Over the years, many films have been branded with an unfortunate label: that of a "cursed movie."

The nature of these films can differ hugely – ranging from horror movies that seem to be possessed by something sinister to projects that never managed to get off the ground at all – but each of them are linked by some kind of series of bizarre coincidences or tragic events.

This week, we're taking a look at just some of the Hollywood films that have been described in such terms – read on for our list.

1. The Exorcist

It's a well-known fact that William Friedkin's The Exorcist was seen as a major horror landmark when the film was first released in 1973 – breaking box office records, prompting mass hysteria, and even facing calls for censorship.

But all that came after a production period which was incredibly fraught and – given the subject matter of the film – led some to believe that the movie may have been cursed (although others have dismissed this as a marketing stunt).

Filming took more than twice as long as had originally been scheduled, with numerous crew members injured on set and a handful of other bizarre incidents pausing production.

One of those occurred when a fire was started after a bird flew into a circuit breaker, with only Regan's room left unscathed – causing a six-week delay. Meanwhile, another issue came when a 10-foot statue of Pazuzu was shipped to Hong Kong instead of Iraq, resulting in two more lost weeks.

Stars Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair also both suffered injuries on set, the former fracturing her coccyx – which later caused her chronic back problems – and the latter fracturing her lower spine due to being too loosely strapped to the rocking bed in an iconic scene from the film.

Furthermore, two cast members – Jack MacGowran and Vasiliki Maliaros – sadly died shortly after completing their scenes and before the film was released, while three crew members also passed away during the shoot.

Speaking to the magazine Castle of Frankenstein, Friedkin acknowledged that the various problems had led him to question whether something sinister was going on.

"I'm not a convert to the occult but after all I've seen on this film, I definitely believe in demonic possession ... We were plagued by strange and sinister things from the beginning!"

The various delays meant the budget skyrocketed to almost three times its initial size – so it's a good job the film became such a box office sensation and managed to make a huge profit nonetheless.

2. The Exorcist II: Heretic

But that wasn't where talk of an Exorcist curse ended. The sequel – helmed by Point Blank and Deliverance director John Boorman and released four years later in 1977 – faced similar production issues, and this time didn't have the benefit of becoming a critical and commercial hit.

The endless production woes were recently detailed in a new documentary titled Boorman and the Devil, and included the heavy drinking of star Richard Burton and a near-death experience for Boorman.

The latter caught a respiratory disease known as Valley Fever from dirt which had been imported to create an arid landscape on a Californian soundstage, with production shut down for five weeks after he was hospitalised.

Meanwhile, Lee J Cobb – who was set to reprise his role as Lt Kinderman from the original – died before production began, while stars Kitty Winn and Louise Fletcher both suffered from gallbladder-related health issues.

Despite rumours of another cursed production, Boorman was less inclined than Friedkin to play up to these reports, as filmmaker David Kittredge explained during a recent interview about the aforementioned documentary.

"Boorman just shoots it down. It’s like 'No, we just had a very long shoot, and stuff happens,'" he said. "Certainly when I asked the other people, nobody seemed to think there was a curse."

Still, what were the chances that films would be so plagued by issues? It's certainly bad luck!

3. The Omen

Another iconic staple of 1970s horror, Richard Donner's demonic classic is another example of a film which had production issues that eerily matched up with the sinister themes of the film.

Perhaps the most spooky – and tragic – incident concerned the death of John Richardson, who had been keen for the film to feature a scene in which a character was decapitated during a car crash.

While in Holland with his assistant in August 1976, both Richardson and his assistant Liz Moore died in a fatal head-on-collision, with Moore's body being split in two in a manner not dissimilar to the aforementioned death Richardson had designed for the film.

What made the matter all the more eerie is that it occurred on Friday 13th, while rumours circulated that it took place nearby a road sign reading "Ommen, 66.6 km" – although this part appears to be urban legend rather than established fact.

There were other, less tragic, incidents and coincidences too. Star Gregory Peck, producer Mace Neufeld and writer David Seltzer separately travelled in planes that were struck by lightning during production, while another producer Harvey Bernhard only narrowly escaped being struck by lightning while filming in Rome.

Other incidents included an IRA bombing of the hotel where Neufeld and his wife had been staying, the death of a tiger wrangler in a freak accident and the crash of a plane that had initially been hired for the production, killing all on board.

He added: "The devil was at work and he didn't want that film made. We were dealing in areas we didn't know about and later on in the picture it got worse, worse and worse."

4. Poltergeist

Perhaps one of the most frequently cited "cursed" movies is the 1982 supernatural classic Poltergeist, with the curse in question extending to the franchise as a whole rather than just the first film.

The curse relates to the fact that a prominent cast member from each of the first three films – released within six years of each other in the 1980s – died shortly after filming on the respective movies.

Dominique Dunne – who played eldest daughter Dana in the original – was horrifically strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend John Thomas Sweeney at the age of just 22, only a few months after the release of the film.

Julian Beck, who starred in the second movie as malevolent preacher Reverend Henry Kane, passed away from stomach cancer during post-production – although he had been diagnosed with the illness ahead of filming.

Finally, Heather O'Rourke – who had played Carol Anne Freeling in all three movies – tragically died at the age of just 12 in 1988, due to complications from an acute bowel obstruction.

However, it's worth noting that surviving family members of those who passed away have dismissed the reports of a curse as hurtful and disrespectful to the memories of their loved ones.

In a documentary titled Heather O'Rourke: She Was Here – which was released earlier this year – Heather's older sister Tammy and some of her friends outlined their opposition to the rumours.

Meanwhile, Poltergeist III director Gary Sherman explained: "For all of this stuff and the Poltergeist curse and all of this to be heaped upon her memory, that's just not fair and not good."

5. The Misfits

It's not just horror films that have been labelled as "cursed" movies – with another prominent example being John Huston's brilliant – and often underrated – downbeat Western romance The Misfits, from 1961.

The curse here doesn't concern anything specific that happened on set, but rather the tragic fate of all three of its main stars shortly after production ended.

It is famously the final completed film of the legendary Marilyn Monroe, who delivers one of her finest performances in the movie. Her tragic death occurred less than 18 months after its premiere.

That premiere occurred on 1 February 1961, which would have been the 60th birthday of the film's male lead, Clark Gable – another icon of Golden Age Hollywood – who suffered a fatal heart attack just two days after filming ended.

Finally, the film's third main star Montgomery Clift also passed only five years later, aged just 45. According to The Telegraph, Clift's companion and nurse Lorenzo James had noted the film was showing on television the night of the star's death – and had asked him if he wanted to watch it.

Clift had responded that he absolutely didn't want to watch it and instead went for a bath, where he suffered a fatal heart attack.

While it's perhaps not quite right to say the film was cursed, to watch it now – with the knowledge that three legends of the silver screen would be dead within a few years of giving such stellar performances – certainly feels a little haunting.

6. Atuk and The Confederacy of Dunces

Here are two particularly notorious examples of cursed movies – the only entries on this list that were so hampered by tragedy that they never even got made at all.

Development on the first of these two projects – an adaptation of the 1963 satirical novel The Incomparable Atuk by Canadian author Mordecai Richler – initially began when Norman Jewison purchased the rights in the 1970s, while filming almost began on one proposed version of the film in 1988.

But tragically, several actors who had been linked with the main role in the film passed away before production could start – with John Belushi, Sam Kinison, John Candy and Chris Farley all having expressed an interest in starring before their untimely deaths.

A very similar issue has also been observed with another planned adaptation of an acclaimed comedic novel, John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, which was published in 1980 after the author himself had passed away.

Belushi, Candy and Farley had also each been considered for the lead role in that planned adaptation, while various attempts to get it off the ground since have stalled.

Prolific director Steven Soderbergh once penned a script for a version which got closer than most previous attempts to getting made, but arguments over rights agreements ultimately prevented it from receiving the go ahead.

In 2013, Soderbergh explained: "I think it’s cursed. I’m not prone to superstition, but that project has got bad mojo on it."

7. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

This is an interesting one, in that for a very long time it appeared that this film – a real passion project for Monty Python star and acclaimed director Terry Gilliam – would also remain incomplete forever.

Gilliam had eventually started work on the project as long ago as 1989, although it didn't enter pre-production until almost a decade later in 1998.

Filming got underway another two years later, but very quickly all sorts of major issues emerged: sets and equipment were destroyed by flooding, star Jean Rochefort pulled out after falling ill, and financial difficulties including problems with insurance became seemingly unsurmountable.

Unable to continue, the project was scrapped, and various attempts to revive it with different stars – ranging from Johnny Depp to Jack O'Connell and Robert Duvall to John Hurt – all failed to gather enough momentum and funding.

Eventually, filming finally started on what would go on to be the completed film in 2017, with Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce in the lead roles.

But after all that, the film had something of a muted release – partly due to a lengthy legal dispute with former producer Paulo Branco – becoming a major box office bomb and receiving fairly mixed reviews. Maybe it was cursed, after all!

"The problem is that people have very high expectations," Gilliam said in 2017. "And a lot of people say I'm a fool to make the film and that it would have been better to let people imagine how great it would have been, rather than making it a reality and disappointing them.

"People love Roman ruins because they're not complete and you can imagine them. So I may be making a great mistake. Maybe the film would be better as a fantasy!"

8. Twilight Zone: The Movie

Like 1994's The Crow, this is an example of a film that was completely overshadowed by a tragic event that occurred during filming.

Star Vic Morrow and child actors Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen – who had been illegally hired – died in a helicopter crash during the filming of the segment that was directed by John Landis.

Many years of legal action followed, and although no one was eventually found criminally liable, the incident marked a turning point for safety standards in Hollywood.

Although the film ended up becoming a critical success, its legacy is tarnished by the horrific event.

The film was featured in an episode of the 2020 documentary series Cursed Films, but perhaps it's better to look at the film as a tragic cautionary tale about on set negligence and the importance of proper safety standards.

9. Apocalypse Now

We're ending the list like we started it – with another film that overcame a hugely troubled production to become one of the best regarded films not just of the 1970s, but of all time.

The problems that plagued Francis Ford Coppola's hugely ambitious Vietnam War epic are well documented – particularly in the hugely compelling 1991 documentary Hearts of Darkness – and many people had written it off during production as a hugely expensive flop.

The various issues were so pronounced that the initial 5-month shooting period was extended to more than a year, with some of the obstacles including the costly destruction of sets by severe weather, Marlon Brando showing up to set without having done any preparation and Martin Sheen suffering both a breakdown and a near-fatal heart attack on location.

That's not even mentioning the issue with the helicopters that Coppola had rented for the shoot. The US military had failed to co-operate – owing to the film's anti-war stance – and so he instead rented them from Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, only for them to be repeatedly recalled during production so they could be used in the country's active civil war.

Whatever those problems, though, it seems like it was all worth it in the end. Apocalypse Now was enormously acclaimed, performed well at the box office, and is still considered one of the finest movies ever made.

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