Jack the Giant Killer (1962) is a United Artists feature film starring Kerwin Mathews in a fairy tale story about a young man who defends a princess against a sorcerer’s giants and demons. The film was loosely based on the traditional tale “Jack the Giant Killer” and features extensive use of stop motion animation. The film was directed by Nathan H. Juran and later re-edited and re-released as a musical by producer Edward Small.
Trivia:
Producer Edward Small re-released this film as a musical. Songs were dubbed onto the soundtrack. Some of the footage was doctored to make it look like some of the original cast were singing rather than speaking their dialog.
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This was producer Edward Small’s attempt to cash in on the huge success of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). He even hired the same director (Nathan Juran), hero (Kerwin Mathews) and villain (Torin Thatcher).
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The film was unreleased in the UK until 1967 and then received cuts for an ‘A’ certificate to edit the witch attack on the ship, Princess Elaine being attacked by the giant, and Jack’s fight with the dragon.
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a 1953 science fiction film directed by Eugène Lourié and stars Paul Christian, Paula Raymond and Cecil Kellaway with visual effects by Ray Harryhausen. The film is about an atomic bomb test in the Arctic Circle that unfreezes a hibernating fictional dinosaur, a Rhedosaurus, that begins to wreak havoc in New York City. It was one of the first monster movies that helped inspire the following generation of creature features, coining it with the atomic age.
Trivia:
Vera Miles and Paul Picerni appear in the trailer for this film, but not in the film itself.
While visiting his friend Ray Harryhausen on the set, Ray Bradbury was given a copy of the script (which was going under the working title “Monster From the Sea”) and was asked if he could possibly do some rewriting on it. After reading the script, Bradbury remarked about a scene in the story (which featured the monster destroying a lighthouse) that seemed very similar to a short story that he had published in “The Saturday Evening Post” several years earlier called “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms”. Bradbury’s story was about a dinosaur that destroys a lighthouse. The next day Bradbury received a telegram offering to buy the film rights to the story. After the sale, the films title was changed to “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms”. Years later when Bradbury had his story reprinted he changed the title to “The Fog Horn”. The dinosaur skeleton in the museum sequence is artificial. It was obtained from storage at RKO where it had been constructed for Bringing Up Baby (1938). The “Coney Island Amusement Park” in the film is actually The Long Beach Amusement Park in Long Beach, California. The production was able to film at the park from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. The film is based on a short story by Ray Bradbury. This film (which was inspired by the successful 1952 re-release of KING KONG) was the first film to feature a giant creature awakened or mutated by a Nuclear Bomb. Deleted Scene: The 2003 DVD release reveals one shot of the Rhedasaurus that was omitted from the final film. That shot can be found in the trailer for “The Black Scorpion” (in special features) about 1/2 through the preview. (Spoiler: The Beast is walking, breast high, toward screen right. The background shows 2 buildings; one of them with fire escapes. Superimposed title card states, “You’ve thrilled to the terror of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.” When the radio announcer is reading the news about the monster’s rampage through New York, various shots of the city are shown, mostly with panicked citizens in the street. When the announcer mentions the situation at Times Square, the accompanying footage shows the Palace Theater, whose marquee reads “Judy Garland – Live and in Person.” Warner Brothers bought the film from producers Hal E. Chester and ‘Jack Deitz’ for $450,000. Before the film was sold to Warner Brothers, it contained an original music score composed by Michel Michelet. Execs at Warners felt Michelet’s score wasn’t powerful enough so they replaced it with an original score by David Buttolph. Some film aficionados might recognize Alvin Greenman, the first character to speak after the narrator, and the first to notice the beast on on the radar. Six years earlier he played Alfred, the Macys Janitor in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). TV aficionados though might recognize the second character to speak. Playing the part of Charlie is actor James Best, best remembered for his role as Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane from “The Dukes of Hazzard” (1979). This was said to have been one of the inspirations for Tomoyuki Tanaka to go ahead and film Gojira (1954). When the streets are being cleared once the beast comes ashore in NYC, films appearing on various theater marquees are “Detective Story”, “Come Fill The Cup” and “Across The Wide Missouri”. During the octopus/shark sequence, some of the footage was obviously shot in an aquarium, because some of the octopus’ suckers are gripping the glass.
Rosemary’s Baby is a 1968 American horror/thriller/drama film written and directed by Roman Polanski, based on the bestselling 1967 novel of the same name by Ira Levin. The film received mostly positive reviews and earned numerous nominations and awards. The film has led to numerous references in film, television, music and other media. The American Film Institute ranked the film 9th in their 100 Years…100 Thrills list.
Trivia:
The Dakota Building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side was renamed The Bramford for the film.
It was on the set of this film that Mia Farrow received divorce papers from then-husband Frank Sinatra. There was a popular belief that Alfred Hitchcock was originally offered the chance to direct this movie. This has been deemed false. The director was never approached. There is a popular rumor that Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey gave technical advice and portrayed Satan in the impregnation scene. This is false – LaVey had no involvement with the film. Oscar-nominated editor Sam O’Steen would later direct the sequel, Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby (1976) (TV). Directed by Roman Polanski, whose pregnant wife actress Sharon Tate was murdered in 1969 by Charles Manson and his followers, who titled their death spree “Helter Skelter” after the 1968 song by The Beatles, one of whose members, John Lennon, would one day live (and in 1980 be murdered) in the Manhattan apartment building called The Dakota – where Rosemary’s Baby had been filmed. There is a heatedly disputed rumor that Sharon Tate appears unbilled at the party Rosemary gives for her “young” friends. Mia Farrow does the vocals on the title-sequence lullaby. This was Roman Polanski’s very first adaptation, and it is very faithful to the novel. Pieces of dialog, color schemes and clothes are taken verbatim. William Castle acquired the movie rights to the novel. Robert Evans of Paramount agreed to green-light the project if Castle did not direct. This was due to Castle’s fame and reputation as a director of low budget horror films. Castle was allowed to make a prominent cameo appearance. According to Mia Farrow, the scenes where Rosemary walks in front of traffic were spontaneous and genuine. Roman Polanski is reported to have told her that “nobody will hit a pregnant woman.” This film, along with Repulsion (1965) and Le locataire (1976), forms a loose trilogy by Roman Polanski about the horrors of apartment/city dwelling. This was Roman Polanski’s first American film. His first American film was going to be Downhill Racer (1969), but Robert Evans of Paramount decided that “Rosemary’s Baby” would be more suited to Polanski. Casting for this film presented its own problems: Polanski at first saw Rosemary as an “All-American Girl” and sought Tuesday Weld for the lead, but she passed on the role. Jane Fonda was then approached, but turned down the offer so she could make Barbarella (1968) in Europe with then- husband Roger Vadim. According to his memoirs, Polanski for a while had the idea of having his future wife Sharon Tate on the part of Rosemary, yet he desisted, thinking it would have been unethical. Other actresses considered for the part were Julie Christie, Elizabeth Hartman and Joanna Pettet. Robert Evans suggested Mia Farrow based on her TV work and her media appeal (at the time she was Mrs. Frank Sinatra). Both men wanted Robert Redford for the role of Guy Woodhouse, but negotiations broke down when Paramount’s lawyers blundered by serving the actor with a subpoena over a contractual dispute regarding his pulling out of Silvio Narizzano’s film Blue (1968). Other actors considered were Richard Chamberlain, Jack Nicholson and James Fox. Laurence Harvey begged to do it, Warren Beatty turned it down claiming “Hey! Can’t I play Rosemary?”, before the part was offered to John Cassavetes. For Minnie and Roman Castevet, William Castle suggested Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, the famous Broadway acting duo. He even tried to convince Polanski to let him play the part of Dr. Sapirstein, a role eventually filled by Ralph Bellamy. According to John Parker’s recent biography of Jack Nicholson, Robert Evans suggested Nicholson to Polanski but, after their meeting, the director stated that “for all his talent, his slightly sinister appearance ruled him out”. Mia Farrow actually ate raw liver for a scene in the movie. Roman Polanski was so faithful to the novel that he asked Ira Levin the date of the issue of the New Yorker in which Guy Woodhouse sees a shirt he wants. Levin confessed that he had made up the detail. The last movie of special effects creator Farciot Edouart. The devil costume that Anton LaVey was falsely rumored to have worn in the impregnation scene was later re-used in the film Asylum of Satan (1975). A small woman had difficulty fitting into the tiny suit. Cameo: [William Castle] man near phone booth. Cameo: [Tony Curtis] voice on phone of the actor who is struck blind by a witch’s curse so that Rosemary’s husband can get an acting job. Rosemary (Mia Farrow) says to Terry Gionoffrio (Angela Dorian), “I thought you were Victoria Vetri, the actress,” to which Terry responds, “Everyone says that, but I don’t see the resemblance.” Victoria Vetri is Angela Dorian’s real name. A scene was shot, but not used, of the characters attending an off-Broadway play. Mia Farrow’s and Emmaline Henry’s attend a performance of “The Fantasticks” and meet Joan Crawford and Van Johnson as themselves. Along with several other insignificant scenes, this was deleted to reduce the film’s running time. Production chief Robert Evans has admitted that he simply used an offer to direct Downhill Racer (1969) to lure Roman Polanski from Europe. It was his intention to have Polanski direct this film all along. The script called for Rosemary (Mia Farrow) to explain to Guy (John Cassavetes), that she’d “been to Vidal Sassoon” for her dramatic new haircut. Thus, Vidal Sassoon was in fact flown to the set to arrange Mia Farrow’s hair into the now iconic pixie cut she sports during the second half of the film. For the first part, she wears a blonde wig designed by famed stylist Sydney Guilaroff. Entertainment Weekly voted this the tenth scariest film of all time. The book that Rosemary reads in the cab is the Book of Ceremonial Magic, by A.E. Waite, Chapter IV: The Rituals Of Black Magic: Section 4: The Grimoire of Honorius. The italic section has been entered into the natural flow of the text; the previous paragraph has been shortened to make space for it. The movie’s poster was as #21 of “The 25 Best Movie Posters Ever” by Premiere. When Rosemary receives the book “All of Them Witches,” she is told that ‘the name is an anagram.’ At first she tries to rearrange the letters of the book’s title, but then realizes that the clue referred to a name within the book. However, the title actually is an anagram for ‘Hell a Cometh Swift.’ In a scene where Rosemary is getting her blood drawn, Rosemary tells the doctor that she just saw the off- Broadway show “The Fantasticks.” In that play, the parental figures arrange a “rape” of the ingenue, by a dark devilish character (named El Gallo), so a young man can save her, hoping that the young girl fall in love with the young man, marry him and procreate. Rosemary’s baby was born in June 1966 (6/66). Before the filming of the scene of Rosemary calling Donald Baumgart (the actor in the story who mysteriously goes blind), Mia Farrow did not know who would be speaking the lines. It was Tony Curtis, and in the scene Farrow shows slight confusion, finding the voice familiar but not able to place it. This confusion was exactly the effect director Roman Polanski hoped to capture by having Curtis read the lines. Ira Levin felt Rosemary’s Baby is “the single most faithful adaptation of a novel ever to come out of Hollywood.” William Castle speculated the reasons for this were because it was the first time Roman Polanski had ever adapted another writer’s work. Unaware he had the freedom to improvise on the book.
Predator is a 1987 science fiction action film directed by John McTiernan, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura, and Kevin Peter Hall. The story follows an elite team on a mission to rescue hostages from a guerrilla group in Central America. Unknowingly, the group is hunted by an extraterrestrial life form. Reaction to the film was generally favorable, and the film grossed $60 million in the United States. The film also generated a sequel, Predator 2 (1990) with another, titled Predators in development, and two crossover films with the Alien franchise: Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007).
Trivia:
According to an interview with director John McTiernan, the “hole in the jungle” appearance of the Predator was played by Jean-Claude Van Damme in a “blue screen” (actually red) suit. Van Damme quit after two days, unhappy with being cast as an uncredited special effect, but can be seen as the Predator in If It Bleeds We Can Kill It: The Making of ‘Predator’ (2001) (V). The alien was scrapped, redesigned and was eventually played by Kevin Peter Hall who was 7’2″ tall.
An attempt was made to get shots of the Predator swinging from tree to tree using a monkey in a red special-effects suit. However, the monkey kept removing the suit and the idea was abandoned. The mandibles of the predator were the idea of James Cameron. Most of film was shot under the original title “Hunter”, it was only later when the creature design was changed that the movie became “Predator”. The clapperboards showing the original title can be seen in the outtakes on the special edition DVD. The original “Hunter” model was a large creature with a long neck, a head shaped like a dog and one big eye in the middle. This can be seen on the camouflage demo’s on the DVD. It was only when Stan Winston moved in that the complete design of the now “Predator” changed, along with the title. Two waterfalls are used in the climax of the movie, both near Palenque in Mexico. The first is Misol Ha, just outside the village (beginning and end of the sequence), and the other is Agua Azul about an hour’s drive away (the middle part of the sequence). The original concept for this film originated as a joke. Someone said that the only person Rocky Balboa of the Rocky (1976) series of films had yet to fight was E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Two of the actors portraying commandos besieged by the Predator have been elected to state governorships: Jesse Ventura (Independent) was elected Governor of Minnesota in 1998, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (Republican) was elected Governor of California in a hotly-contested recall election in 2003. In addition, Sonny Landham (Republican) ran an unsuccessful campaign for Governor of Kentucky in 2003. The weapon that Blain (Jesse Ventura) is using is a minigun. This is a weapon most commonly mounted on the side of a helicopter (or an aircraft carrier) and many, many modifications had to be made to make it usable in the film. It was powered via an electrical cable hidden down the front of Blain’s trousers. The firing rate was slowed down to approximately 1/3rd the normal rate of fire, both to reduce consumption of blanks, and to make the spinning of the barrels visible on film. It is rumored that Ventura had to wear a bulletproof vest because of the forceful ejection of spent cartridges, but this is false. Unmodified miniguns eject out of the bottom, with the cases essentially falling out due to the force of gravity. Close examination of the film (especially the scene in which Mac fires the minigun at the fleeing predator, along with the other commandos) show that the ejection of the minigun was not changed. The studio would not allow John McTiernan to shoot this film in anamorphic widescreen due to the complexities of the optical effects. As a sly sort of retaliation, the director added an anamorphic version of the film’s opening 20th Century Fox logo, which looks noticeably stretched on screen. Sonny Landham was hired to work on this film, but on one condition: the insurance company insisted on a round-the-clock bodyguard for Landham, not to protect the actor, but to protect everyone else from the actor (who was prone to bar fights, etc.). Shane Black, who plays commando Hawkins, is actually a writer. The producer wanted Black, who was writing Lethal Weapon (1987), close to him to review the script. John McTiernan broke his wrist while on location, but kept working. John McTiernan admitted that actor R.G. Armstrong was too old for his part, but kept Armstrong simply because he liked him. Added to this, the actor wore “too much” tanning makeup to hide his age somewhat. The predator’s blood – a goopy substance with the color of Mountain Dew – was made on-set using a mixture of the liquid from inside glow sticks, and KY jelly. Due to health and safety regulations, Arnold Schwarzenegger was not allowed to light his cigar inside the helicopter near the beginning of the film. As a result the glow was added optically in post-production. Jesse Ventura was delighted to find out from the wardrobe department that his arms were 1″ bigger than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. He suggested to Schwarzenegger that they measure arms, with the winner getting a bottle of champagne. Ventura lost because Schwarzenegger had told the wardrobe department to tell Ventura that his arms were bigger. During the closing credits, Shane Black is seen prominently displaying a copy of Sgt. Rock #408 (Feb. 1986). In the DVD commentary, John McTiernan notes that at the time, Arnold Schwarzenegger had an adaptation of Sgt. Rock in production, and that’s why the comics were on set, so he could read them. He described the scene where Dutch (Schwarzenegger) walks up to Billy (Sonny Landham), who senses the Predator’s presence out in the bush, as a “Sgt. Rock moment”. Shane Black spent his free time on the set writing the screenplay for The Last Boy Scout (1991). Arnold Schwarzenegger lost over 25 pounds before filming began in order to better fit the role of a special warfare operative, who would be lean as well as muscular. All of the actors are wearing Vietnam surplus canvas load bearing gear, not the more modern (i.e. post 1967) nylon gear. The sidearms carried by the troopers are Desert Eagle handguns. Cameo: [Sven-Ole Thorsen] Arnold Schwarzenegger’s friend and frequent collaborator appears as the Russian Officer. Acting debut for both Jesse Ventura and Shane Black. Third film in which Arnold Schwarzenegger wears a Seiko model H558-5009 diver’s watch. Since nicknamed “The Arnold”, it is highly sought-after by collectors and regularly trades for values in excess of its original retail cost. Its distinctive black collar and stainless steel fittings suitably complements Schwarzenegger’s exaggerated arm muscles in his early films. Supposedly, Jerry Goldsmith was originally approached to score the film, but was unavailable. The map General Phillips uses to brief Dutch is a map of Brazil. The map show a geographic feature called Chapada das Mangabeiras. The sound editors called the Predator’s shoulder gun the ‘Parrot Gun’, because when it moved independent of the Predator while aiming, it reminded them of “Peter Sellers with a rubber parrot on his shoulder.” One of the elements in the sound of the ‘snap’ to Predator-vision is a whip crack.
Ghostbusters, titled on-screen as Ghost Busters, is a 1984 American science fiction comedy film written by co-stars Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis about three eccentric New York City parapsychologists-turned-ghost exterminators. The film was released in the United States on June 8, 1984 and like several films of the era, teamed Aykroyd and/or Ramis with headliner Bill Murray. It was produced and directed by Ivan Reitman, who also directed Stripes, and stars Murray, Aykroyd, Ramis, Rick Moranis, Sigourney Weaver, Annie Potts, and Ernie Hudson. The film made $291,632,124 in the United States alone, the equivalent of $538,260,000 in 2010 prices, ranking the film as the 32nd biggest grossing in U.S. Box Office history after adjustment for inflation.
It was followed by a sequel, Ghostbusters II in 1989, and two animated television series, The Real Ghostbusters (later renamed Slimer! And the Real Ghostbusters) and Extreme Ghostbusters. Ramis, who co-wrote the first two films, has confirmed that a script for a potential third film is being developed by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, the writing team best known for their work on Curb Your Enthusiasm and the American version of The Office. Ramis told a Chicago Tribune columnist in 2008 that the original films’ four main cast members may have minor on-screen roles: “The concept is that the old Ghostbusters would appear in the film in some mentor capacity”. The American Film Institute ranked Ghostbusters 28th in its 100 Years… 100 Laughs list of film comedies.
Trivia:
The role of Louis Tully was originally written for John Candy.
The role of Peter Venkman was originally written for John Belushi. According to Ivan Reitman and Harold Ramis in the DVD Commentary, in Dan Aykroyd’s original rough draft of the movie, the story was going to take place in the future and that there would be teams of Ghostbusters like there are paramedics and firefighters (thus explaining basing the Ghostbusters HQ in a firehouse). According to Reitman, such a film would cost “at least $300 million in 1984 dollars”. So Harold Ramis was brought in to rewrite the script and bring it into modern times. The role of Winston was originally written for Eddie Murphy. Gozer was originally going to be played by Paul Reubens, who turned down the role. In the original script, Gozer appeared as a normal man in a business suit. Punk rocker Anne Carlisle was originally offered the role of Zuul, but turned it down. Sandra Bernhard was originally offered the role of Janine. Dan Aykroyd’s original version of the script began with the Ecto-mobile flying out of Ghostbusters HQ, but director Ivan Reitman suggested that it would be better to show how the team got started. Dana’s apartment building actually exists at 55 Central Park West in New York City. The building is actually only 20 stories high. For the film, matte paintings and models were used to make the building look bigger and with more floors. According to the commentary on the DVD, the top of the building is modeled after the top of the Continental Life Building in St. Louis, MO. The Stay-Puft marshmallow man was originally supposed to come up out of the water right next to The Statue of Liberty, to get a contrast of size, but the scene was too hard to shoot. On the set, Dan Aykroyd referred to the “Slimer” ghost as the ghost of John Belushi. Though never referred to in the script, the green ghost the guys bust in the hotel was dubbed “Onionhead” by the crew, because of its horrid smell. A scene where the ghost haunts two newlyweds showed this characteristic, but it was cut. Since it was never referred to in the movie, the writers of the animated show came up for a different name for the green ghost: Slimer. The eggs which fry themselves are sitting next to a package of “Sta-Puft” marshmallows. There is also a large advertisement for “Sta-Puft” marshmallows (complete with the marshmallow man) visible on the side of a building. Many sequences were shot but removed from the film (a couple of the following were added as extras to the Criterion Collection CAV laserdisc release) : – Several shots in the sequence where Venkman, Stantz, and Spengler are thrown off campus were cut. – Several scenes throughout the film with Janine and Egon were cut. – The first time Venkman leaves Dana’s apartment, he says to Louis “What a woman.” – The “green slimer” ghost is discovered by two newlyweds at the Hotel Sedgewick. Also cut was a Ghostbuster inspection of the room. – A policeman tries to ticket the Ectomobile, but the car won’t let him. – Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd play two bums that witness Louis being chased by the terror dog. – Ray and Winston inspect Fort Detmerring, where Ray dresses in an old General’s coat and falls asleep. When he awakes, he sees a female ghost above his bed. This part of the sequence was kept and used in the montage in the middle of the film. – Louis encounters two muggers in Central Park during the ghost montage. – Venkman and Stantz discuss matters with the mayor outside City Hall. – The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man sequence ends with his large hat falling to the ground. Some deleted shots appear in the film’s trailers. In the middle of the film’s initial release, to keep interest going, Ivan Reitman had a trailer run, which was basically the commercial the Ghostbusters’ use in the movie, but with the 555 number replaced with a 1-800 number, allowing people to call. They got a recorded message of Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd saying something to the effect of “Hi. We’re out catching ghosts right now.” They got 1,000 calls per hour, 24 hours a day, for six weeks. When Alice the librarian is queried as to whether anyone in her family had ever had any history of mental illness, she replies she had an uncle who thought he was St. Jerome. Jerome is the patron saint of librarians. The demonic voice of Dana/Zuul was performed by director Ivan Reitman. The voice of Gozer was provided by Paddi Edwards. In rehearsal, Bill Murray (Venkman) teased Czech model Slavitza Jovan (Gozer) about her pronunciation of the line “Choose and Perish”, which sounded to him like “Jews and Berries”(!) and he’d say “There are no Jews and Berries here!” Most of the deleted scenes are “restored” in the novelized adaptation of Ghost Busters (1984). The original script had a budding romance between the cynical receptionist Janine and the blissfully out of it Egon, but most of it was edited out of the film. The special edition DVD features a deleted scene of Janine giving Egon a coin for luck before he goes off with the other Ghostbusters to fight Gozer; they are interrupted by Venkman. The relationship between Janine and Egon was explored more in the animated series that followed. The interiors for the hotel scene were filmed (mostly) at the famous Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, on the corner of 5th and Grand. This famous location has been used for hundreds of films, TV shows, commercials and even a few music videos. The three doors that the Ghostbusters walk through in the movie are actually located on the entrance on 5th St. The Grand Avenue entrance leads you to the main lobby, which used to be the hotel ballroom, as seen in the film. (The ceiling is a dead give away.) The room’s formerly solid walls have been replaced by glass doors (at the entrance) and archways. The reception desk is where the long banquet table was located in the film. To the right of that would have been the bar that Egon blasts. If you go into the bar to the right of the main lobby, there is a picture of the old ballroom on one of the walls, giving you a better perspective of what the room looked like in the early ’80s. Flashbulbs were used on the business end of the proton pack weapons so that the special effects creators could properly synch up the effects with the action (most visible in the dining room scene, frame by frame, when capturing Slimer). All the college scenes were filmed at Columbia University in New York, including the fictional Weaver Hall office/lab interiors. Director Ivan Reitman decided to use an actual on-campus office instead of a soundstage so the film crew could film indoors if the weather turned bad, rather than lose a day’s filming. Columbia University agreed to all this, on the condition the school not be mentioned by name on-camera. The firehouse set the Ghostbusters use as HQ was remodeled and used once again as the mechanic shop in The Mask (1994). The original premise of Ghost Busters (1984) had three main characters: John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy. They fought ghosts in S.W.A.T. like suits using wands instead of guns. The ghost named Slimer was known as ‘Onionhead’, and at the end of the movie the Ghostbusters franchise was all over the United States. John Candy also was slated to play Louis. However, with Belushi’s death and characters backing out, the script was rewritten and new actors cast. Storyboarded but never shot included: – A scene with Egon testing the proton pack, which is charged by being plugged in. The pack melts the plug. – A model’s mink coat comes to life on a runway. Note that this scene does happen in Ghostbusters II (1989) to a woman on the street. Early publicity for the film was a teaser campaign featuring just the “no ghosts” logo. As the campaign built, the Ectomobile was also driven around the streets of Manhattan. Exterior scenes of the Ghostbusters headquarters were filmed at the Hook and Ladder #8 Firehouse in the Tribeca section of New York City. Inside the firehouse are a Ghostbusters sign and photos taken with the cast and crew. After the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man is destroyed there is a shot of a man down on the street being deluged by a huge amount of marshmallow goo. Due to the extreme angle of the shot most viewers don’t realize that this is Walter Peck (William Atherton), until he screams, “I HATE you, Venkman!”. A cut scene (included on the DVD) took place a few moments before, at the same angle, where Peck tells the police to go up to the roof and arrest the Ghostbusters. The “marshmallow” goo was actually shaving cream. More than fifty gallons was dumped on Walter Peck (William Atherton), almost knocking him to the ground. The schedule for getting the movie into theatres for its scheduled release date in summer 1984 was so tight, director Ivan Reitman said that the final print included incomplete special effects shots and errors like “wires showing” but, “remarkably, people didn’t care”. One scene shot for the film but later deleted shows Ray and Winston on a call and Ray ends up in Canadian Mounties outfit. Production stills from this scene appear in the published version of the film script. Initally, Ray Parker Jr. was having trouble writing the theme song to the film. The problem was solved when he saw the TV commercial for the Ghostbusters business in the film which inspired him to write the song like a advertising jingle for the business. The song was a #1 hit for three weeks. When Venkman mentions the time Spengler tried to drill a hole in his head, Spengler’s response (“That would have worked if you hadn’t stopped me”) was actually ad-libbed by Harold Ramis. The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man suits cost Approximately $20,000 apiece. Three were made and all were destroyed during filming. The Ectomobile was originally painted black until it was pointed out that most driving would be at night and the car would be difficult to see. It was then repainted white. The firehouse used is actually two different firehouses that are in two different cities. The exterior is in NY, while the interior is in downtown Los Angeles. The LA firehouse is very popular with filmmakers and has been used in many movies. Bill Murray agreed to do this movie only on the condition that Columbia finance a remake of The Razor’s Edge (1946) with him as the star. The remake was made (The Razor’s Edge (1984)). The bum that Bill Murray played in a deleted scene looks and acts just like his character on Caddyshack (1980) (and also sports a golfing cap). The party scene where Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) mingles with his party guests (commenting on the price of the salmon, and so on) is not only taken in one continuous shot, but is almost entirely improvised. Huey Lewis and the News turned down an offer to write and record a theme song for Ghostbusters. They later sued Ray Parker Jr. for plagiarism, citing the similarities between his theme song and their earlier hit “I Want a New Drug.” Lindsey Buckingham was approached to write the theme song to after the successful collaboration for Vacation (1983) (“Holiday Road”). He declined because he didn’t want to get into the rut of being asked to write movie themes. There was an even more ferocious version of the Librarian Puppet that was going to be used, but it was rejected. However, it was recycled and used in another successful Columbia Pictures film released one year after this one, Fright Night (1985). Until the release of Home Alone (1990), this was the highest-grossing comedy of all time. In the original draft for Bill Murray’s character, sexual obscenities were written on Peter Venkman’s door; but Ivan Reitman wanted to make his film a target audience for families so the phrase “Venkman Burn in Hell” was added. In fact, this is a nod to the final scene in Stephen King’s Carrie (1976) – where there is a for-sale sign on the vacant lot where Carrie’s house once stood, and someone has graffitied it with “Carrie Burn in Hell”. Voted number 28 in channel 4′s (UK) “Greatest Family Films”. Scenes in the montage sequence of the Ghostbusters running around New York (and also driving in the Ecto-mobile) were done on the first day, largely without film permits. In one scene, someone who looks like they might be a security guard begins chasing after them, and Dan Aykroyd can be seen actually driving the Ecto-mobile. In the scene when the terror dogs (Zuul and Vince Clorthow) come to life, were actual statue designs on an old church in Philadelphia. As revealed in an interview with Mix Magazine Online the hit song ‘Ghostbusters’ was created 4:30 in the morning when after almost 2 long days of trying to create a song Ray Parker Jr. saw a commercial for a drain company that reminded him of a scene from the film. That commercial helped him coin the popular line “Who you gonna call?” The character of Winston was initially written to be a guard at the Ghostbusters firehouse. Also, in earlier drafts of the script, Winston was the one who conjured up the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. The phone number for the Ghostbusters as it appears on the television ad that Dana sees in her apartment is 555-2368. When the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man arrives, Ray says that he remembered the Stay-Puft marshmallows from when he use to go camping at Camp Wauconda. Camp Wauconda is an actual boy scout camp outside of Peoria, IL. The electric shock experiments that Venkman conducts on the college students parodied the real life Rhine Experiments, which related to ESP. In the early 1930s, Duke psychologist JB Rhine, interested in parapsychology, wanted to test for ESP. Using Zener Cards, a deck of 25 cards with 5 different symbols, test subjects were asked to report what card the test administrator was holding up without being able to see it. Though Rhine reported that one test subject was able to correctly guess all 25 cards correctly, the results have never been duplicated, and Venkman is apparently using electric shocks in an attempt to repeat the original results. Also, the Miligrim experiment was used as an inspiration, where people were asked to give increasing electric shocks to strangers. This experiment was more about seeing how far people would go when being pushed, and the movie used the same premise to see how people would like to have the good guy giving electric shocks unfairly in a test. Michael Keaton turned down both the roles of Dr. Peter Venkman and Dr. Egon Spengler. Chevy Chase turned down the role of Dr. Peter Venkman, he claimed that the script used in the movie wasn’t the original script and in the original script was very dark and even more scarier. The movie’s line “Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!” was voted as the #68 of “The 100 Greatest Movie Lines” by Premiere in 2007. The movie’s line “Well, there’s something you don’t see every day.” was voted as the #19 of “The 100 Greatest Movie Lines” by Premiere in 2007. The music video for the song “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jr., directed by Ivan Reitman, featured a number of celebrities who did not appear in the film. This included Chevy Chase, John Candy, Danny DeVito, Peter Falk, Melissa Gilbert, Carly Simon, Teri Garr, Irene Cara and George Wendt. In addition, the Ghostbusters themselves (in costume) danced down Times Square right behind Parker Jr. The lively chorus shouting the words “Ghostbusters” through the song were made up of the only people Ray Parker Jr. could find quickly enough to help him meet his deadline: his young girlfriend and her friends. The floating Sigourney Weaver special effect is an actual physical effect, not an optical effect. The actress was put in a full body cast and attached to a post that was hidden in the curtains. According to the commentary, this effect came from director Ivan Reitman’s Broadway experience. Christopher Walken, John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd and Jeff Goldblum were all considered for the role of Dr. Egon Spengler. Harold Ramis really had no intention of starring in the film, only writing it. But he decided to star in this film as Dr. Egon Spengler after he felt he was the best person suited for the role. The probe Venkman uses in Dana’s apartment is actually a United Technologies/Bacharach 300 Series “Sniffer”, normally used to locate utility gas leaks or low-oxygen hazards. The squeeze-bulb is standard. It is conceivable such a detector could be modified to find other gases-perhaps even paranormal ones. Jean Kasem’s feature film debut. Eddie Murphy was to have originally played Winston but did Beverly Hills Cop (1984) instead. That movie ended up beating this one as the year’s highest grossing film. The name ‘Gozer’ was taken from the much publicized alleged haunting in Amityville. The term ‘proton pack’ was never actually used until the middle of Ghostbusters II (1989) when Spengler, in the subway tunnel said “before we go any further I think we should get our proton packs.” Probably by interesting coincidence, the name “Zuul” corresponds to “Zuhl”, an Alien Being George Adamski claimed to have met in his 1955 book “Inside the Space Ships”. In 1982 producers Ivan Reitman, Joe Medjuck and Michael C. Gross were planning to make a film of the sci-fi novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. Douglas Adams wrote three drafts for them per his contract. In this occasion Medjuck and Gross were considering Bill Murray or Dan Aykroyd to play Ford Prefect, but then Aykroyd sent them his idea for this movie and they decided to do it instead. At their first brush with a ghost, Peter (Bill Murray) chides Ray (Dan Aykroyd) by calling him “Francine” (“Come here Francine.”). This may have been Murray poking ad-lib fun – or a jibe by the writers, including Aykroyd himself – at Aykroyd’s real-life friendship with Fran Drescher (see her bio). 225 E. 5th Street in Los Angeles, named as one of the locations (Firehouse #23, Ghostbusters HQ interior shots) runs parallel to Winston Street (to the North). Almost none of the scenes were filmed as scripted and, in fact, almost all of the scenes had at least one or two ad-libs. Coincidentally with a movie about ghosts and ghost-busting, the filming of the jail scene was actually a prison reported to be haunted, and the dailies had many scratches all over with no apparent physical cause. Ivan Reitman was concerned about returning there, but the crew was very relieved to find enough footage to complete the scene without returning. Dan Aykroyd’s original title for the film was “Ghost Smashers”. Had Eddie Murphy accepted the role of Winston, the character was actually meant to appear in more of the film. He was to have joined the team much earlier, and it would have been he who was slimed at the hotel. When Murphy declined the role, the script was re-written to have him appear about half-way through the film. CNN Host Larry King’s film debut. In the library scene, as an addition, there is a part where books are stacked, cover to cover, one on top of another. This is discovered with Ray calling it “symmetrical book stacking.” The whole scene was thought up by director Ivan Reitman that very day as he was driving to the set. In the storyboards for the film (included in a gift booklet for the Ghostbusters two disc set), the guns for the proton packs were actually wands, like magic wands. They were long sticks with a ball on the end. They fired by the Ghostbusters flicking their wrists as a magician would and pointing the wands at the ghosts. The wands were changed to laser guns to fit the idea that the Ghostbusters created their gear from practical equipment. When Janine is interviewing Winston for the job, the scene originally began with Winston listing his qualifications. According to Ivan Reitman in the DVD commentary, Winston’s qualifications included: An Army veteran (which meant he would have the courage to face ghosts), a former paramedic (which meant he would be able to go on call ‘at a moment’s notice’) and that he was also a construction worker. They decided to open with Janine’s questioning instead as it was considered a funnier opening. Incidentally, in the cartoon series, “The Real Ghost Busters” (1986), there is an episode where the Ghostbusters fight spirits on a construction site run by Winston’s father and he chides Winston for quiting the construction business to become a Ghostbuster. John Candy quit the role of Louis Tully because his ideas for the character were being rejected. According to Ivan Reitman in the DVD commentary, among Candy’s suggestions he wanted the character to have a German accent and have a pair of schnauzer dogs. No one felt the German accent was appropriate for the character and since there was “dog imagery” in the movie (i.e.: the Terror Dogs), they felt having Tully own dogs was “too much”. So John Candy quit early in production and Rick Moranis was cast at the last minute; Candy and Moranis are both veterans of “Second City TV” (1976), along with Harold Ramis. According to Harold Ramis, the name “Egon Spengler” is a conglomeration of two people. He went to high school with a foreign exchange student named “Egon” and “Spengler” comes from Oswald Spengler. In 2010, actor William Atherton recalled to “The A.V. Club” that the shaving cream that was used for the melted “marshmallow” was still quite heavy: “We had the eighth-grade science test. I went under the bag, and I asked, ‘How much shaving cream is in there?’ And they said, ‘Not that much.’ So I said, ‘Well, how much does it weigh?’ ‘It’s about 75 pounds, but it’s shaving cream.’ You know the whole thing about 75 pounds of feathers and 75 pounds of lead? It’s about the same thing. [Laughs.] So can we figure out what’s going to happen with this?” So they put some poor stunt guy underneath to show the sissy actor ‘Okay, nothing’s going to happen.’ So they unleashed it, and it flattened him. So they took out half of the shaving cream, and I went in very happily and was slimed.”
Poltergeist is an American horror film, directed by Tobe Hooper, produced by Steven Spielberg, and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on June 4, 1982. It is the first and most successful of the Poltergeist film trilogy, and was nominated for three Academy Awards.
The franchise is often said to be cursed, because several people associated with it, including stars Dominique Dunne and Heather O’Rourke, died prematurely. “The Poltergeist Curse” has been the focus of an E! True Hollywood Story.
The film was ranked as #80 on Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments and the Chicago Film Critics Association named it the 20th scariest film ever made.The film also appeared on American Film Institute’s 100 Years… 100 Thrills, a list of America’s most heart-pounding movies.
Trivia:
The hands which pull the flesh off the investigator’s face in the bathroom mirror are Steven Spielberg’s.
The weird way the family members descend the stairs at the beginning of the film was created by having the actors walk backward up the stairs and playing the film in reverse. The same effect was used later in the movie during the scene showing video playback of the ghosts. Steven Spielberg worked on Poltergeist (1982) and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) literally back to back. Principal photography on Poltergeist ended in August of 1981, then Spielberg took a few weeks off and began work on E.T. Spielberg also supervised the visual effects for both films simultaneously (which were produced at Industrial Light & Magic under the supervision of Richard Edlund and Dennis Muren). Once post production work on Poltergeist began in early 1982, Spielberg was in total control. He was responsible for the editing of the film (Spielberg’s usual editor Michael Khan edited this film while Carol Littleton edited E.T), the final sound mixes and loops, the supervision of the visual effects, and the selection of Jerry Goldsmith as the composer of the score. Poltergeist and E.T opened to theaters nationwide only a week between each other during the summer of 1982, Poltergeist on June 4th and E.T. one week later on June 11th. Spielberg later said “If E.T. was a whisper, Poltergeist was a scream”. The sign at the Holiday Inn reads, Welcome Dr. Fantasy and Friends. Dr. Fantasy is a nickname for producer Frank Marshall. Heather O’Rourke, who played the little girl Carol-Anne, and Dominique Dunne, who played the teenage daughter, are buried in the same cemetery: Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles. Dunne was strangled into brain-death by her boyfriend in 1982, the year of the film’s release. Six years later, O’Rourke died of intestinal stenosis. The film was originally given a R rating, but the filmmakers protested successfully and got a PG rating (the PG-13 rating did not exist at the time). When writers Michael Grais and Mark Victor first met with Steven Spielberg, they were being hired to write the film that eventually became Always (1989). When Spielberg happened to mention he also had an idea for a ghost story, Grais and Victor said they’d rather write the ghost story than Always and that’s how they got this job. The crawling steak was done by using a real steak which was laid over a slot cut between the tiles in the counter top. Two wires were fastened to the bottom of the steak and a special effects operator, hidden under the counter, simply moved the wires to make the steak crawl like a caterpillar. A similar operation was done when Diane presents to Steven the chairs that move across the room by themselves. A wire was fastened to one of the chair’s legs under the set. An operator first wobbled the chair with the wire, then dragged the chair across to its destination. Shirley MacLaine was offered a starring role in the film, but backed out in order to make Terms of Endearment (1983). The shot of the chairs that position themselves in the amazing balancing act on the table was all done in one take. As the camera panned along with JoBeth Williams, who was getting some cleaning materials, several crew members quickly set an already organized pyramid of chairs on the table, then took the single chairs away before the camera scrolled back. See Goofs entry. The Rams (then Los Angeles Rams) vs. Saints football game seen near the beginning of the film, is taken from a Monday Night Football game in 1980. The scene in which Diane opens the bedroom door and is met with a fearsome scream was the first to be filmed. The scene in which Marty hallucinates in the bathroom was the last to be filmed. Both of the terrors that plague Robbie came from Steven Spielberg’s own fears as a child, a fear of clowns and a tree outside his window. Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper wanted virtually unknown actors to play the Freelings because they wanted to add a realism to the family that would off-balance the ghost story. They felt that if the audience watched well-known stars, then it would take away from the realistic feel of the characters. The swirling, flickering lights coming from the closet during the rescue scene were achieved using a very simple effect by having an aquarium full of water in front of a spotlight. Then a fan blew on the surface of the water to make it swirl. The house used to film this movie is located in Simi Valley, California where it still stands today. The family who owned it when this movie was filmed still live there today. In addition to the two times that the Beast appeared in the movie (the face that appeared in the closet and the creature that guarded the kid’s door), the script had it appearing during the scene where the family and investigators are looking at the tape of the manifestation. The giant ghost that they saw visually slowly resolved itself into the image of a face of a cruel old man: the man we know in the later films as ‘Reverend Henry Kane.’ A common translation of the German word “Poltergeist” is “rumbling spirit”. During all the horrors that proceeded while filming Poltergeist (1982), only one scene really scared Heather O’Rourke: that in which she had to hold onto the headboard, while a wind machine blew toys into the closet behind her. She fell apart; Steven Spielberg stopped everything, took her in his arms, and said that she would not have to do that scene again. The movie’s line “They’re here!” was voted as the #69 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100). Drew Barrymore was considered for the role of Carol Anne, but Steven Spielberg wanted someone more angelic. It was Barrymore’s audition for this role, however, that landed her a part in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). In reality, Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams are only 14 and 11 years older than Dominique Dunne, who plays their teen-aged daughter. Stephen King was briefly approached to write the screenplay. It would have been the first written by King directly for the screen, but the parties could not agree on the terms. Footage from this movie was used in a 2008 DirecTV commercial. When Steve Freeling first meets with the university paranormal specialists, he states that his wife, Diane Freeling, was “32″ at the time, and their eldest daughter, Dana, was “16″. Thus, Diane was only sixteen years-old when she gave birth to Dana. Though on-screen credit goes to Tobe Hooper, a wealth of evidence suggests that most of the directorial decisions were made by Steven Spielberg. In fact, Spielberg had wanted to direct the film himself, but a clause in his contract stated that while still working on E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Spielberg could not direct another film. Members of the cast and crew, including Executive Producer Frank Marshall and actress Zelda Rubinstein, have stated that Spielberg cast the film, directed the actors, and designed every single storyboard for the movie himself. Based on this evidence, the DGA opened a probe into the matter, but found no reason that co-director credit should go to Spielberg. [WILHELM SCREAM] When the TV plays Go for Broke! (1951), one of the soldiers screams. On top of the master bedroom television set sits an Atari Video Computer System console with its two joysticks; later known as the Atari 2600.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a 1982 American motion picture released by Paramount Pictures. The film is the second feature based on the Star Trek science fiction franchise. The plot features James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and the crew of the starship USS Enterprise facing off against the genetically-engineered tyrant Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalbán), a character who first appeared in the 1967 Star Trek television series episode “Space Seed”. When Khan escapes from a 15-year exile to exact revenge on Kirk, the crew of the Enterprise must stop him from acquiring a powerful terraforming device named Genesis. The film concludes with the death of Enterprise crewmember Spock (Leonard Nimoy), beginning a story arc that continues through 1986′s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
After the lackluster critical and commercial response to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, series creator Gene Roddenberry was forced out of the sequel’s production. Executive producer Harve Bennett wrote the film’s original outline, which Jack B. Sowards developed into a full script. Director Nicholas Meyer completed the final script in 12 days, without accepting a writing credit. Meyer’s approach evoked the swashbuckling atmosphere of the original series, and the theme was reinforced by James Horner’s musical score. Leonard Nimoy only reprised his role as Spock because the character’s death was intended to be irrevocable. Negative test audience reaction to Spock’s death led to significant revisions of the ending without Meyer’s consent. The production used various cost-cutting techniques to keep within budget, including utilizing miniatures from past projects and re-using effects footage from the previous movie. Among the film’s technical achievements is the first complete feature film sequence created entirely with computer-generated graphics.
The Wrath of Khan was released in North America on June 4, 1982. It was a box office success, earning US$97 million worldwide and setting a world record for first-day box office gross. Critical reaction to the film was positive; reviewers highlighted Khan, the film’s pacing and the character interactions as strong elements. Negative reaction focused on weak special effects and some of the acting. The Wrath of Khan is generally considered one of the best films of the Star Trek series and is credited with creating renewed interest in the franchise.
Trivia:
Director Nicholas Meyer envisioned the film as the ultimate extension of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s idea of “Horatio Hornblower in space”. Therefore, prior to filming he had the cast watch Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. (1951) for inspiration.
Producer Harve Bennett viewed all the original “Star Trek” (1966) episodes and chose “Star Trek: Space Seed (#1.22)” (1967) as the best candidate for a sequel. Spock even remarks in the script that it would be interesting to return in a hundred years or so to see what type of civilization had grown there. This is the first time a movie was made as a sequel to a specific television show episode. In “Star Trek: Space Seed (#1.22)” (1967) approximately 80 genetically-engineered supermen were left behind on Ceti Alpha V by the Enterprise. By the time of this film, only 15 (including Khan) are left. 20 were killed by Ceti Eels, the rest through other means (presumably as a result of the explosion of Ceti Alpha VI). This is the only Star Trek film that features no appearances by Klingon characters. The Enterprise Torpedo Room and Spacelab transporter sets were originally parts of the Klingon bridge built for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). In order to save money, shots of the Enterprise departing from dock, and in space, were taken from the first Star Trek movie. The Spacelab model is that of the orbiting space office turned upside down and with some cosmetic changes from the first Star Trek movie. This movie was produced by the Paramount Television division and released by the feature film division, in order to avoid the then-astronomical $43 million cost of the first feature film. In a Starlog interview titled “The Man Who Killed Spock”, after the movie was released, Harve Bennett said that: – 1. He wrote a scene where Chekov, on the Reliant, calls up data for the Ceti Alpha system, and remembers Khan and tells Terrell. That was written out and became the “you never told your captain the tale” sequence on the planet. – 2. The Ceti system was always a binary star system, hence the Alpha. The idea was for planets V and VI to have varying orbits similar to Neptune and Pluto where they would cross in and out of each other’s orbits. Thus the confusion. “You thought this was Ceti Alpha VI.” The unstable orbits caused the explosion of Ceti Alpha VI. Again, written out. – 3. Khan and Kirk were to have fought in the Genesis cave foyer. Khan and his supermen were to have had PSI powers similar to the Talosians, and Kirk beats them by simply not believing in it. Khan then beams out with the Genesis torpedo. – 4. Radiation causes blood vessels to burst and Spock was written to be covered in green blood. Leonard Nimoy objected, and the result was what you see. Due to budget limitations, sets and props were re-used wherever possible. Space Station Regula 1 was the space station from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)… turned upside-down. Terrell and Chekov’s environmental suits were also originally used in ST: TMP. For this film Gene Roddenberry was given a consultant position and replaced as executive producer by Harve Bennett. Apparently, Paramount blamed the constant production delays and budget overruns for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) on Roddenberry’s constant meddling and demanding script re-writes. The shot of the three Klingon ships in the Simulator room is from the opening sequence of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). The Enterprise bridge set from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) was redressed for use as the Kobayashi Maru simulator, the Enterprise bridge, and the Reliant bridge. The circular set was built as a set of modular “wedges”, which allowed them to be rearranged for a similar, but distinctive, look. Also, for the Reliant, the seat covers were changed, and the turbolift door was painted blue. In one shot, when the turbolift doors are open, a ship diagram for the Enterprise can be seen inside the lift. The “Genesis” sequence called for a long and massive explosion. ILM rented the Cow Palace in San Francisco for the effect. They covered the ceiling with a black cloth and placed the camera on the floor looking up at it. The explosion would occur directly above the camera so the fall-out would appear to rush directly towards the point of view. A special high-speed camera was constructed which ran at 2,500 frames per second. One of its components was a spinning prism, which bent the image onto the film as it rushed past, which increased exposure time without having to slow the frame rate. The software that generated the computer image of the Genesis probe approaching the planet placed mountains on the planet at random, and one of these happened to be right in the probe’s path. Each frame took so long to create with the systems then available that when the problem was spotted, it was not considered reasonable to discard the seconds of footage already made. Hence a canyon was introduced: see the goofs entry. When Spock and Saavik speak to each other in Vulcan, Leonard Nimoy and Kirstie Alley actually spoke in English and then the sound people – Including Marc Okrand, in his first association with Star Trek – created the Vulcan words to match the movements of the actors’ mouths, which Nimoy and Alley later overdubbed. There are several books in the container that shelters Khan’s followers on Ceti Alpha V. Two of the titles are “Moby Dick” and “King Lear”, and a lot of Khan’s lines are directly taken from those books. In particular, the final monologue of Khan is identical to the last words of Captain Ahab from Melville’s book. Other titles visible are “The Inferno” by Dante, an anthology of “Paradise Lost” and Paradise Regained” by Milton, a single copy of “Paradise Lost,” the Holy Bible, and one where the title is partially obscured called “Statute Regulating… Commerce”. The word SNAVE appears under NCC 1864 RELIANT in the final computer generated tactical display around Regula. Snave is the nickname of the CG star field programmer, Stephen McAllister. The main viewer display during the opening sequence indicates that the Kobayashi Maru’s captain is Kojiro Vance and that the ship is registered out of the planet Amber (Tau Ceti IV). Film debut of Kirstie Alley. The original subtitle was to be “The Revenge of Khan”, but this was changed because of Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983), then subtitled “Revenge of the Jedi”, was to be released near the same time. In the end both films titles were changed. All of Khan’s men were Chippendale dancers at the time. An early draft of the script had Dr. Janet Wallace (Sarah Marshall) from the original series episode “The Deadly Years” as Kirk’s long-lost lover in the role that eventually became Dr. Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch). Star Trek fans have speculated that Dr. Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch) could have been the “little blonde technician” Gary Mitchell (Gary Lockwood) admitted to collaborating with to distract Kirk with a romance in the second pilot episode, “Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before (#1.3)” (1966) Originally subtitled “The Undiscovered Country”, but that subtitle eventually went to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). Kim Cattrall was Nicholas Meyer’s first choice for the role of Saavik, but eventually proved unavailable. She did, however, get the role of Vulcan officer Lieutenant Valeris in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). Judson Earney Scott’s lack of screen credit for his very large part as Joachim (Khan’s right-hand man) was the fault of his then-agent, who mistakenly opted to waive Scott’s credit believing that that would allow them to negotiate better credit placement later. 65% of the film was shot on the same set. The computer ship diagram when the shields are being raised are actually from the aborted 1978 Star Trek: Phase II TV show. The “No Smoking Is Permitted On Bridge” sign from the first scene was removed in later bridge scenes when Gene Roddenberry complained that smoking would not exist in the future. One of Admiral Kirk’s antiques is a Commodore PET computer. The silver container with the pressure tanks was actually a spaceship model from Conquest of Space (1955). The huge background painting of San Francisco seen through the window of Admiral Kirk’s apartment was initially used for The Towering Inferno (1974). One of the Reliant’s crew, Commander Kyle, played by John Winston, was a recurring member of the Enterprise crew in the original TV series. The famous “Space, the final frontier” monologue is heard for the first time since the original TV series, now narrated by Leonard Nimoy, however it has been changed slightly. Instead of saying, “…its five-year mission…” and “to seek out new life,” it now says, “her ongoing mission…” and “to seek out new life forms”. The vector-based computer graphics used on the Tactical displays and viewing screens, and also starfield effects in the Control Rooms of both the Reliant and the Enterprise and the Bridge Simulator, were rendered using computers by Evans and Sutherland Computer Corporation. In the beginning when Kirk and Spock are talking in the hallway, the black building directory in background lists key Starfleet Command personnel including Admiral Gene Roddenberry (Also Joseph R. Jennings, Michael Minor, Lee Cole and other art department members). The different colored turtlenecks worn by Starfleet officers indicate what division they belong to. White – Command; Gold – Engineering; Gray – Science; Light Green – Medical; Red – Cadets and Trainees; and Black – Enlisted. Kirk and Khan never meet face to face during the movie. All of their interaction is through viewscreens or communicators. In the director’s commentary on the special edition DVD, mention was made of the difficulties both William Shatner and Ricardo Montalban had in displaying proper emotions to lines being fed to them by a script girl, so it might be assumed that Shatner and Montalban did not interact face-to-face during the production of the film either. Cameo: [James Horner] running down a corridor during the preparation for the final battle, just before the torpedoes are loaded into the launch bay. Star Trek “technobabble” seen on walls throughout the Regula space station includes: Geoplastics, Gravitronics, Thermowave Multiplexer, JBK Sensors Synthostasis, Thermonics, Wave Matrix ETM Storage, and Bellus. It has been widely debated that Ricardo Montalban’s chest was actually a prosthetic piece that he wore during the film. In the director’s commentary in the special edition DVD, Nicholas Meyer is quoted as saying that it was, in fact, Montalban’s actual chest and that he was a very muscular man who worked out. During publicity for the movie, during an appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” (1962), Montalban explained that he was able to achieve the look seen in the film by doing push-ups. “A lot of push-ups.” The battle of wits between Kirk and Khan in the Mutara Nebula sequence was inspired by the battle between destroyer captain Robert Mitchum and U-boat commander Curd Jürgens in The Enemy Below (1957), which was was also the inspiration for the “Star Trek” (1966) episode ‘Balance of Terror.’ This film marks the first appearance of the Miranda class starship, namely the USS Reliant. The model was reused several times in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987) and in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” (1993), as other vessels of the same class, or Soyuz class. First Star Trek movie to feature the “red tunic” uniforms, used in every Original Series-based movie thereafter, and used on several occasions on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987). This movie officially establishes the 23rd-century time line as the time period for “Star Trek” (1966) and for its movies. Prior to this movie, it had never been officially established which century the original series took place. According to Gene Roddenberry, the original series could’ve easily taken place between the 21st and 31st centuries, and Stardates were used to allow for this ambiguity in the time line. The model of the USS Reliant was purposely designed so that the warp engines hung below the fuselage so that audiences would not accidentally confuse it with the Enterprise. As the fundamental components of both ships are the same (saucer, warp engines, etc) it was seen as being an effective way to visually differentiate the two vessels, particularly during action sequences when both ships are in the same scene. It is revealed in the Director’s Edition DVD, Special Features disk 2 “Designing Khan” feature that the USS Reliant design sketch was sent to Harve Bennett for review. He signed off on it while looking at it upside-down, and calls it the upside-down Enterprise. This was not corrected because it gave some distinction for both ships that already looked so much alike belonging to the same fleet. Saavik was originally intended to be a male Vulcan, but was changed later on to a female Vulcan/Romulan hybrid. Nicholas Meyer’s rewrite wasn’t thorough enough, though, and Saavik is referred to as “Mr.” Saavik throughout the movie, especially during the launch sequence of the Enterprise. Although “Trek” fans and Naval buffs have pointed out in actual, nautical jargon: women are addressed as such. Being that the “true” lady is the vessel “herself”. Nicholas Meyer and Bibi Besch collaborated again on The Day After (1983) (TV), a film about nuclear war. After completing that film, Besch, having learned a great deal about nuclear warfare, stated that she should have approached the character of Dr. Carol Marcus very differently, as a scientist more wary of the Genesis Device’s destructive power. Nicholas Meyer has always insisted that the books in Khan’s library were just titles he selected at random from a bookshelf. However, given the titles, plots, and the analogies in regards to Khan, this seems extremely unlikely. Two of the titles are “Moby Dick” and “Paradise Lost”, both of which center on vengeance for someone harmed by a higher power. “King Lear” is the story of a man having to live with bad decisions. When Paramount Video released its 1986 VHS set of the “Trek” trilogy franchise, one publicity shot on the box is of Kirk and Spock behind bars. Nowhere in the film is this scene shown. Lt. Saavik ends her radio transmissions saying “Saavik out,” instead of the more commonly heard “Over and out.” In the armed services, “over” calls for a response for the listener, while “out” officially ends communication. So Saavik’s usage is actually correct. In addition to the footage of the Klingon vessels in the simulator scenes, other footage was lifted directly from ST:TMP primarily to keep costs down. These include: Kirk’s shuttle docking with the Enterprise in advance of his inspection, scenes of the ship first being lighted before Saavik is told to clear all moorings, the ship pulling out of space dock, and the few seconds of footage of the saucer of Enterprise just before the scene cuts to Kirk in his quarters, about to read his book. Both Star Trek films “The Wrath of Khan” and “First Contact” include characters quoting Herman Melville’s novel “Moby Dick”. Khan quotes it in “Wrath” during his death scene, and Picard quotes it in “Contact” when realizing his own obsessive hatred for the Borg, referring to Ahab’s obsessive hatred for the whale. Also, John Masefield’s poetry was mistook by McCoy for Melville (and corrected by Spock) in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). Star Trek “technobabble” seen on a Regula space station wall: Kmrt. (“K-Mart”) There is a background prop in the Regula 1 Space Station; a machine that has a pair of red fluorescent tubes firing back and forth at each other. This machine reappears in the movie Airplane 2, in which William Shatner makes a cameo saying that his staff must work out what it does, since to think that its purpose is just to sit there blinking is absurd and infuriating. The light prop makes its way again on various occasions in “Star Trek: TNG” (1987) , such as “DataLore”. In the Genesis cave, two containers are labeled “Bellus” and “Zyra”. Bellus and Zyra were the planetary system that destroyed Earth in When Worlds Collide (1951). Sulu’s backstory of being promotable to Captain (leading to his eventual command of USS Excelsior by Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)) is edited from George Takei’s line, “I’m delighted! Any chance to go aboard Enterprise…” When Sci Fi Channel aired this movie on television, Leonard Nimoy appeared on-screen during commercial breaks, explaining various memories and trivia about the film. One of the items was the character backstory of Lt. Saavik (Kirstie Alley), who was intended to have Romulan/Vulcan heritage, which would have made her more emotional than a pureblood Vulcan. Three hints at this remain in the final film: during the Kobayashi Maru simulation, she says to herself, “Damn!”; she gasps in shock when Scotty appears on the bridge with midshipman Peters’ injured body; and she is emotionally moved by Kirk’s eulogy. There was no comic book adaptation of this movie because at the time, nobody had a license to do a Star Trek comic; Marvel’s license had expired before it went into production, and DC Comics didn’t pick up the license until after this movie was released. An adaptation has been released now, though. On the back wall of the Reliant’s bridge (and presumably the Enterprise’s as well, since it was a slightly redecorated version of the same set), on either side of the turbolift doors, are some rectangular shapes with smaller rectangular impressions in them. These are shells for storing audio cassette tapes, painted white and attached to the wall. They are very visible during several scenes when Khan is talking and plotting. In the DVD bonus feature “The Captain’s Log”, Ricardo Montalban says that once he committed to this film, he realized that he had trouble getting back into the character of Khan. After years of playing Mr Roarke on “Fantasy Island” (1978), he found that he was “stuck” in that character. He requested a tape of the original “Space Seed” episode from Paramount, and proceeded to watch it repeatedly. By the third or fourth watching, he had recaptured the essence of Khan’s character. Many of the wall panels and equipment on Regula I and in the Genesis underground space have a ridged texture to them. According to the “Designing Khan” DVD bonus, these were molded from the cardboard packing materials for fluorescent lighting tubes used in various areas of Paramount studios. In the atrium scene at the beginning, where Spock gives Kirk a copy of “A Tale of Two Cities”, a wide shot shows several plants in the room around them. This was accomplished with a foreground miniature — a miniature set placed between the camera and the actors, making the space look larger and more decorated than it actually is. The scenic view of San Francisco through Kirk’s apartment window is a painting, originally created for The Towering Inferno (1974). In front of the backdrop were placed a couple of models of futuristic skyscrapers, with working lights and elevators. The exterior scenes on Ceti Alpha V were filmed on the same part of Paramount stage 8 where the set for Kirk’s apartment was later built (the apartment set, however, was saved for re-use in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)). This part of the stage was later home to the Ten-Forward set on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987) and sickbay on “Enterprise” (2001). The interior set for Khan’s cargo container home was built on the same part of Paramount stage 8 where bridge sets for the Enterprise-D on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987) and Voyager on “Star Trek: Voyager” (1995) were later housed. An oft-noted discrepancy in this film is that Chekov was not a member of the crew during the first season of “Star Trek” (1966) when Khan was first encountered in “Star Trek: Space Seed (#1.22)” (1967), yet Chekov and Khan recognize each other. Walter Koenig has surmised that perhaps Chekov was a member of the crew, but just happened to never be shown in the first season; he jokes that maybe an off-duty Chekov accidentally caused Khan to wait uncomfortably long to get to the men’s room, leaving a particularly indelible impression. The propulsion module from the spaceship model used in Conquest of Space (1955) is part of the set decoration in Khan’s cargo container home. It’s a cagelike structure with four silver cylindrical tanks. In Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Chekov was burned on the hand; in this film, he has a Ceti eel crawl in his ear. Walter Koenig joked that this film should be called “Star Trek II: Chekov Screams Again”. The baby Ceti eels were pulled along the actors’ cheeks using a piece of string. They were made out of a stretchy rubber, allowing them to seem to crawl along, and covered with raspberry jelly to give them a slimy appearance. The closeups of the Ceti eels entering and exiting Chekov’s ear were done using a huge rubber replica of Walter Koenig’s ear. One morning, the effects crew discovered that the art department had left a true-to-scale Q-tip next to the giant ear. In the atrium scene at the beginning, there is a black building directory on the wall by the turbolift, which includes listings for Starfleet personnel such as “Admiral Gene Roddenberry” and several members of the art department. George Takei initially declined to appear in this film. William Shatner called Takei and convinced him to reconsider. More Regula station gag technobabble: one console bears the legend “R XM”, a reference to the sci-fi classic Rocketship X-M (1950). In the scene with Kirk and Saavik in the turbolift, when the doors reopen (and McCoy gets in), the corridor outside appears shorter, giving the appearance that the lift really has moved to someplace else. In reality, a wall was moved into place while the doors were closed. Another cost-saving measure on this film is that many of the “computer” consoles and other high-tech set dressings were rented from a Hollywood company called Modern Props. The more common approach would have been to have set designers create these by hand, for limited use, at a much higher cost. The moving starfield during the title sequence was filmed by putting the camera in the center of the floor of a local planetarium, aimed up. In Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), all of the on-set displays were operated by looped film projectors behind the walls, because normal video monitors’ refresh rate was different from the film frame rate, causing a visible flicker. Sets like the bridge had dozens of these projectors operating simultaneously, which were very noisy, and had to be manually synchronized with the camera. For this film, a new system was developed with monitors and videotape that ran at the same 24fps rate as the film, allowing quieter (and brighter) displays to be used on-set. This technology subsequently became a standard for Hollywood film production. Although Gene Roddenberry created Starfleet in the original “Star Trek” (1966) with a military structure, he deliberately avoided getting very detailed on the nature of that structure (what he called “excessive militarism”). Director Nicholas Meyer, however, decided to further expand this part of the Star Trek mythos, making the uniforms and insignias more military in style, adding a ship’s bell and boatswain’s whistle, and writing the dialogue to be more accurate to actual naval protocol. These details have greatly influenced the films and spin-off series that followed. The stars seen in the background of the Genesis simulation sequence are based on a 3-D model of the Milky Way, as seen from the perspective of a fictitious moon. In other words, if you were to travel to the point in space where the simulation programmers chose to place the moon, that is what the actual star configuration in the sky would look like. Nicholas Meyer admits that Kahn’s familiarity with Chekov is a mistake, but defends this citing Arthur Conan Doyle who frequently had trivial errors in his Sherlock Holmes stories, but made no apologies for them. Just before the scene where Genesis is explained, there is a scene where Spock crosses the bridge and tells Kirk, “There are two explanations: they are unable to respond; they are unwilling to respond.” As he crosses the bridge, he walks directly in front of the main viewscreen, where the stars are visible. On most films (even Star Trek films), this would require a chromakey (bluescreen or greenscreen) matte effect, so that the moving starfield could be added to the screen in post-production. However, in another of the cost-cutting measures on this film, the scene was done without any FX work: the “viewscreen” in this scene is actually a black cloth with miniature lights draped behind the screen opening. Unlike most bridge shots when the Enterprise is underway, the stars are quite motionless in this scene. Khan’s right-hand man in “Star Trek: Space Seed (#1.22)” (1967) was named “Joaquin” (Mark Tobin), but in this film, he is named “Joachim” (Judson Earney Scott). Director Nicholas Meyer attributes the change to a clerical error during script development. When Spock advises Kirk that Kahn’s moves “indicate two dimensional thinking”, Spock is commenting that Kahn is using tactics learned from playing two-dimensional chess. Kahn, as a Sikh, was likely familiar with 2 D chess – which originated from his homeland. Kirk and Spock routinely played three-dimensional chess during The Original Series (1966-69), The key to 3-D chess was using an “attack board” to come up from below or above your opponent. Hence, Kirk commands “all stop” and requests the photon torpedoes be preloaded for a 3 dimensional attack vector at close range: “Z-minus 10,000 meters.” In the Cartesian coordinate system, the Z-axis measures above or below the horizontal plane. A vector in this sense implies a solution like firing a torpedo in 3D space – underwater or in deep space. During filming of some of Khan’s scenes, the prop guys decided to have a little fun at Ricardo Montalban’s expense. They created a small robot and attached to its head a cardboard cutout of the head of Hervé Villechaize – Montalban’s pint-sized co-star from the TV series “Fantasy Island” (1978). Montalban was quite amused when he saw the prop on the set.
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.
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock is a 1984 motion picture released by Paramount Pictures. The film is the third feature based on the Star Trek science fiction franchise. After the death of Spock (Leonard Nimoy) during the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the crew of the USS Enterprise returns to Earth. When James T. Kirk (William Shatner) learns that Spock’s spirit, or katra, is held in the mind of Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Kirk and company steal the Enterprise to return Spock’s body to his home planet. The crew must also contend with hostile Klingons, led by Kruge (Christopher Lloyd), bent on stealing the secrets of a powerful terraforming device.
Paramount commissioned the film after positive critical and commercial reaction to The Wrath of Khan. Nimoy directed, the first Star Trek cast member to do so. Producer Harve Bennett wrote the script starting from the end and working back, and intended the destruction of the Enterprise to be a shocking development. Bennett and Nimoy collaborated with effects house Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) to develop storyboards and new ship designs; ILM also handled the film’s many special effects sequences. Aside from a single day of location shooting, all of the film’s scenes were shot on Paramount and ILM soundstages. Composer James Horner returned to expand his themes from the previous film.
The Search for Spock opened June 1, 1984. In its first week of release, the film broke Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom‘s gross records, making $16 million from almost 2,000 theaters across the United States. It went on to gross $76 million at the domestic box office, toward a total of $87 million worldwide. Critical reaction to The Search for Spock was mixed. Reviewers generally praised the cast and characters, while criticism tended to focus on the plot; the special effects were conflictingly received. Roger Ebert called the film a compromise between the tones of the first and second Star Trek films. The Search for Spock was released on multiple home video formats, including VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray high definition discs. Nimoy went on to direct The Search for Spock‘s sequel, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
Trivia:
The villains of the film were originally intended to be Romulans, but upper studio management wanted Klingons to be used since they were better-known enemies. By the time the decision was made, the Romulan ship was already built and they did not want the expense of replacing it. However, since the TV show had already established that the Klingons and Romulans had shared technologies and ships in the past (for exactly the same real-world cost-cutting reasons), the idea of Klingons using a Romulan-style vessel was not a problem.
Although not mentioned on-screen, the novelization establishes that Saavik was half Vulcan and half Romulan. A scene cut from the previous film, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982), also established this but can not be considered canon. Leonard Nimoy seemed to have directed Robin Curtis to portray Saavik as a full Vulcan. Leonard Nimoy does the turbolift voice in the scene when Scotty says “Up your shaft”, while exiting the Starship Execelsior. The end credits lists the voice under the alias Frank Force. Production was endangered by the great fire at Paramount. William Shatner helped fight the fire and rescue a crewmember before firefighter reinforcements arrived. Shatner said that his motivation for doing so was purely to save a day on the shooting schedule, as he had a make a deadline to be available for shooting on a new season of “T.J. Hooker” (1982). When the Enterprise enters space dock at the beginning of the movie, just before Uhura comments on the Excelsior’s appearance (“Would you look at that!”), another docked ship can be seen, in shadow, at the upper left corner of the screen. This ship is one of the alternative models that was considered for use as the Excelsior. This alternate model also makes several appearances in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987), usually as a wrecked ship or piece of space junk. The shot of the Enterprise approaching Spacedock is later re-used in various episodes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987) with the Enterprise-D overlapping the original Enterprise (Another cost-saving method often used with Star Trek). Grace Lee Whitney, who played Janice Rand, Kirk’s yeoman in season one of “Star Trek” (1966) and returned as transporter chief in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), makes a cameo appearance during the Enterprise’s docking sequence. She is the red haired officer in the spacedock lounge who shakes her head in disapproval as she sees the ship’s damage. Tribbles, a popular creature from the “Star Trek” (1966) episode ‘The Trouble with Tribbles’, make a cameo appearance during the bar sequence where McCoy tries to hire a ship. Gary Faga plays the security guard who Kirk knocks out; he also played the airlock technician that Spock gave the Vulcan nerve pinch to in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). This is the first Star Trek ‘episode’ to be directed by a member of the Star Trek cast. Leonard Nimoy also directed Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) and William Shatner directed Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). This would later become commonplace on the various Trek TV series: Jonathan Frakes directed Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) as well as fourteen television episodes over three Star Trek series. LeVar Burton directed twenty-nine episodes over four Star Trek series. Other Star Trek actors who went on to direct their castmates were Patrick Stewart, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Avery Brooks, Rene Auberjonois, Alexander Siddig, Andrew Robinson, Robert Duncan McNeill, Roxann Dawson, Robert Picardo and Tim Russ. The self-destruct codes for the U.S.S. Enterprise apparently haven’t been changed in decades, as they are identical to those in the original series episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”. Nicholas Meyer, director of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982) was originally asked to direct, but refused because he thought that Spock’s death should have remained final. He later directed the final film of the original series, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). The Excelsior was supposed to debut in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and be identified as newly-promoted Captain Sulu’s first command. This plot line was dropped and Excelsior saved for this film. Sulu would finally take command of her in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). The ship design would be reused for the USS Enterprise-B in the Star Trek: Generations (1994). The USS Grissom bridge was the USS Enterprise bridge redressed with pink chairs, and the bar where Dr. McCoy tries to charter spaceflight is the redressed Enterprise sickbay. As in the previous Star Trek film (Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982)), the movie includes the famous “Space, the final frontier” monologue, spoken by Spock. As in the previous film, the words have been changed slightly, referring to seeking out “new life forms” instead of just “new life”. This was the final use of this modified version of the monologue. The few Klingon phrases that James Doohan introduced in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) was used by Marc Okrand as the basis for the Klingon language in this film. Okrand’s Klingon language became a fully realized fictional language, and would be the basis for all future Klingon dialogue in future movies and television shows (as well as an obsession to become fluent in for hardcore Star Trek fans.) The spacedock orbiting Earth is supposed to be five miles tall – making it easily observable from the surface. The actual model itself was 6 feet tall. Chekov makes a remark in Russian to Scotty about the security breach in Spock’s quarters. Translated, he is saying, ‘I’m not crazy! There it is.’. The uniforms worn by the security guards are the same uniforms from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), but they’re worn with the new red Starfleet uniforms, and a dark green turtleneck, which represents the security division. This film marks the first appearances of the Excelsior class vessel, the Oberth class vessel (namely the USS Grissom), and the Klingon bird-of-prey. The models were reused as other, similar ships in numerous episodes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987) and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” (1993). James Goldstone was considered to direct the movie before Leonard Nimoy asked to direct. The USS Grissom is evidently named after real life astronaut Gus Grissom, who was killed after the Apollo 1 spacecraft itself was destroyed on 27 January 1967. Edward James Olmos was Leonard Nimoy’s original choice for the role of Kruge. However, executive producer Harve Bennett preferred Christopher Lloyd. Nimoy finally cast Lloyd because he came off more operatic and physically intimidating. One of the boys who plays young Spock, had to wear brown colored contact lenses to match the color of Leonard Nimoy’s eyes as the boy’s natural eye color was blue. In the scene where Kirk meets Admiral Morrow for a drink to discuss taking the Enterprise back to the Genesis Planet, an abstract hanging sculpture can be seen on the wall behind Morrow. The sculpture is in fact one of the miniatures of the Epsilon IX station from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), which was made of acid-etched brass. When Dr. McCoy declares his full name, the “H” stands for Horatio. Horatio Hornblower was Gene Roddenberry’s model for Captain Kirk. David Andrew McCoy is his father’s full name, according to the novelization of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). As explained by William Shatner in Star Trek 25th Anniversary Special (1991) (TV), there was tight security on the set to minimize theft, as incurred on Star Trek II. Picture ID badges, codes and the works were used so much that Shatner quipped it was like Paramount’s real-life “Mission: Impossible” (1966). The chirping on the Tricorder (especially when Sulu scans after the Enterprise is destroyed) comes from an audio remote control device for the Radio Shack (“Realistic” label) answering machine. The remote control was able to be used away from home, over the phone to signal the answering machine (through electronic chirping sounds) to play back massages or carry out other functions. Christopher Lloyd, who is most famous for playing Doc Brown, inventor of the time machine in the Back to the Future (1985) trilogy, plays the Klingon captain who’s ship is taken over by Kirk and his crew. In the next movie, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), Kirk ironically uses this same ship to travel back to the 1980s, near the 1985 date that Brown first used his famous DeLorean time traveler. Christopher Lloyd, who played the Klingon Captain Kruge, also played Jim Ignatalski on the classic television show “Taxi” (1978). In one particular episode, a television executive is in his cab and Jim says he loved the show Star Trek. Jim added that he didn’t like the leader of the Klingons because the writers had him say things a “real Klingon just wouldn’t say.” When the crew is standing on the bluff supposedly watching the flaming Enterprise hulk, they were in fact watching a tennis ball mounted on an overhead boom microphone. The shot had to taken many times because not everyone was watching it at the same time. When Kirk calls out to Kruge, the Klingon commander has his head in his hands. According to the original storyline, Kruge is not mourning the loss of his troops, he’s humiliated because Kirk was more cunning than he was. Through Kirk’s apparent suicide, Kruge has been beaten and shamed. The young Spock was voiced by Frank Welker. Welker and Nimoy would go on to share the role of Megatron/Galvatron in The Transformers: The Movie (1986). Welker would also provide numerous voices in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), directed by Nimoy’s cousin, Michael Bay. Nimoy himself was offered the title role as well, but it is not yet known if he accepted. It was Director/Star Leonard Nimoy who conceived the distinctive design of the Klingons’ Bird Of Prey. At a preproduction meeting with Industrial Light And Magic, Nimoy posed his arms and hands to demonstrate the vessel’s wings as they ultimately would appear in the final film. The DVD documentary, “Space Docks and Birds Of Prey”, revealed that the physique of a bodybuilder in the “crab” pose, emphasizing the trapezius muscles, was also the basis for the ship’s aggressive stance. Finally, the script, at the time when it was received by ILM, established that the Bird Of Prey was definitely a Romulan vessel, commandeered by Kruge. With that back story in mind, the feather-like pattern on the ship’s underside was a direct tribute the original Bird Of Prey as it first appeared in the 1966 original series episode “Balance of Terror”. Though the final version of Star Trek 3 (and subsequent star trek films and TV episodes) refer to the ship as purely of the Klingon fleet, the Romulan plumage-detail was never lost. Marc Okrand had to update the grammar and vocabulary of the Klingon language several times when actors would get the line wrong and it was deemed easier to re-write the language than re-shoot the scene. In a June 2009 interview, Christopher Lloyd said that the role of Klingon Commander Kruge was among one of his favorite roles he ever portrayed in his acting career. Close to the end of the film, after landing on Vulcan. While Spock’s body is being carried up the long staircase to begin the fal tor pan ritual, the “maidens” carrying Spock are not actually touching him. They are actually holding their hands above him, effectively levitating his body to the alter.
The Brood is a 1979 Canadian horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg, starring Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar and Art Hindle. It was filmed in Toronto and Mississauga, Ontario. In 2004, one of its sequences was voted #78 among the “100 Scariest Movie Moments” by the Bravo Channel. The Brood was named 88th on the “Chicago Film Critics Association’s 100 Scariest Movies of All-Time”. The film was Cronenberg’s first major success.
A novelization was written by Richard Starks.
Trivia:
David Cronenberg wrote the film following the tumultuous divorce and child-custody battle he waged against Margaret Hindson. Cronenberg also said that Samantha Eggar’s character, Nola Carveth, possessed some of the characteristics of his ex-wife.
Link this trivia
