Urban Legend is a 1998 horror film starring Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, Michael Rosenbaum, Tara Reid, Joshua Jackson, and Robert Englund. The film is based on the premise that a killer is using the methods of death described in certain urban legends as a means to kill his victims.

The film was followed by Urban Legends: Final Cut, which was released to theaters in 2000, and Urban Legends: Bloody Mary, which went direct-to-video in 2005.

Plot

The film opens at a gas station, where a young woman, Michelle Mancini (Natasha Gregson Wagner), fights off a supposed attack by the stuttering gas attendant (Brad Dourif). However, the attendant actually tried to warn her, and as Michelle drives off, a shape appears in the back seat and decapitates her with an axe. On campus, student Parker Riley (Michael Rosenbaum) relates how one of the campus halls, Stanley Hall, had been the site of a massacre in 1973. The story is discredited by school journalist Paul Gardner (Jared Leto), but it sticks in the minds of Natalie and Brenda. The two girls attend a lecture by Professor Wexler who introduces them to the concept of urban legends.