Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a 1978 science fiction film based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney.
Trivia:
At the beginning of the film, as the alien spores rain down on earth, you see them presumably landing on the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco – the headquarters of what was then the parent company of United Artists, which produced the film.
Cameo: ['Don Siegel (I)'] taxi driver. Siegel directed the original film, of which this film is a remake.
Cameo: [Kevin McCarthy] man asking for help. McCarthy was the star of the original film, of which this film is a remake.
Cameo: ['Robert Duvall (I)'] the priest on the swing.
According to the commentary on the DVD, director Philip Kaufman said they paid ‘Robert Duvall (I)’ by giving him an Eddie Bauer jacket.
Director Cameo: [Philip Kaufman] playing an impatient man rapping on the window of a phone booth occupied by Donald Sutherland.
Silence is heard as the end credits roll as there was no end title music composed or recorded for the film.
Elizabeth’s nude scene in the factory was also filmed with clothes. That was seen when the film debuted on ABC in 1980.
Donald Sutherland insisted on performing his own stunts in the film’s climax. His scenes at the pod factory were filmed without harnesses or nets. In the shot of a fireball erupting from the factory, Sutherland barely missed it. However, an extra missed his cue and was seriously injured from the explosion.
Among the sounds Ben Burtt used for the pod growing scene, the heartbeat came from an ultrasound recorded on his pregnant wife. The pod screams were recorded pig squeals. Additionally, the natural diegetic sounds (crickets, birds chirping) fade as the film progresses, until only mechanical sounds (sirens, the garbage trucks) are heard.
Donald Sutherland was hit by a Volkswagen beetle while filming a shot of Matthew and Elizabeth running. He fell onto the windshield and was able to see the driver saying “Oh, my God! Not you!”
Matthew’s story/joke goes as follows. The British are trapped in the Sahara and are surrounded by the Germans. One day, an officer makes an announcement: “I have good news and bad news. The bad news is, we have no food but camel poop. The good news is, there is plenty of it.”
While rehearsing Kevin McCarthy’s cameo, a naked homeless man recognized him and said “The first one was better”.
Cameo: [Cinematographer Michael Chapman] janitor at the Health Department. Appears when Elizabeth cries in Matthew’s arms and later when they sneak into the building.
During the taxi ride, Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams’ nervousness is genuine. Don Siegel had lost much of his vision and was driving through the dark streets of San Francisco without his glasses.
Don’t Open Till Christmas is a 1984 British horror film starring Edmund Purdom, Alan Lake, Belinda Mayne and Mark Jones. Directed by Edmund Purdom.
Trivia
The film took almost two years to complete after original director Edmund Purdom quit the job and Derek Ford took over but was fired after two days. The distributors then hired Ray Selfe to complete the direction and Al McGoohan to rewrite parts of the script, including the original ending and the London Dungeon sequence, and much of the footage was completely re-filmed.
Although the character of Dr Bridle (played by Nicholas Donnelly) is referred to in the script he has never appeared in any print of the movie. Due to the films many production difficulties his scenes were probably filmed but deleted.
Scream 2 is a 1997 horror thriller film, the second part of the Scream trilogy. This movie takes place one year after the original. As with the other films in the trilogy, Scream 2 combines straight-forward scares with dialogue that satirizes conventions of slasher films, especially (in this case) slasher film sequels.
Scream 2
Trivia:
Not only was the cast not informed who the killer was until the last Day of shooting, they also didn’t receive the last 10 pages of the script until it was time to film them. The last 10 pages were also printed on grey paper, therefore making them unable to be illicitly Xeroxed. All cast members had to sign contracts that they would not discuss the movie’s outcome or the killer’s identity with the media.
Body count: 10
In Scream, Sydney laments that with her luck, she’d be portrayed by Tori Spelling if her story were ever filmed. In Stab, the film-within-a-film in Scream 2, Tori Spelling does in fact play Sydney.
Cameo: [Wes Craven] man in the background at the hospital.
Cameo: [Kevin Williamson] Cotton’s interviewer on T.V.
Cameo: [Matthew Lillard] Co-star of the original Scream is in the background at the frat party.
Liev Schreiber’s dog (terrier) has a cameo in the film. A female co-ed leads him in front of the crowd that goes to investigate after news of Cici’s murder.
Most of the outdoor scene are filmed at Agnes Scott College, a women’s college in Atlanta, Georgia.
“Dewey’s Theme” and other bits of the score are actually taken from the Broken Arrow (1996) soundtrack by Hans Zimmer. Later Score Soundtrack releases for Scream 2 feature Belltrami’s score, although it was not used in the film.
There are several references to actors from “Friends” (1994) which stars ‘Courtney Cox’. Gale says that the nude photos of her that were put on the internet are fakes, and that the body is that of Jennifer Aniston. Also, We learn that in Stab, Dewey is played by ‘David Schwimmer’.
Though in most films, phone voices are recorded later, director Wes Craven actually had the voice of the killer on set, to heighten the sense of fear for the actors. According to ‘Roger L. Jackson’, who plays the voice, he was kept on set but always out of sight from the actors, so they couldn’t picture a face with the voice. He said while watching the monitors, he could see between takes that Heather Graham looked a little scared, whereas Sarah Michelle Gellar would pick up the phone and carry on a conversation with him.
Gail’s mention of doctored internet photos is also a reference to an incident that actually happened to ‘Courteney Cox’ in the mid-1990s.
Paulette Patterson, who plays the usher who hands masks to Maureen and Phil, won her role in a contest sponsored by MTV.
Eric Mabius, Natasha Gregson Wagner, and Paula Marshall all auditioned for roles.
The Gothic statues in the film aren’t Agnes Scott campus features; they were put there for the film and guarded by a watchman. Students on the campus for summer events were told not to mess with the statues, but at least once the statues were dressed up and decorated by mischievous students who evaded the watchman.
Officers Richards and Andrews are named after Kyle Richards and Brian Andrews, the two child actors that Jamie Lee Curtis babysat in the original Halloween.
The girl that Cici talks to on the phone before the killer calls is Selma Blair.
The third rule to surviving a sequel is cut from the movie, but is shown in the trailer. “”And #3. Never, ever under any circumstance assume that the killer is dead.”
The tagline for “Stab” (the movie within the movie) is, “This is Gonna Hurt”.
The plot twists were all a matter of top secrecy throughout production. The screenplay was heavily guarded and restricted to only the most crucial personnel. Certainly none of the cast knew how the film ended as the last 10 pages were withheld from them. Consequently when an early screenplay draft was leaked onto the Internet, revealing the intended identity of Ghostface, Kevin Williamson was forced to do some hasty rewrites. This meant that the film went into production without a completed script.
Earned one third of its total gross of $101.3 million in its opening weekend.
The rules for a horror movie sequel – as laid out by Randy in the film – are (1) the body count is always bigger and (2) the death scenes are always much more elaborate with more blood and gore.
The killer’s comments when Omar Epps overhears him in the bathroom stall next to him are directly inspired by the killer in Black Christmas (1974).
The film’s working title was “The Sequel to Scream”.
Released less than a year after Scream (1996/I).
A number of sequences in Kevin Williamson’s screenplay simply read “Wes will make it scary”.
Any actor auditioning for the part of Derek had to perform the scene in the cafeteria where he sings “I Think I Love You” without accompaniment.
Sarah Michelle Gellar signed on for the movie before even reading the script
When we first see CiCi (Sarah Michelle Gellar) alone in the sorority house and on the phone with her friend, she says “They aren’t going out anymore, Sarah broke up with Bailey when she found out he slept with Gwen.” Sarah, Bailey and Gwen were all characters on “Party of Five” (1994), which Neve Campbell starred in for 6 years.
In the trailer and TV spots, the scene where Sidney talks to the killer for the first time on the Lamda house phone is altered. In the trailers, the killer replies to her question with “It’s time, girlfriend!” In the theatrical version, he says “I want you. It’s show time.”
The idea of a sequel came up when writer Kevin Williamson was writing the script for _Scream (1996)_, feeling there was more to the story.
Started filming just 6 months after it’s predecessor _Scream (1996)_ was released.
Eye of the Devil is a 1967 film with occult and supernatural themes. This film was set in rural France and filmed in England. Starring Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Donald Pleasence, and Sharon Tate. Directed by J. Lee Thompson.
Sidney J. Furie and Michael Anderson (I) were originally approached to direct the film.
Deborah Kerr replaced ‘Novak, Kim’ in the role of Catherine de Montfaucon after an accident.
Horror Express, also known as Pánico en el Transiberiano, is a 1973 Spanish horror film directed by Eugenio Martin, written by Arnaud d’Usseau and Julian Zimet (credited as Julian Halevy), and starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas.
Cast
Cristopher Lee … Prof. Sir Alexander Saxton
Peter Cushing … Dr. Wells
Alberto de Mendoza … Father Pujardov
Silvia Tortosa … Countess Irina Petrovska
Julio Peña … Inspector Mirov
Angel del Pozo … Yevtushenko
Helga Liné … Natasha
Alice Reinheart … Miss Jones
José Jaspe … Conductor Koniev
Jorge Rigaud … Count Maryan Petrovski
Silvia Tortosa as Countess Irina Petrovska
Trivia:
The train interior sets and the train model used for the exterior shots were the same sets that the producer/director had just used for their collaboration Pancho Villa (1972), which had just finished production and which also featured Telly Savalas.
Peter Cushing arrived in Spain for filming and immediately told producer Bernard Gordon that he could not do the picture, as he felt it was too soon after his wife’s death. Christopher Lee convinced Cushing to stay on by reminiscing with him about the previous films they’d worked on together, much to the relief of Gordon.
German Import DVD has a Super-8 Version (German language only), as a special feature on the disc.
During the production there was only one set available for the interior of the train cars. All of the scenes for each train car had to be shot at once and then the set would have to be reconstructed for the next train car.
Ironically the film wasn’t a success in director Eugenio Martin’s home country of Spain.
Most of the film was shot without audio recording, the soundtracks and dialog were all added in post production. Stars Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Telly Savalas provided their own voices for the films English release.
Frequent airings on television throughout the 1970′s and 1980′s helped to gain Horror Express a devoted cult following among horror fans.
London After Midnight (1927) is a silent mystery film with horror overtones. The film stars Lon Chaney, Marceline Day, Conrad Nagel, Henry B. Walthall, and Polly Moran and was directed by Tod Browning. It is also a lost film, quite possibly the most famous and eagerly-sought of all lost films. The last known copy was destroyed in a fire in an MGM film vault in 1967.
Lon Chaney wore a set of false animal teeth that hurt him so much that he could only wear them for a few minutes at a time. The teeth Chaney wore were not animal teeth, but were made of gutta-percha, a hard rubber-like material. What gave him the most discomfort were the wire loops around his eyes.
It is believed that this film existed until 1967. Inventory records indicated that the only remaining print was being stored in MGM’s vault #7 which was destroyed by fire in 1967. By that time, all other elements had been destroyed or were missing.
Lady In Cement is a 1968 detective film, directed by Gordon Douglas and starring Frank Sinatra, Raquel Welch, Dan Blocker, Martin Gabel and Richard Conte. A sequel to the 1967 film Tony Rome, and based on the novel by Marvin H. Albert, Lady In Cement was released on November 20th 1968.
Trivia:
When Tony Rome walks into the room in the massage parlor where Bronski is, Bronski (Dan Blocker) is watching the TV show “Bonanza” (1959) where he starred as Hoss Cartwright.
The scene when Tony Rome gets in the taxi by the air-port, there is an advertisement for fellow “Rat Pack” member, Dean Martin’s restaurant on the side of the cab.
Sinatra says that he knew a girl that used to date bullfighters, a reference to Ava Gardner’s affair with a matador when filming The Barefoot Contessa (1954) in Spain.
As Tony Rome is running from the police on the beach, you hear a band playing the Sinatra song “You Make Me Feel So Young”.
Sleepy Hollow is a 1999 period horror film directed by Tim Burton.
Johnny Depp
The town Sleepy Hollow was created from the ground up in three months. At the time of filming, it was the largest set built in England and was put up in record time. The last set that held this record was built for Billy Elliot (2000).
The Western Wood was built on a sound-stage so everything, the weather, light, could be controlled.
Christina Ricci
The dress worn by Katrina Anne Van Tassel (Christina Ricci) in the last shot of the movie has the same pattern as Michael Keaton’s outfit in the climactic scene of Beetle Juice (1988) also directed by Tim Burton.
Tim Burton and the crew of the movie built the small town Sleepy Hollow complete with rooms, floors, and stairs. The town was dismantled after filming was completed.
Historically, Ichabod Crane was a very unattractive man. Johnny Depp wanted to add prosthetics to his face to make himself look ugly, but This is the first adaption of Sleepy Hallow that doesn’t involve the actor of the headless horseman having to conceal their head in the cloak. Rather, to fit with the technology, the head of the actor is replaced with a blue screen mask and a CGI collar to match the flow of the robe.
Jacob’s Ladder is a 1990 psychological thriller / horror film directed by Adrian Lyne, based on a screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin. It stars Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Peña, Danny Aiello, and Jason Alexander. Actor Macaulay Culkin appears in an uncredited performance.
Tagline: The most frightening thing about Jacob Singer’s nightmare is that he isn’t dreaming.
Trivia:
All SFX were filmed live, with no post-production. For example, to achieve the famous ‘shaking head’ effect, director Adrian Lyne simply filmed the actor waving his head around (and keeping his shoulders and the rest of his body completely still) at 4fps, resulting in an incredibly fast and deeply disturbing motion when played back at the normal frame-rate of 24fps.
The Bergen Street station in the film was actually an abandoned, lower level portion of the station, which had to be re-tiled and fixed to look as if it was still in working condition.
All ads in the subway and Bergen Street station are anti-drug ads.
According to the original script, the subway station Jacob arrives at in the beginning of the movie was supposed to be Nostrand Avenue – not Bergen Street.
According to the original script, after Jacob is nearly run over by the subway train, a sequence involving a man being raped in the subway station mens bathroom was supposed to occur. It was filmed but deleted from the final cut (parts of the scene can be seen in the Making-Of featurette Building ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ (1990) (V)).
Writer Bruce Joel Rubin wrote the script for Jacob’s Ladder in 1980 after he had a dream of being trapped in a subway. He spent ten years trying to get it produced, but the script remained languishing in developmental limbo. During this period, Rubin’s agent told him that the film would never be made as “Hollywood doesn’t make ghost movies”. After the Rubin scripted Ghost (1990) became a smash hit, coupled with the success of Alan Parker’s Angel Heart (1987), studios became more open to the possibilities of Rubin’s script. After taking on the role of director, Adrian Lyne spent over a year refining the script with writer Rubin.
Adrian Lyne made sure Jacob and his visions never appear together in the same shot.
The hospital gurney that carries Jacob was deliberately unbalanced by Adrian Lyne. He raised one wheel slightly off the floor, causing it to rattle and spin.
The confrontation between Jacob and Geary originally takes place in a courtroom corridor. Lyne moved them to the stairs in order to downplay the height difference between Tim Robbins (who is 6′ 5″) and ‘Jason Alexander’ (who is 5′ 5″).
Some additional scenes from the original script which were changed or removed by director Adrian Lyne: – During the dance scene, ALL the dancers turn into demons. – During one of his Vietnam flashbacks, Jacob has a vision of a “celestial staircase” accompanied by heavenly music. – Jacob watches a reverend on TV who rants about the world coming to an end. – Jacob sees an image of a demon on the wall of his living room, which, when he looks closely at it, becomes a portal to Hell. – A scene following the “antidote” sequence in which the ceiling explodes and Jacob is surrounded by a vision of Heaven. – A different ending, where Jezzie turns herself inside-out and transforms into a huge demon, which Jacob has to fight before ascending to heaven.
The closing legend of the film mentions the testing of a drug named BZ in Vietnam. BZ is NATO code for a hallucinogen called 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, which was rumored to have been administered to US troops during the Vietnam War in an attempt to increase their combat abilities.
After initial test audiences reported that the film was overwhelming, director Adrian Lyne cut out almost thirty minutes of material, almost all of which came from the last third of the film. Four major sequences were removed after Jacob (Tim Robbins) first meets Michael (Matt Craven); a scene where Michael gives him an antidote for the Ladder, a scene where Jacob thinks he is cured but turns out not to be; a scene where he goes to Michael’s apartment and finds Michael decapitated; and a scene just prior to his final meeting with Gabe (Macaulay Culkin), where he meets Jezzie (Elizabeth Peña), who shows her true form.
For all of the chiropractor scenes, director Adrian Lyne ensured there was a real chiropractor on-set, who would work with actor Danny Aiello so as to ensure authenticity. According to Lyne, chiropractors often approach him and thank him for going to the trouble of getting what they do exactly right.
According to director Adrian Lyne, most of the dialogue in the opening scene between the soldiers was improvised on set by the actors themselves, especially the conversation between George (Ving Rhames) and Jacob (Tim Robbins) about masturbation.
Prior to the commencement of filming, former US marine Dale Dye took actors Tim Robbins, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Eriq La Salle, Ving Rhames, Brian Tarantina, Brent Hinkley and Anthony Alessandro to a 5-day military boot camp.
Adrian Lyne also heavily rewrote the scene involving the biblical Jacob’s ladder at the end of the film. Writer Bruce Joel Rubin had written the scene to involve a massive staircase ascending into the clouds, with crowds of people lining it, towering columns, and huge gates at the summit. Again however, Lyne felt that such an image could come across as preposterous (he refers to Rubin’s original conception as the Liberace scene’ on the DVD commentary track). As such, Lyne rewrote the scene to involve simply the staircase in Jacob’s house, basing this on the principal that heaven is wherever you were happiest.
In the original screenplay, writer Bruce Joel Rubin had created a typical Biblical hell, complete with winged demons, cloven hoofed devils with horns, people with beaks and strange objects lying randomly around (director Adrian Lyne likens Rubin’s vision to the work of Hieronymus Bosch). As with Rubin’s general depiction of demons however, Lyne felt that such scenes could very easily make an audience laugh. As such, he decided to rewrite the scene of Jacob’s descent into hell; ultimately coming up with the hospital sequence where Jacob is wheeled on a gurney into a metaphorical hell which becomes more and more grotesque as he moves.
In Bruce Joel Rubin’s original screenplay, all of the demons who appear throughout the film were typical biblical demons with horns, wings, cloven hooves etc. Director Adrian Lyne felt that this kind of imagery could very easily come across as comic, which would destroy the film. He felt that the fact that the imagery was so far from human lessened its impact, and as such, he decided he wanted the demons to be humanesque, but not quite human. During his research into this (which was when he discovered the photography of Joel-Peter Witkin), Lyne came across the Thalidomide scandal. Thalidomide was a drug made available for purchase from 1957 to 1961. Ostensibly, it was designed to treat pregnant women; primarily as an antiemetic to combat morning sickness, and secondarily as a sleeping aid. However, prior to its release, inadequate clinical tests were carried out, leading to roughly 10,000 children in Africa and Europe being born with severe physical deformities because their mothers had taken thalidomide during their pregnancy. The most common defects were phocomelia, dysmelia, amelia and polymelia; all conditions which affect the appearance of the limbs. During his research, Lyne studied the Thalidomide case, and came to feel that the birth defects caused by the drug represented the perfect starting place for his redesign of Rubin’s demons. The Thalidomide scandal was also the inspiration for David Cronenberg’s Scanners (1981).
According to director Adrian Lyne, the drug aspect of the story was inspired by the Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain book, “Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and Sixties Rebellion”.
Director Adrian Lyne used the art of painters William Blake, H.R. Giger, and Francis Bacon and photographers Diane Arbus and Joel-Peter Witkin as his primary influences for the visual style of the film.
The film was green-lit by Paramount Pictures (with whom Adrian Lyne had made both Flashdance (1983) and Fatal Attraction (1987), and with whom writer Bruce Joel Rubin had made Ghost (1990)), but there was a change of leadership in the studio and the new executives were unsure of the film. They demanded that the end of the movie be changed, but both Lyne and Rubin refused, and so Paramount pulled the plug on the film. It appeared as if the project was going to have to be completely abandoned until Mario Kassar and Andrew G. Vajna of Carolco Pictures saved it with a budget of $25 million. They also gave Lyne complete creative control as well as final cut of the film.
In an ironic reversal, Adrian Lyne turned down directorial duties on The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) so he could direct Jacob’s Ladder. His first choice for the role of Jacob Singer was Tom Hanks, but Hanks turned down the film so he could make The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990).
According to writer Bruce Joel Rubin, the script was heavily inspired by the Bardo Thodol (The Tibetan Book of the Dead), the biblical story of Jacob’s ladder and Robert Enrico’s Oscar-winning short film La rivière du hibou (1962), based on the 1890 Ambrose Bierce short story ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’, in which much of the narrative is a man’s experience of an imagined life in the spilt second before he dies.
Actors who were allegedly interested in playing the leading role of Jacob Singer included Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino and Richard Gere. For the role of Jezzie, director Adrian Lyne auditioned roughly 300 women, including Julia Roberts, Andie MacDowell, Madonna and Jennifer Lopez. The role eventually went to the very first person who auditioned – Elizabeth Peña.
Sidney Lumet, Michael Apted and Ridley Scott all tried to get the project green-lit during its ten-year period of non-production.
Don Johnson and Mickey Rourke both turned down the lead role.
The People Under the Stairs is a 1991 horror film directed by Wes Craven and starring Brandon Adams, Everett McGill, Wendy Robie, A. J. Langer, Ving Rhames and Sean Whalen.
Trivia:
Wes Craven was inspired to write this film after seeing a real-life news story about parents who locked their children up inside their house, never allowing them outside.
Wes Craven chose Wendy Robie and Everett McGill to play the parts of Mommy and Daddy after seeing them play husband and wife on the TV series, “Twin Peaks” (1990).
Through out the entire movie you hear the Man and Woman call each other “Mommy” and “Daddy”. You never hear their real names. But when Alice attacks the woman, you hear her yell for the Man and she calls him Eldon.
Although Alice was a 12 year old girl, actress A.J. Langer was almost 17 when she played the character in this movie.
