Trivia for
The Frighteners (1996) More at IMDbPro »

• Michael J. Fox repeatedly blew his lines by calling John Astin's character "Doc" - the name of Christopher Lloyd's character in the Back to the Future (1985) movies.
  
  
• The film was not released to theaters in Tasmania. The Port Arthur Massacre rather spookily mirrored the film's content and it happened not long before the film's release. It was released on video and subsequently broadcast.
  
  
• Director Cameo: [Peter Jackson] The bearded and pierced man who Frank bumps into a minute before the ghost of Ray knocks him down. Jackson had to wear the heavy metal outfit (leather jacket, make up and a vast amount of piercings) the entire day of shooting, which was also the day that the studio had invited the media to the set for publicity.
  
  
• CAMEO: Grant Major production designer as Chuck Hughes obituary photo early in the movie.
  
  
• Was originally planned as a "Tales from the Crypt" (1989) feature, but producer Robert Zemeckis liked the script so much, he decided it should stand on its own and not be part of a series.
  
  
• During Ray Lynskey's funeral you can see Frank Bannister's house burning down in the background (not clearly, you can see a large orange blur directly behind Lucy). It was burned by the film crew because they had finished filming there.
  
  
• It was Jeffrey Combs who suggested the Hitler-inspired haircut for his character, to show Milton Dammers extreme sense of nationalism after serving his country for so long. Combs also suggested two ear appliances, which made his ears stick out quite comically, and several of Dammers' chest tattoos.
  
  
• As an inside joke, the black-and-white footage of Johnny Bartlett's trial contains many cameos of crew members on the picture.
  
  
• Trini Alvarado sustained so many bruises working on the film, receiving new ones almost every day, that the make up department would take pictures for future reference.
  
  
• CAMEO: Billy Jackson 3-month-old son of director as a levitated baby.
  
  
• Danny Elfman was so impressed with Peter Jackson's previous movie, Heavenly Creatures (1994), that he offered to do the score for one of Jackson's next movies, and agreed to this movie without even knowing what it was about.
  
  
• Weta Digital Ltd, Peter Jackson's special effects company, had to expand their capacity from 1 to 35 computers in order to meet the visual effects demands for this movie.
  
  
• The 'Russian cannibal creep' referred to by Bartlett is Andrei Chikatilo, really a Ukrainian.
  
  
• "Johnny Bartlett" is named after Velda and Marion Bartlett, the second and third victims of Charles Starkweather, who murdered 11 people throughout Nebraska and Wyoming in 1958, accompanied by his his 15-year-old girlfriend, Caril Fugate, whose precise role in the killings is not known. The story has been dramatized in Badlands (1973) and other movies. In the film, the Johnny Bartlett character names Starkweather as his role model. Strangely, Starkweather and the victims Bartlett are buried together in Wyuka Cemetary, Lincoln, Nebraska.
  
  

• SPOILER: The first name of Patricia Bradley (Dee Wallace) provides a hint to her criminal past, revealed later in the film. She is named after Patricia Hearst, also known as Patty Hearst, a girl who was taken hostage by an urban guerrilla group, then brainwashed into sympathizing with her kidnappers and helping them rob banks.
  
  

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