If you’ve ever watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and thought, I’d really love to smell like rotting meat and decaying grandfathers, you are surprisingly not alone. You’re an odd bird and may be a danger to society, but you’re not alone. As it turns out, there’s a company making fragrances based on horror movies.
A man named Killian Wells launched a company called Xyrena, which itself has a brand labeled Cinematic Scent Archives, with Wells seeking to capture the smell of certain horror movies in fragrance form. Some of the titles in the officially licensed collection include American Psycho, Creepshow, Nosferatu, Silent Night Deadly Night, and Sleepaway Camp. So what do they actually smell like?
Patrick Bateman might be one of the few horror movie villains that we would expect to actually smell good. But you just know that Count Orlok is downright stinky! For the American Psycho fragrance, we’re getting notes of sorbet, chardonnay, cardamom, and more. More specific to the film, the website writes, “The base notes leave a killer impression with a blend of bloody metallic ambroxan, crème brûlée (from Dorsia), and premium cigar tobacco.” Nosferatu, naturally, has an entirely different approach. For this, we get cracked peppercorn and dried wildflowers, “like forgotten bouquets scattered across the cobblestone streets of Wisborg, and a bitter touch of wormwood, a nod to the creeping unease that follows Count Orlok’s shadow…At its heart, the fragrance delves deeper into foreboding beauty with a chilling mineralic stone accord, conjuring the cold, damp walls of an ancient Carpathian castle…” Sounds like one spray should be enough for that one.
On his approach to the horror movie fragrances, Wells told GQ, “The biggest issue in a line like this is navigating the line between something that’s more avant-garde and wearable. It’s impossible to please everybody—you’re going to get people that say, ‘Oh, this is too pretty,’ and then other people will say, ‘This is too realistic.’”
For their next endeavor into the horror movie olfactory system, Xyrena has a licensing deal with Universal, with the plan to move forward on a Jaws fragrance, so you can probably expect sea water, chum and Narragansett.
Which horror movie fragrance do you think would smell the absolute worst? Give us your pick in the comments section below.
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