5 Hokey Movie Plots That Played Out in Real Life
Movies aren’t real life. Why, just the other day, we heard someone saying, “This isn’t a movie! This is real life.”
But now that we think about it, that person was actually a movie character, in a movie we were watching, so maybe movies aren’t that different from reality after all. Which must be why many of the very scenes we roll our eyes at in fiction played out perfectly well for real.
The Murder Game That Wasn’t a Game
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If you’re feeling especially lazy about setting up a mystery you’re writing, you might have your characters play a murder mystery game, which gets interrupted by a real murder. That way, you have an easy excuse for putting a bunch of strangers in a confined location, and you place the viewer into mystery mode without have to take the usual preparatory steps. Bonus points if you later reveal the murder was part of the game after all.
NBC
Of course, in real life, such a game would be the last venue anyone would choose for murder. If, say, a man wants to kill his wife, he will attempt to do so at home, out of earshot of holiday guests, and particularly out of earshot of guests who fancy themselves detectives.
But in 2017, guests aboard a Princess Cruise were engaged in some sort of Sherlock Holmes murder mystery game when they heard the sounds of violence from a nearby cabin. Clearly, those screams were created by the crew for the show, they reasoned. It was “just part of the dramatic effect,” as one player later told the news.
It was actually Kenneth Manzanares murdering his wife Kristy. His immediate motive: She just wouldn’t stop laughing at him. Though the murder game kept some players from reacting to the sounds of the murder, it didn’t stop wiser members of the crew from catching him trying to chuck the body overboard shortly afterward.
Manzanares was sentenced to 30 years and died in prison in 2021, where unconfirmed reports say the inmates wouldn't stop laughing at him.
The Spy Swimming to a Party
Goldfinger opens with our man James Bond popping out of the ocean, wearing a wetsuit. He soon strips off the wetsuit (or drysuit, technically), to reveal he is dressed in full eveningwear underneath, including a white tux. It’s a famous scene, referenced in many other movies, and it’s absurd.
In reality, diplomats do attend parties, and we have no doubt that military operatives sometimes approach targets from the water. But no one would do both during the same mission. If a spy has cause to be at some banquet, the most reasonable point of entry would be the same front door as everyone else, with no snorkel required.
Or so we thought. But it turns out that the Goldfinger scene was inspired by something that happened in real life. During World War II, the Dutch resistance sent spy Peter Tazelaar to infiltrate a party in the seaside resort of Scheveningen. He couldn’t just walk in the front door; this was a Nazi party. Instead, the resistance took him close by in a dinghy, then he swam up close to the Grand Hotel in diving gear.
He now took off the drysuit and entered the party in formalwear, and by approaching from the water, he avoided inspection. The goal here was to exfiltrate two Dutchmen from the hotel so they could join the government-in-exile, in Britain.
An intelligence officer, Paul Dehn, who knew about this operation went on to work as a script doctor, and he was the one who inserted this scene into Goldfinger. But when the movie came out, no one knew Tazelaar had done that for real. That remained under wraps for 40 years more.
Sky Pirates
When a movie throws a bunch of zeppelins in the air, they’re telling you this is a different world. Maybe this is a comic book universe, or maybe it’s an alternate timeline.
Fox
If they really want to get silly, those zeppelins might be the source of all adventure, with pirates firing at each other and boarding like sailors of old.
But we know that zeppelins really were a thing in the 20th century, and on one occasion, pirates from one of them really did descend upon a ship in the North Sea. The year was 1917, and the German airship L 23 dropped bombs around a Norwegian schooner named the Royal. The Royal’s crew abandoned ship, and the crew of the L 23 came down via a rope and claimed the vessel.
via USNI
The Germans claimed the ship and sailed it away. And if the Hindenburg disaster 20 years later didn’t put a pin in this promising industry, zeppelins would be mugging you from above at this very moment.
Drowning in a Chocolate Pool
When we’re really thinking about fanciful scenes, about pure imagination, there’s no greater example than Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. That place — according to all sources we have consulted — doesn’t run the way actual chocolate factories do. “Wonka clearly isn’t following OSHA regulations,” we joke to one another, because no proper factory should let people fall into a chocolate river.
Paramount Pictures
But let’s highlight the unfortunate death of Vincent Smith in 2009. Smith was working at a New Jersey chocolate factory that bore the most generic name of Cocoa Services Inc. He fell into a vat of chocolate measuring eight feet deep. And perhaps he stood a chance of swimming his way out, or eating his way out, but the vat also contained an agitator that swirled around and made short work of him.
So, the only fanciful part of the Wonka version is that, depending on which adaptation you watch, Augustus Gloop survived.
The Butler Did It
A little while ago, we were telling you about the history of the Butler-Did-It trope. It was never really a cliché but rather happened in one mystery novel called The Door, which had the misfortune of coming out after a widely read article declared that servants should never be culprit in mystery stories.
The author of The Door, Mary Roberts Rinehart didn’t suffer terribly hard due to the mockery she received for having the butler do it in that story. She wrote some 35 successful novels total. One mystery play she wrote called The Bat even inspired the creation of the world’s greatest detective — Batman.
Oh, and in 1947, a butler tried to murder her.
Blas Reyes had worked as a butler before. He worked for Rinehart as a cook, and he thought he was going to be promoted to the position of butler in this home as well, but in 1947, he learned that he wouldn't be. His mistress was going with an outside hire instead. So, he pointed a gun at her and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired, saving her life. He turned to another weapon next: a knife, probably from the kitchen he knew so well, but Rinehart’s chauffer now attacked him and saved her.
Since Reyes tried to kill her because she denied his chance to become a butler again, this might be more a case of the not-butler doing it. But that wouldn’t have satisfied S.S. Van Dine, the writer of that widely read article, who said no servant in a mystery must ever wield the murder weapon. For violating that literary rule (and for attempted homicide), Reyes went to prison, where he hanged himself.
So many criminals seem to die in prison right after being sent there. It’s like an author wrote this all and wants to leave no loose ends.
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