HORROR OF THE ZOMBIES

When a publicity stunt of two models on a boat goes horribly wrong and the two get lost in a fog. They end up on a creaky floating tomb of the blind dead. That's right, these sea going Templars make short work of the Supermodels and move along. The head of the modeling agency and a group of employees start looking for the babes and too meet the Templars Pirates. But can they escape the fate of the models or will they too succumb to the monsters of the deep?

PRINCE OF DARKNESS

John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness 1987
When the guardian priest of an abandoned church in Los Angeles dies, Father Loomis finds a diary and a key, opens the door of the basement and finds a cylinder with a gruesome green fluid. The priest contacts Professor Howard Birack in the local university and he invites a team of students to research the findings and translate manuscripts. Their discovery leads to the fact that the tube contains the Devil's son, and a prophecy that "when the sleeper awakens the son will release the father." The tube is locked from the inside and the sleeper is beginning to stir.






















TRIVIA

# Screenwriter 'Carpenter, John' is credited as "Martin Quatermass". The pseudonym is a homage to Professor Bernard Quatermass, the lead character of "The Quatermass Experiment" (1953) and several subsequent TV series and film versions. In the original press notes he was described as 'the brother of Professor Bernard Quatermass, head of the British rocket programme.' In a further nod to Carpenter's influences, the character Wyndham is named after science-fiction author John Wyndham and Anne Howard's character is named after the star of The Wasp Woman (1959), Susan Cabot.

# Donald Pleasence's character, Father Loomis, is named after the character he played in the Halloween movies.

# 'Jameson Parker', who plays Brian, was sporting an old leg injury he picked up while making TV series "Simon & Simon" (1981), and would sometimes need to rest in his trailer because of the pain.

# When actor Peter Jason, who plays Dr. Leahy, introduces himself to Dr. Birack ('Victor Wong') for the first time, he wasn't expecting Wong to walk away in the middle of the scene. Jason's subsequent confused appearance and awkwardness is natural and unscripted.

# Rock singer Alice Cooper is among the hordes of homeless people that surround the church during the film.

# This is the second film in what John Carpenter calls his Apocalypse Trilogy. The others are The Thing (1982) and In the Mouth of Madness (1994).

# Peter Jason hurt his shoulder in the scene where he and Jameson Parker try to break the front doors of the church down to escape. He claims that the pain still flares up to this day.

# The movie was shot in just over 30 days.

# The scene where Wyndham (Robert Grasmere) is stabbed by the bag-lady at the back of the church is inspired by a smiliar stabbing scene in the Terence Fisher movie Curse of the Werewolf.

# Alice Cooper used the bike impalement trick in his stage shows prior to this movie. The bike he uses was his own personal prop.

# In the scene where Brain and Catherine are in bed in the morning, Brian says to her, "Who was he, the one that gave you such a high opinion of men?" This is a fairly well known quote (among others) from To Have and Have Not (1944), only the sexes are reversed here. The original has Lauren Bacall saying, "Who was the girl, Steve?" To which Humphrey Bogart replies, "Who was what girl?" And she responds, "The one who left you with such a high opinion of women."

# The audio of the "broadcasts" that Brian receives in his dreams was sampled by Marilyn Manson in the song "Down In The Park".

# Factual errors: (At 12:25) The Priest (Donald Pleasence) tells Dr. Birack (Victor Wong) that the Catholic Church containing the demonic fluid, located in Los Angeles, was built in the 1500s by Spanish missionaries. The Spanish did not colonize California with missions until 1769, with the founding of San Diego by the explorer-missionary Fra Junipero Serra. The mission where filming took place, Mission San Fernando Rey de España, was not founded until 1797.

More Info on IMDB.com

TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE

A young alien (David Love) falls for a pretty teenage Earth girl (Dawn Anderson) and they team up to try to stop the plans of his invading cohorts, who intend to use Earth as a food-breeding ground for giant lobsters from their planet. The invaders, who arrive in a flying saucer, carry deadly ray guns that turn Earth-people into skeletons.

A CLASSIC FROM RETROFLICK TV

TRIVIA
* The film's producers could not afford to construct a giant lobster, so only its shadow is seen - cast, no doubt, by a normal-sized lobster.

* Although Warner Bros. distributed this ultra-low-budget sci-fi film, it was definitely not a Warner Bros. production. The studio needed a genre film to play as the second feature with the Godzilla sequel it was releasing under the title Gojira no gyakushû (1955) and bought this from producer Tom Graeff.

* Unable to afford time on a soundstage to film Betty Morgan's home, director Tom Graeff posed as a UCLA student directing a student project, and so obtained permission from an elderly woman to film for free in her home.

* The trim on the aliens' costumes is made from masking tape, and their space boots are men's dress shoes covered by socks.

* One skeleton was used for every dead body in the film. A hook/tag on the head and identification markings in permanent marker on the hip can clearly be seen on the skeleton in almost every scene. The skeleton also has curiously bolted limbs.

* The filmmaker was on such a tight budget that the film's ultimate weapon, the "focusing disintegrator", was actually a Hubley's Atomic Disintegrator toy cap gun, bought for a dime, with a flashbulb added as a beam. (In some scenes the words "Hubley's" can clearly be seen embossed on the side of the gun.) Atomic Disintegrators can be bought today on eBay for upwards of $300.

* Dawn Anderson, who played Betty, was actually a former child actress named Dawn Bender. Like most movie teenagers of the period, she was in her early twenties when this film was shot.

* The ZAP visual from the ray-gun toys was accomplished by a mirror glued on to the nozzle and pointed at the camera, which was hit by the "deadly" glare.

* The super alien apparatus with the dials was actually an old audio mixing device (from the days of the bulky vacuum tubes).

* The entire B movie is an extra on the 2005 PS2 video-game, "Destroy All Humans!". It becomes available once the main story campaign is completed.

* King Moody's movie debut.

* The night watchman at Station 86 is reading a book titled "The Flying Saucers are Real" by Donald Keyhoe.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

he radiation from a fallen satellite might have caused the recently deceased to rise from the grave and seek the living to use as food. This is the situation that a group of people penned up in an old farmhouse must deal with.



TRIVIA
* Bosco chocolate syrup was used to simulate the blood in the film.

* The zombie hand that Tom (Keith Wayne) hacks up with a kitchen knife was made of clay and filled with chocolate syrup.

* When the zombies are eating the bodies in the burnt-out truck they were actually eating roast ham covered in chocolate sauce. The filmmakers joked that it was so nausea inducing that it was almost a waste of time putting the makeup on the zombies, as they ended up looking pale and sick anyway.

* The gas pump was not bolted to the ground when the actress who played Barbra, Judith O'Dea, runs into it at the start of the film. She did it with so much force she almost tipped it over on the cameraman.

* One of the working titles for this film was "Night of Anubis". Anubis is the god of embalming/mummifying in the ancient Egyptian (Kemetan) religion.

* One of the working titles for this film was "Night of the Flesh Eaters". Originally, the beings attacking the characters were extraterrestrial in origin, either aliens or humans possessed by an alien pathogen, presumably covering a NASA satellite returning from Venus. Eventually, it was decided that the dead would rise and devour the living, presumably due to radiation that was carried by a NASA satellite returning from Venus.

* Though the radiation of a detonated satellite returning from Venus is theorized to be the cause of the dead rising and attacking the living, according to the filmmakers, the actual cause is never determined.

* Columbia Pictures was the only major Hollywood studio interested in distributing this film, but eventually passed because it was in black-and-white at a time when movies had to compete with new color televisions. Ironically, Columbia did distribute the 1990 color remake. American International Pictures (AIP) considered releasing the film, but wanted George A. Romero to shoot an upbeat ending and add more of a love story subplot.

* During the filming of the cemetery sequence, shot on two separate days, an unexpected accident caused a fast change of script. The car driven by Barbara and Johnny into the cemetery was actually owned by the mother of Russell Streiner. Unfortunately, sometime between the two filming sequences, someone ran into the car and put a dent in it that would easily be visible on camera. George A. Romero rewrote the scene so the car would come to a stop by crashing into a tree.

* In the scene where Ben is nailing wooden boards to the door, small numbers can be seen on them. These were written on the backs of the boards so they could be removed and replaced in between shots, preserving continuity. Some numbers are visible because some of the boards were nailed on backwards.

* Tom Savini was originally hired by George A. Romero to do the makeup effects for this film. The two were first introduced to each other when Savini auditioned for an acting role in an earlier film that never got off the ground. Romero, remembering that Savini was also a makeup artist (he had brought his makeup portfolio to show to Romero at the audition), called Savini to the set of his horror movie. However, Savini was unable to do the effects because he was called to duty by the US Army to serve as a combat photographer in Vietnam.

* The film's first scene, the initial cemetery attack on Barbara and Johnny, was the last filmed, in November 1967. The actors had to hold their breath to avoid visible condensation in the frosty autumn air.

* According to George A. Romero, the film was originally ten minutes longer but the distributor pressured him to cut it down.

* The word "zombie" is never used. The most common euphemism used to describe the living dead is "those things," mostly by Cooper.

* Bill 'Chilly Billy' Cardille, who played the television reporter, was indeed a local Pittsburgh TV celebrity. Known as "Chilly Billy" Cardille, he hosted a horror movie program on Channel 11 and occasionally reported the news.

* S. William Hinzman and Karl Hardman, two of the original $300 investors had small roles due to a shortage of available talent. Another investor was a butcher, who provided some blood and guts.

* Actor/co-producer Karl Hardman (Harry Cooper, the father in the basement), also served as makeup artist, electronic sound effects engineer, and took the still photos used for the closing credits.

* When the writers decided to base the film on zombies, they brainstormed about what would be the most shocking thing for the zombies to do to people and decided on cannibalism.

* During production, the film's title was still being chosen. The working title was simply "Monster Flick".

* The character of Ben was originally supposed to be a crude but resourceful truck driver. After 'Duane Jones (I)' auditioned for the part, director and co-writer George A. Romero re-wrote the part to fit his performance.

* George A. Romero has readily admitted that Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls (1962) was a big influence in his making of this film.

* The main house did not have a true basement but a dirt potter's cellar, and thus had no long staircase leading down to it. Because of this, the basement scenes were filmed in the editing studio's cellar.

* In the 30th Anniversary Edition, the car that drops off Debbie Rochon at the medical center is driven by Marilyn Eastman (Helen Cooper) and owned by Karl Hardman (Harry Cooper).

* The music used in the film was from a Capitol/EMI Records Hi-Q stock music library, on which the copyright was in the public domain, and cost the filmmakers $1500. It was originally used in Teenagers from Outer Space (1959).

* When the movie was in its scripting stage, John A. Russo had developed an idea that was basically described as "teenagers from outer space". This version was not filmed, but the version that was filmed uses stock music from the movie Teenagers from Outer Space (1959).

* One of the Walter Reade Organization's publicity stunts was a $50,000 insurance policy against anyone dying from a heart attack while watching the film.

* The film's world premiere was at the Fulton Theatre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 1 October 1968 (At 8PM, admission by invitation only). The film was met with a standing ovation.

* The only real mishap to happen during filming involved producer and actor Russell Streiner's (Johnny's) brother, Gary Streiner. After the scene where 'Duane Jones (I)' sets the chair on fire, it was Gary's responsibility to extinguish the flames and set the chair ablaze again to preserve continuity, ensuring that smoke would be seen emanating from it near the end of the film. At one point Gary's sleeve caught on fire and, as he ran in terror, S. William Hinzman (in full zombie makeup) tackled him to the ground and helped extinguish the flames, saving him from major injury.

* George A. Romero was the one operating the camera when S. William Hinzman (the cemetery zombie) attacks Barbara in her car by smashing the window with a rock. When Hinzman shattered the window, the rock barely missed Romero.

* Some of the groans made by S. William Hinzman when he's wrestling with Russell Streiner in the cemetery are authentic. During the struggle, Streiner accidentally kneed Hinzman in the groin.

* The Evans City Cemetery was the cemetery used in the original version of the film, but it could not be used for the 30th anniversary edition. Before filming the new footage, a tornado had torn through the Evans City Cemetery, and ironically, it unearthed several graves.

* The Chevy truck seen in the new footage is not the same one seen in the original footage. The filmmakers for the new footage were fortunate enough to find a truck owned by a local resident that bore a near-perfect resemblance to the original truck. The owner was kind enough to let them borrow his truck for the film.

* During the filming of the new footage for the 30th anniversary edition, actor/composer Scott Vladimir Licina (Reverend John Hicks) suffered a heat stroke in the cemetery and was hospitalized for a few days.

* The house used for this film was loaned to the filmmakers by the owner, who planned to demolish it anyway, thereby ensuring that they could do whatever they wanted to the house.

* There were two trucks used in the film. The first one used in the beginning of the film would not start for the trek-to-the-gas-pump scenes and had to be replaced. Unfortunately, they forgot to break the headlights.

* While writing the script, George A. Romero and John A. Russo were trying to think of a manner in which to destroy the zombies. Marilyn Eastman joked that they could throw pies in their faces. This is obviously an inspiration for the pie fight scene in this film's sequel, Dawn of the Dead (1978).

* Judith Ridley worked as a receptionist for Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman, which led to her getting the part in the movie.

* Assuming the movie takes place on the spring time change (according to the dialog at the beginning) after the date (December 1966) on the calendar in the house (a reasonable assumption from the condition of the body in the house), the movie begins on the night of 30 April 1967 and ends the next morning, which is May Day.

* The body upstairs in the house was made by director George A. Romero, who used ping-pong balls for the eyes.

* S. William Hinzman based his characteristic saunter (and, subsequently, that of each other zombie) on a film with Boris Karloff, the title of which he could not remember. In that film, Karloff played a man risen from the dead, and walks with a characteristic ungainly saunter.

* According to the George A. Romero commentary track on the Elite laserdisc and DVD version of the film, the original working print and working elements and materials for the film no longer exist - they were destroyed as a result of a flood that filled the basement where the materials were stored (which was the same basement used in the movie).

* At between 51 and 52 minutes into the film, going by the Elite laserdisc/DVD release, there is a very visible jump cut. The distributors wanted some of the "talky" bits trimmed down, so, about 6 minutes was cut from a basement scene involving the Coopers. The jump is quite clearly visible because at one point Harry is facing one direction and then immediately in the next frame, he is facing another.

* At the time of the film's release, any work that did not include a copyright notice was assumed to be public domain. Since the film makers forgot to include this notice, the film slipped into the public domain. In was not until 1 March 1989 that a copyright notice was no longer required.

* Screenwriter John A. Russo appears as the ghoul who gets his forehead smashed by Ben with a tire iron. He also allowed himself to be set on fire for real when nobody else wanted to do the stunt.

* The Cooper family are played by a real family. Karl Hardman (husband Harry Cooper) and Marilyn Eastman (wife Helen Cooper) are real-life husband and wife. Kyra Schon (daughter Karen Cooper) is Karl's daughter, as well as Marilyn's step-daughter.

* This was one of the first films added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress because of naïve business practices that allowed the copyright of the film to slip into the public domain.

* The filmmakers were accused of being "Satanically-inspired" by Christian fundamentalist groups for their portrayal of the undead feeding on flesh and of the Coopers' zombie child (Kyra Schon) attacking her mother (Marilyn Eastman).

* One of the original ideas for the script before its many revisions called for Barbara to be a very strong, charismatic character. Instead, George A. Romero and the producers loved Judith O'Dea's portrayal as a catatonic and terrified young girl much better, and edited the script to accommodate the part. Eventually, the idea of Barbara being a strong, central character would be revisited in Tom Savini's 1990 remake.

* The stock music that accompanies Barbara's initial flight from the cemetery zombie had been used a year earlier, in the final episode of television's "The Fugitive" (1963).

* As George A. Romero explains it on "The Directors: The Films of George A. Romero", the day the final editing and voice-over dubbing was complete (4/4/1968), he and John A. Russo literally "threw" the film into the trunk of their car and drove to New York to see if anyone wanted to show it. While driving through New York on the night of April 4th, 1968, Romero and Russo heard news on the radio that Martin Luther King had been assassinated.

* The role of Ben was originally meant for Rudy Ricci. After 'Duane Jones (I)' had read the part, however, it was given to him, and Ricci played one of the zombies.

* In the scene where Ben moves the body upstairs to another room, we can see that its face is intact. This was in fact Kyra Schon who doubled as the upstairs body as it was felt that a mannequin would look unrealistic.

* This film is ranked at #9 on Bravo's _"100 Scariest Movie Moments, The" (2004) (mini)_ special.

* SPOILER: The social commentary on racism some have seen in this film was never intended (an African-American man holing up in a house with a white woman, a posse of whites shooting a black man in the head without first checking to see if he was a zombie). According to the filmmakers, 'Duane Jones (I)' was simply the best actor for the part of Ben.

* SPOILER: Barbara (Judith O'Dea) was originally meant to be the sole survivor of the zombies' onslaught. This idea is incorporated into the remake of Night of the Living Dead (1990).

* SPOILER: Originally, one idea for the script called for Harry Cooper to die from the gunshot wound received from Ben before his daughter became a zombie, which would have resulted in Helen coming down the stairs to find him eating their daughter, rather than the daughter eating him. It was decided that this would probably be far too disturbing and graphic and was changed back to the idea of the daughter becoming a zombie first.

DAY OF THE DEAD

When a small Colorado town is overrun by the flesh hungry dead a small group of survivors try to escape in a last ditch effort to stay alive.

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THE GHOST OF WAVERLY HILLS MOVIE

Waverly Hills Sanatorium, located in Louisville, Kentucky, opened in 1910 as a two-story hospital to accommodate 40 to 50 tuberculosis patients. It has been popularized on television as being one of the "most haunted" hospitals in the eastern United States, and was seen on ABC/FOX Family Channel's Scariest Places On Earth as well as VH1's Celebrity Paranormal Project. It was also seen on the Sci Fi Channel's Ghost Hunters.

The current plan for the sanatorium is to turn it into a hotel that will cater to the haunted hotel crowd as well regular hotel patrons.




The land that is today known as Waverly Hill was purchased by Major Thomas H. Hays in 1883 as the Hays Family home. Since the new home was now so far away from any existing schools, Mr. Hays decided to open a local school for his daughters to attend. He started a one-room schoolhouse on Pages Lane, and hired Lizzie Lee Harris as the teacher. Miss Harris loved her tiny school nestled against the hillside, and remembered her fondness for Walter Scott's Waverley novels, so she named her little school house "Waverly School". Major Hays liked the peaceful-sounding name, so he named his property "Waverly Hill" and the Board of Tuberculosis Hospital kept the name when they bought the land and opened the sanatorium. It is not known exactly when the spelling changed to exclude the second "e" and became Waverly Hills. However the spelling fluctuated between both spellings many times over the years.

Check out My older post about WAVERLY HILLS

THE OMEGA MAN

In 1977, two years after Russia and China had engaged in germ warfare and destroying most of mankind, U. S. Army scientist Robert Neville, who had immunized himself, is practically alone in the city of Los Angeles, except for a group of albino-like survivors, led by a former newscaster, now calling himself Matthias, who had predicted the destruction, His group , sensitive to light and heat, are bent upon smashing all remnants of the prior civilization, especially Neville.

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TRIVIA
* The production company wanted a locale that looked like an abandoned metropolitan area, but it was too costly to build. The producer drove through Downtown Los Angeles one weekend and discovered there were no shoppers, so the majority of the film's exteriors were shot there on weekends.

* British studio Hammer Films had previously contemplated a film adaptation of Richard Matheson's book under the title of "The Night Creatures", written by Matheson himself. The project was ultimately deemed too graphic, floundered and eventually died.

* Charlton Heston had read the original novel on an airplane coming back to California, and was very interested in a modern adaptation of the book; he was totally unaware of the fact it had already been made into a film long before - The Last Man on Earth (1964) starring Vincent Price.

* Richard Matheson said that ‘The Omega Man’ was so removed from his book that it didn't even bother him.

* Neville's primary weapon during the film is a Smith and Wesson M76 Sub Machine Gun, sometimes fitted with a flashlight. During the first night attack by the Family, Neville uses a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) with an Infra-Red scope.

* The movie was the inspiration for two CBC Radio comedy series, "Steve the First" and "Steve the Second", starring Matt Watts and Mark McKinney. Each series was about a slacker (the second the son of the first), called upon to save the world after a disaster.

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH

Dr. Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) is the only survivor of a devastating world-wide plague due to a mysterious immunity he acquired to the bacterium while working in Central America years ago. He is all alone now...or so it seems. As night falls, plague victims begin to leave their graves, part of a hellish undead army that''s thirsting for blood...his!

I Am Legend is a 1954 science fiction novel by Richard Matheson about the last man alive in Los Angeles. It is notable as influential on the developing modern vampire genre as well as the zombie genre, in popularizing the fictional concept of a worldwide apocalypse due to disease, and in exploring the notion of vampirism as a disease. The novel was a success and was adapted to film as The Last Man on Earth in 1964, as The Omega Man in 1971, and again in 2007 as I Am Legend.



Trivia

# This film was originally going to be produced by Hammer Films of Great Britain. They decided not to make it and passed the script over to their U.S. associate, Robert L. Lippert, who produced the film in Italy.

# The script was written in part by Matheson, but he was dissatisfied with the result and was therefore credited as Logan Swanson.

Tomorrow night's movie, THE OMEGA MAN

RETURN TO HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL

8 Years have passed since Sara Wolfe and Eddie Baker escaped the House on Haunted Hill. Now the kidnapped Ariel, Sara's sister, goes inside the house with a group of treasure hunters to find the statue of Baphomet, worth millions and believed to be the cause of the House's evil.


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HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL 1959 And 1999

The original 1959 Version
House on Haunted Hill is quite an atmospheric film with spooky background music and a very convincing cast. The special effects might be poor when compared to today's standards, but with believable charecters, and all of that atmosphere, who needs modern-day effects. "The Ghosts are moving tonight," Watson Pritchard tells us at the beginning if the film, and then promises that in a few moments he will show us the only really haunted house in the world. Watson keeps his promise and there are plenty of cobwebs, ceilings that drip blood, organs that play by themselves and chandaliers that swing and fall. This is an olide, people, but it is still a goodie, and, to top it all, it's got Vincent Price in it too.





The 1999 Remake
How far would you go for a million dollars? Would you spend the night in a haunted house? When twisted billionaire Stephen Price and his devilish wife, Evelyn, offer six strangers one million dollars each, there is only one rule to the game: they'll have to survive one night in a former mental institution, haunted by the ghosts of the inmates killed there, and an insane doctor who did unspeakable things... At first, everyone is having fun, thinking that the whole thing is a joke. But once the entire house automatically seals itself shut, they realize that this is no joke.

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Trivia For The house on Haunted Hill 1959

* Used a gimmick called "Emergo" in theaters. When the skeleton rises from the acid vat in the film, a lighted plastic skeleton on a wire appeared from a black box next to the screen to swoop over the heads of the audience. The skeleton would then be pulled back into the box as Vincent Price reels in the skeleton in the film. Many theaters soon stopped using this "effect" because when the local boys heard about it, they would bring slingshots to the theater; when the skeleton started its journey, they would pull out their slingshots and fire at it with stones, BBs, ball bearings and whatever else they could find.

* The large grosses for this film were noticed by Alfred Hitchcock. This led him to create his own low-budget horror film--Psycho (1960).

* This would be the last of only five films for Julie Mitchum, the sister of Robert Mitchum.

* The Ennis Brown House in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1924, and now listed on the National Historic Register, was used for the exterior shots of the haunted house during the film's opening sequence.

* William Castle had related the story of meeting Vincent Price on a day when Price had learned that he had been passed over for a part. Over coffee, Castle described the premise of this picture. Price liked the idea and it led to a two-picture collaboration, this and The Tingler (1959).

* The popular theme music originally had haunting lyrics by Richard Kayne, but only the orchestral version was used in the final film. For the record, the lyrics went as follows: There's a house on Haunted Hill / Where ev'rything's lonely and still / Lonely and still / And the ghost of a sigh / When we whispered good-bye / Lingers on / And each night gives a heart broken cry / There's a house on Haunted Hill / Where love walked there's a strange silent chill / Strange silent chill / There are mem'ries that yearn / For our hearts to return / And a promise we failed to fulfill / But we'll never go back / No, we'll never go back / To the house on Haunted Hill!

Trivia For The House on Haunted Hill remake 1999

* Geoffrey Rush's character's last name is Price. This is a reference to the original House on Haunted Hill (1959) in which Vincent Price played the main character.

* The rollercoaster in the beginning of the movie is The Incredible Hulk at Universal's Islands of Adventure in Orlando, Florida.

* The directors of both the original version and the remake are named William.

* The only character in both the original and the remake of this film is the owner of the house, Watson Pritchet. However all the other characters are loosely based on characters from the original.

* The names William Malone, Gilbert Adler and Vlademar Tymrak appear on Price's guest list before it is deleted. William Malone and 'Gilbert Adler' are respectively the director and producer of the film. Vlademar Tymrak was a serial-killer and evil spirit in an episode of "Tales from the Crypt" (1989) (episode "Report from the Grave") which was also directed by Malone.

* The first person to be killed in the movie is screenplay writer Dick Beebe.

* The inscriptions on the walls and doors in the hospital are all in German, but do not make any particular sense when translated. The inscription "Gehirn Hygiene" for example is a rough translation of the English "brain sanitation" into German. Maybe the German inscriptions were just supposed to add a more gothic atmosphere to the movie, but quite certainly they are also a reference to an old German Horror movie Schloß Vogeloed (1921) directed by F.W. Murnau, which also deals with a haunted manor.

* Cindy Crawford was considered for the role of Melissa Margaret Marr.

* Famke Janssen performed her own stunt when the glass ceiling breaks. It was extremely important for Janssen to remain where she was and very still, yet even with her basically glued to the spot, the shard hit with so much impact that it bounced her head off the table as you can see on close inspection of the scene.

* William Malone got the idea to set the movie in a former insane asylum when he was filming an episode of "Tales from the Crypt" (1989) in a former asylum and noticed that crew members were running scared out of the basement, not wanting to film there.

* Co-producer Terry Castle is the daughter of William Castle, who directed the 1959 version of the film.

* Geoffrey Rush was never meant to look like Vincent Price (star of the original film). The original screenplay described Stephen Price as a regular looking businessman. Rush didn't care for this, so he suggested that his character look like the film director John Waters. The director agreed to test this look out. After his transformation, he ended up looking so much like Vincent Price the director decided to keep the look.

* Marc Blucas and Ivana Milicevic filmed a short "movie in a movie" sequence which was cut from the theatrical release, but appears in the deleted scenes section of the DVD release.

* When creating the black "evil" that attacks the surviving cast at the end of the film, the animators used images of nude women. They took film of nude women dancing, mirrored the image, and then repeated that image hundreds of times at different sizes to make the spidery shape you see in the finished movie. If you pause the DVD and look closely, you can make out some of the women.

* 'Elizabeth Hurley' was considered for the role of Evelyn Stockard-Price.

Bartonville State Hospital

Another great site of my favorite Old haunt, Bartonville State Hospital

http://director1775.allhell.com/photo2.html

Anybody have any old pictures of The Bartonville State Hospital from the 70's or 80's Email me at DSSBLOG@GMAIL.COM

PAN'S LABYRINTH

A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamed of the human world. She dreamed of blue skies, soft breeze, and sunshine. One day, eluding her keepers, the Princess escaped. Once outside, the brightness blinded her and erased every trace of the past from her memory. She forgot who she was and where she came from. Her body suffered cold, sickness, and pain. Eventually, she died. However, her father, the King, always knew that the Princess' soul would return, perhaps in another body, in another place, at another time. And he would wait for her, until he drew his last breath, until the world stopped turning...

PAN'S LABYRINTH - English subtitles



In 1944 fascist Spain, a girl, fascinated with fairy-tales, is sent along with her pregnant mother to live with her new stepfather, a ruthless captain of the Spanish army. During the night, she meets a fairy who takes her to an old faun in the center of the labyrinth. He tells her she's a princess, but must prove her royalty by surviving three gruesome tasks. If she fails, she will never prove herself to be the the true princess and will never see her real father, the king, again.
This movie teaches us how children survive the real world, which they are not prepared for, and how adults forgotten this ability, disregard it as nothing, missing its "power"


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TRIVIA
Received 22 minutes of applause at the Cannes Film Festival.

Mexico's entry to the Academy Awards, in the category of Best Film in a Foreign Language (2006).

In 2007, this film became one of the few fantasy films ever nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars.

After the first week movie theaters in Mexico had to place signs over the movie posters warning about the graphic violence as parents were taking small children to see it.

Guillermo del Toro is famous for compiling books full of notes and drawings about his ideas before turning them into films, something he regards as essential to the process. He left years worth of notes for this film in the back of a cab, and when he discovered them missing, he thought it was the end of the project. However, the cab driver found them and, realizing their importance, tracked him down and returned them at great personal difficulty and expense. Del Toro was convinced that this was a blessing and it made him ever more determined to complete the film.

It took five hours for Doug Jones to get into The Pale Man costume. Once he was in it, he had to look out the nose holes to see where he was going.

Doug Jones was the only American on the set and the only one who didn't speak Spanish.

Doug Jones had to memorize not only his own lines in Spanish (a language he does not speak) but also Ivana Baquero's (Ofelia) lines so he knew when to speak his next line. The servos in the head piece that made the facial expressions and ears move were so loud, he couldn't hear her speak her lines.

The faun's legs were not computer-generated. Guillermo del Toro created a special system in which the actor's legs puppeteer the faun's fake ones. The actor's legs were later digitally removed.

Ivana Baquero was too old to play the lead part originally written for an eight- or nine-year-old, but Guillermo del Toro was so impressed that he revised it to accommodate the 11-year-old actress.

The English subtitles were translated and written by Guillermo del Toro himself. He no longer trusts translators after having encountered problems with his previous subtitled movies.

Guillermo del Toro said that he felt the character of Pan was too dark and sexual to play in a film opposite an eight-year-old girl. The film is only called "Pan's Labyrinth" in America, other English-speaking countries, German-speaking countries, The Netherlands, and Scandinavia; everywhere else it's called "The Labyrinth of the Faun."

Björk was so affected by this film that after seeing it, she went home and wrote the song "Pneumonia".

The ruined town seen during the opening sequence of the film is the old town of Belchite, which was also used by Terry Gilliam for The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), The town was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War and never rebuilt.

It has been said that, for the fairy eating scene, Doug Jones had to bite condoms filled with fake blood.

According to disc 2 of the DVD, it only took 25-30 minutes for Doug Jones to get into the Pan suit.

Doug Jones stated on disc 2 of the DVD that the Pan suit was the most comfortable, and well made suit he had ever been cast to wear. Thanks in large part to the suit being divided into many sections, having the legs anchor to his hips and not his shoulders distributed the weight better, and having the stomach section separate from the shoulder section gave him better range of motion.

According to director Guillermo del Toro the scene involving the Giant Frog was to be shot in an extravagant dome "tree" set. However, 3 days prior to shooting, he realized that the Frog wouldn't seem so giant in the massive set, and the Tree Tunnel set in the movie was constructed in 2 days, and then shot.

On disc 2 of the DVD, Guillermo del Toro points out that he intentionally placed "Faun" references throughout the movie, including: -The horn pattern on the heard board of the Mother's bed -Above every door in the mill house is a simple faun carving -At the head of the stair case is a faun head carved in the railing -The Fig tree (home of the Giant Toad) is shaped like the faun horns -The blood pattern in Ofelia's book.

Is the last New Line movie to be available in both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. All subsequent films are released exclusively on Blu-ray. (Jan. 2008)

On the supplementary DVD, Guillermo del Toro states that the movie has a deliberate pattern of three's - the story revolves around three women (Ofelia, her mother and Mercedes); the faun has three pet fairies; Vidal is always accompanied by two lieutenants (thus, the fascist regime is represented by three men); Ofelia must complete three tasks for the faun; in the Pale Man's lair, there are three vaults from which Ofelia must choose from. This is in direct imitation of fairy tale / mythological traditions that usually has a hero/heroine performing three tasks.

In his director's commentary on the DVD, Guillermo del Toro says that actor Manolo Solo was nearly killed when one of the horses fell on top of him.

SPOILER: And although audiences have interpreted the film's bittersweet ending as everything from a religious metaphor to a psychological allegory, del Toro offers a simpler, but more poetic, explanation, that of "I always think of that beautiful quote by Kierkegaard that says the tyrant's reign ends with his death, but the martyr's reign starts with his death. I think that is the essence of the movie: It's about living forever by choosing how you die."

Pan's Labyrinth - Makeup and Special Effects




Pan's Labyrinth - The Set



Pan's Labyrinth - Ivana Baquero Interview

ALICE SWEET ALICE

Alice, Sweet Alice (aka Communion or Holy Terror) is a 1977 psychological horror slasher film. It was released 3 times: as Communion in 1976; as Alice, Sweet Alice in 1978 and as Holy Terror in 1981. This film was #89 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments for the scene when Alice scares Karen in the warehouse. It is also notable for being the screen debut of Brooke Shields, who played Karen.

The film is set in Paterson, New Jersey, 1961—amongst a Catholic community. Karen is preparing for her first communion. Her older sister Alice watches the attention her younger sibling is receiving with obvious resentment and jealousy. Her attempts at averting the gaze of the adults away from Karen are met with shocked disapproval. She sneaks up on people wearing a grinning mask and yellow raincoat (worn by all the children at the catholic school), throws childish tantrums and, when alone with her sister, plays cruel and warped jokes on her. Her attention seeking only manages to alienate her more and many of the characters regard her with thinly disguised distrust and dislike. Shortly into the film, just before Karen enters the church to begin her communion she is lured away by a whispering figure, wearing the same mask and coat as her sister, who strangles her and dumps her body in a chest, setting fire to it with a church candle. Alice then enters the church and takes up her sister’s place at the altar, kneeling to receive communion—much to the outrage of her family. Before they can interject, Karen’s smoldering body is discovered. All evidence points to Alice as the murderer—a notion that only her mother and (estranged) father refuse to entertain. Soon Alice’s aunt (who Alice hates) is attacked viciously, with a butcher knife, on the stairs by the small figure wearing the mask and yellow coat. She survives to point the finger at Alice. Alice denies it, but eventually reveals her belief that her sister has returned from the grave to seek revenge...




TRIVIA

* Director Alfred Sole was previously a director of pornographic movies.
* Paula Sheppard, who played the part of Alice, was actually 19-years-old during the time of filming.
* The film was shot on location in Paterson, New Jersey, Sole's hometown.
* This film was #89 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments for the scene when Alice takes off her mask in the warehouse.
* The ending wherein Alice stares at the camera is later spoofed in The Simpsons (specifically in Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two) wherein infant Maggie Simpson glares at the camera. She was discovered to injure Montgomery Burns through a gunshot and it was implied that it may not have been an accident[citation needed].
* Lillian Roth at age 67 made a brief appearance as a pathologist in the film. It was the famous singer's first film role in 42 years, making it one of the longest (if not the longest) spans of time of an actor making a film appearance.
* Brooke Shields made her film debut at age 12 in this eerie, effective chiller from director Alfred Sole. However, her role can be summed up in one word -- cameo -- as she is quickly and shockingly strangled and burned to death.

PUPPET MASTER

André Toulon is a puppet maker and the best of the kind. One day he happens upon an old Egyptian formula able to create life, so he decides to give life to his puppets. The Nazis seek to use this knowledge to their advantage and in desperation, Toulon commits suicide. Some years later four psychics get on the trail of a former colleague who suddenly commits suicide, and they decide to investigate the mansion he killed himself in. Along with his widow, they uncover the secrets of the Puppet Master

EVIL DEAD 2

Ash - the sole survivor of the original 'Evil Dead' - returns with his girlfriend Linda to the remote cabin in the woods. He discovers a tape recorder that a professor had used to record incantations from the Necronomicon XMortis - the Book of the Dead. When he turns it on, the recording releases a dark, sinister force from the woods. It turns Linda into a zombie, her soul possessed by some hideous demon, and then tries to do the same to Ash. Other people come to help Ash, but one by one they are taken over by the Evil Dead force that also possesses Linda, the Professor, and the Professor's wife...and they try to make sure Ash is...Dead by Dawn!

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EVIL DEAD TRIVIA

* One of the books on the can that traps Ash's possessed hand is "A Farewell to Arms".

* A glove belonging to the A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) Freddy Krueger character can be seen hanging above the door of the Toolshed when Ash carves his girlfriends head with a chainsaw and when he's looking for the pages in the later cellar scenes. This was in response to the use of The Evil Dead (1981) on a television screen in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

* Director Cameo: [Sam Raimi] the first Medieval knight to raise his sword and give his speech before hailing to Ash.

* Professor Knowby's dead wife is said to be in the "fruit cellar," a reference to Psycho (1960).

* Ash's chainsaw appears to switch hands in one scene. This is because Sam Raimi decided Ash should walk the opposite way across the room in that scene, so he flipped the negative.

* Often considered to be a remake of The Evil Dead (1981), however this is not accurate. The rights to show scenes from the original could not be obtained to re-cap what happened, so they recreated the beginning to explain how Ash got to the cabin, a headless Linda, etc.

* The recap of the previous film includes a shot where the "evil force" runs through the cabin and rams into Ash. When this shot was filmed, Bruce Campbell suffered a broken jaw when Sam Raimi (who was operating the camera) crashed into him with a bicycle. Or so people were led to believe. This was a story concocted by Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell as a gag to see how many people would believe it actually happened.

* Director Trademark: [Sam Raimi] [Oldsmobile Delta 88]

* In an attempt to attain an R rating for the film (the first Evil Dead was released unrated), fluid spit out by the Possessed Henrietta was variously black and green instead of blood red. An alternate take of the "blood flood" (when Ash is deluged by blood from a hole in the wall) used different colors as well (as shown in the special features on the DVD). Ultimately, the film was not given an R rating and was released unrated.

* The sexy, surly Bobby Joe was inspired by Holly Hunter, who was a housemate of Sam Raimi's in the early 80s, along with Joel Coen and Frances McDormand. One particular incident inspired the character: Hunter was auditioning for a hooker part and was unusually made-up and wearing a sexy, short-skirted outfit. She became angry at Raimi when he somewhat leered at her. Raimi pulled for Hunter to play the part, but the producers wanted someone "sexier".

* The scenes with Evil Ash are taken almost scene for scene from the Sam Raimi short film "Within the Woods" which was used to finance the original The Evil Dead (1981).

* The scene were Ash fights the severed hand is taken from Scott Spiegel's short film "Attack of the Helping Hand" in which almost the same events occur, except it involves the Hamburger Helper hand trying to kill a lady.

* Director Trademark: [Sam Raimi] [chainsaw] After Ash loses his hand, he attaches a chainsaw to the stump.

* Most of the film was shot on a set built inside the gymnasium of the JR Faison Junior High School in Wadesboro, North Carolina.

* Originally when Bobbie Joe gets killed, the vines pull her legs apart and she's split in half like a wishbone when she gets rammed with a tree between her legs. It was cut out in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain the R-rating.

BLAIR WITCH PROJECT

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT
Three film students travel to Maryland to make a student film about a local urban legend... The Blair Witch. The three went into the woods on a two day hike to find the Blair Witch, and never came back. One year later, the students film and video was found in the woods. The footage was compiled and made into a movie.

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BLAIR WITCH TRIVIA
* The three principal actors, Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams, shot nearly all of the completed film.

* The actors were requested to interview the townspeople, who often, unbeknownst to the actors, were planted by the directors. As a result, the expressions on the actors' faces were unrehearsed.

* The working title was "The Black Hills Project."

* The actors were given no more than a 35-page outline of the mythology behind the plot before shooting began. All lines were improvised and nearly all the events in the film were unknown to the three actors beforehand, and were often on-camera surprises to them all.

* Some theatergoers experienced nausea from the handheld camera movements and actually had to leave to vomit. In some Toronto theatres, ushers asked patrons who where prone to motion sickness to sit in the aisle seat and to try not to "throw up on other people."

* The production company Haxan Films borrowed its named from Benjamin Christensen's witchcraft documentary, Häxan (1922), a source of inspiration for the film.

* The house that Heather is in during the opening shot is owned by Lonnie Glerum, the film's key production assistant. He is also operating the camera during the opening shot.

* When promoting the film, the producers claimed it was real footage. Some people still believe it.

* Before the film was released, the three main actors were listed as "missing, presumed dead" on the IMDb.

* One of the video cameras used by the actors was bought at Circuit City. After filming was completed, the producers returned the camera for a refund, making their budget money go even further.

* When Joshua Leonard and Heather Donahue pick up Michael C. Williams, they were originally listening to the song "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" by The Animals on the radio. However, Haxan Films couldn't get the rights to keep it in the film.

* In the supermarket scene near the start of the film, you hear in the background, the line "You're Rick Derris?". This is taken from Kevin Smith's 1994 film Clerks. (1994).

* Heather Donahue's discovery of Joshua Leonard's (presumed) tongue and teeth wrapped in his handkerchief bears a striking similarity to Washington Irving's story "The Devil and Tom Walker". Tom's wife goes to find the devil in the swamp, and never returns home. When Tom goes to find her, he discovers her apron with her heart and liver inside.

* The 16-millimeter camera was broken during filming; Joshua Leonard (who had the camera in his pack) rolled down a hill, causing the lens to pop off the camera.

* This film was in the Guinness Book Of World Records for "Top Budget:Box Office Ratio" (for a mainstream feature film). The film cost $22,000 to make and made back $240.5 million, a ratio of $1 spent for every $10,931 made.

* The sign for Burkitsville at the beginning of the movie has been stolen three times, and was stolen opening night of the movie.

* The waitress asking about Blair High School is played by Sandra Sánchez, the sister of director Eduardo Sánchez.

* The three leads believed the Blair Witch was a real legend during filming, though of course they knew the film was going to be fake. Only after the film's release did they discover that the entire mythology was made up by the film's creators.

* Held the record for the highest-grossing independent movie of all time until October 2002, when it was surpassed by My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002).

* This film uses the word "fuck" 154 times.

* The filmmakers placed flyers around Cannes for the film festival that were "Missing" posters, stating that the cast was missing. All the flyers were taken down by the next day. It turns out that a television executive had been kidnapped just prior, and they were taken down out of respect. The executive was since recovered safely.

* It took a mere 8 days to shoot this film.

* Apparently, Heather Donahue brought a knife into the forest while filming was taking place because she didn't like the idea of sleeping with two guys.

* To promote discord between actors, the directors deliberately gave them less food each day of shooting.

* In a scene where the main actors are sleeping in a tent at night, the tent suddenly shakes violently and they all get scared. This was unscripted and the director shook the tent; they were really scared.

* The first cut of the movie to be screened was 2.5 hours in length.

* Other endings shot in post-production that were scrapped included Mike being hanged, another had him bound to the wall with twigs in the manner of a stick figure. Stick figures themselves were experimented with as decorations in the final scene.

* The crackling sounds in the woods were made by the director and friends walking up to the camp's perimeter, breaking sticks, and then tossing them in various directions.

* The band 'HIM' shot parts of their music video for the song 'And love said no...' directly outside the house seen at the end of the movie

* When the movie was released the town of Burkittsville, in the hopes of making at least some profit from the film, did its own marketing. During the annual summer carnival the local Ruritan Club featured the "Bur-Witch" sandwich - country fried ham and a fried egg on top of a cheeseburger, nestled in a sesame seed bun, and doused with horseradish. The sandwich was the most popular selling item on the menu two years in a row.

A link to THE BLAIR WITCH 2
BOOK OF SHADOWS

The DARKSIDE wants to know, who is your favorite witch ?



WITCHIEPOO ROCKS