
of Jared ello as ludicrous he reached a
settlement with the producers out of
court and
and behold the DVD commentary includes
the director outright saying that
giardello was no doubt a great fighter
even the conjuring franchise has gotten
into some hot legal water not because of
how true the movies were or weren't but
because the author of the demonologist
gerald brittle owned the rights to the
war in stories he sued Warner Brothers
for nearly a billion dollars citing
copyright infringement so how did WB get
out of the lawsuit by claiming fair use
of the plots given that they were based
on historical fact
in other words Warner Brothers legal
case rested on the stories of ghosts
possessions and haunted dolls to be so
true they could not legally be
copyrighted and best of all they won
which tells us two pretty shocking
things first that legally you're in a
better position to make up total BS and
then call it the truth in your marketing
then you are to just base your story on
true events and run the risk of someone
suing you and - in the eyes of the
criminal justice system ghosts witches
and demonic possessions are all in the
realm of historical fact but hey that's
just a theory
a spooky theory and make sure you
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essentia and happy early Halloween I'll
try to fit in one more scary theory for
the months out