Frankenhooker is an American black comedy horror film that was released in 1990. Very loosely inspired by Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, the film was directed by Frank Henenlotter and stars James Lorinz as medical school drop-out Jeffrey Franken and former Penthouse Pet Patty Mullen as the title character (who wears a fatsuit in the beginning of the film).

Trivia:

Beverly Bonner plays “Casey”, a character that appears in Basket Case (1982), Brain Damage (1988), and Basket Case 2 (1990), all also directed by Frank Henenlotter.

The brain with the eye in the beginning of the film is based on the advertisements for The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962)

The hooker talk show is a parody of _”The Morton Downey Jr. Show” (1987) [TV-Series 1987-1989]_

The interior of the Franken family garage is intentionally four times as large as the exterior, as specified in the screenplay.

Director Cameo: [Frank Henenlotter] on the train that Frankenhooker takes to Manhattan, standing by the door holding a newspaper.

A family in the movie is called Shelley…after Mary Shelley, the original author of Frankenstein.

Writer/director Frank Henenlotter improvised the basic story at a pitch meeting. After getting the okay to make the picture, he then wrote the script for the movie.

Louise Lasser had just recovered from being sick and hence could hardly speak when she shot her scene talking to James Lorinz. Lasser redid all her dialogue in a post-production recording session.

The Walking Dead is a 1936 horror film starring Boris Karloff as a wrongly executed man who is returned to life by a mad doctor (Edmund Gwenn). The film was directed by Michael Curtiz, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The Walking Dead inspired the low-budget remake The Man They Could Not Hang (1939), released by Columbia Pictures and starring Karloff as both the mad doctor and the reanimated corpse.

Trivia:

• Filming began on November 28 (Boris Karloff’s 48th birthday) and lasted 18 days.
• Boris Karloff’s character was originally conceived as ‘Dopey’ Ellman and was a drug addict and alcoholic.
• The accident scene was shot in Griffith Park.

John Carpenter’s Starman is a 1984 science fiction-fantasy film directed by John Carpenter which tells the story of an alien (Jeff Bridges) who has come to Earth in response to the invitation found on the gold phonograph record installed on one of the Voyager space probes.

The screenplay was written by Bruce A. Evans, Raynold Gideon and Dean Riesner (uncredited). Bridges was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The film inspired a short-lived, 1986 television series of the same name which starred Robert Hays and Christopher Daniel Barnes.

Trivia:

• Producer Michael Douglas considered several directors, including Mark Rydell, Adrian Lyne, John Badham and Tony Scott, before settling on John Carpenter.
• Jeff Bridges’ character (Starman) walks in and buys a Cadillac “cash”. In the film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), Bridges character (Lightfoot) exclaims that one day he would like to walk up and buy a Cadillac with cash.
• This script was being developed at Columbia at the same time as another script about an alien visitation. The studio did not want to make both, so the head of the studio had to choose which film to make; he decided to make this one and let the other script go to a rival studio. The other script was for _E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)_.
• The only John Carpenter film to have an Academy Award nomination (Jeff Bridges, Best Actor).
• The role of Starman originally went to Kevin Bacon.
• When Jeff Bridges walks outside the house naked and uses a ‘marble’ his hair seems to stand on end. This effect was actually created by shooting Bridges hanging upside-down and then matting the shot onto the background the right way up to give him a surreal look.

Meteor is a 1979 disaster film in which scientists detect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and struggle with international, cold war politics in their efforts to prevent disaster. The movie starred Sean Connery and Natalie Wood. It was directed by Ronald Neame and with a screenplay by Edmund H. North and Stanley Mann, “inspired” by an MIT report Project Icarus. The movie co-starred Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Henry Fonda, Johnny Yune, and Katherine DeHetre.

Tagline: There’s No Place On Earth To Hide!

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• Many elements of the movie’s plot were used in the 1998 films Armageddon and Deep Impact.

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• A 2009 film with the same title and a similar plot, Meteor (TV miniseries), was broadcast by NBC as a 4-hour, 2-part miniseries.

Motel Hell is a 1980 horror comedy film directed by Kevin Connor and starring Rory Calhoun as farmer, butcher, and meat entrepreneur Vincent Smith. Often seen as a satire of modern horror films such as Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre because of its low budget nature, the original intent was to make a serious horror film, with moments of disturbing wit and irony. The film’s score was composed by Lance Rubin.

Tagline: You might just die…laughing!

Trivia:

Monique St.Pierre

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Film set for release February 12, 2010:

The Wolfman (2010)

Upon his return to his ancestral homeland, an American man (Del Toro) is bitten, and subsequently cursed by, a werewolf.  Starring: Emily Blunt,  Benicio Del Toro, Hugo Weaving, Anthony Hopkins, and Geraldine Chaplin.

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The Wolfman (2010)

Joe Johnston – Director, Andrew Kevin Walker – Writer (screenplay), David Self – Writer (screenplay), Curt Siodmak – Writer (1941 motion picture screenplay),  and Benicio Del Toro – Producer

Production:

In March 2006, Universal Pictures announced the remake of The Wolf Man with actor Benicio del Toro (a fan of the original film and collector of Wolf Man memorabilia) in the lead role.  Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker was attached to the screenplay, developing the original film’s story to include additional characters as well as plot points that would take advantage of modern visual effects.  Del Toro also looked towards Werewolf of London and The Curse of the Werewolf for inspiration.

In February 2007, director Mark Romanek was attached to helm The Wolfman.  The film was scheduled for a November 12, 2008 release, before being pushed back to early 2009 in September 2007.  In January 2008, Romanek left the project because of “creative differences”.  Brett Ratner emerged as a frontrunner to replace Romanek, but the studio also met with Frank Darabont, James Mangold and Joe Johnston. They were also interested in Bill Condon, and Martin Campbell was interested.  Johnston was hired to direct on February 3, 2008, and the film’s shooting schedule and budget remained as intended.  Johnston hired David Self to rewrite the script.

Shooting took place from March 3 to June 23, 2008 in the United Kingdom. The film was budgeted at US$85 million.  They shot at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, Chatsworth, Derbyshire, and Castle Combe in Wiltshire.  They transformed Chatsworth House by adding weeds, dead grass and ivy.  They also shot in Lacock in Wiltshire, a village conserved by the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, for a day. Universal donated £5000 to the village, in return for filming in the tithe barn for a scene involving frozen corpses.  A funeral scene was also shot beside the Temple of Ancient Virtue at Stowe House for the duration of an afternoon, the temple coated in false ivy with copious amounts of smoke/mist floating over the setting. Pick-ups at Pinewood were conducted in May 2009.

Rick Baker created the make-up for The Wolfman. When he heard Universal was remaking the film, he eagerly pursued it, as both The Wolf Man and Frankenstein inspired him to become a make-up artist as a child. He acknowledged transforming del Toro was difficult because he is a hairy man: “Going from Benicio to Benicio as the Wolf Man isn’t a really extreme difference. Like when I did An American Werewolf in London, we went from this naked man to a four-legged hound from hell, and we had a lot of room to go from the transformation and do a lot of really extreme things. Here we have Benicio del Toro, who’s practically the Wolf Man already, to Benicio del Toro with more hair and bigger teeth.”

From left to right: Rick Baker, Emily Blunt, and Benicio del Toro

Baker and del Toro were adamant about the design resembling the make-up created by Jack Pierce, but Romanek went through thousands of concept art. When Johnston signed on, Baker returned to his second design, which is the finished result.  The make-up took three hours to apply, and one hour to remove. New pieces of latex prosthetic makeup and loose hair was applied to del Toro’s face each day, while several dentures and wigs were created in case some were damaged.  Baker said the transformation will likely be computer-generated, which disappoints him as he is not being involved and therefore feels it will look unrealistic (as the animators do not have his knowledge of the design).  In February 2009, ZBrush art of the transformation by Baker leaked online.  In addition to the film, at the 2009 “Halloween Horror Nights,” Universal Studios Florida is adding The Wolfman to the event.

The Wolfman (2010)

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