knightni

QUOTE (danman31 @ Oct 30, 2010 -> 06:35 PM) Kelly can't possibly make it out of this season right? Between what happened during the week and now the bad season, I can't argue against it. I'm mostly basing this on the tragedy that was mismanaged because I wouldn't normally support a year one firing. Am I just bitter because Mizzou is playing like crap or is this a valid possibility? They're playing without the starting QB, RB,& TE since 4 weeks ago, and have an injured #1 WR. I think he gets this year as slack. If he doesn't win more next year, then compete for a BCS berth by year 3, then there will be talk.

Like there's such a thing as Kelvin...

Just wondering, could he have meant weight instead of mass?

QUOTE (fathom @ Oct 30, 2010 -> 06:03 PM) The refs in this Tulsa/ND game are pathetic. I'll let them know that you think so.

WTF. A PASS?!

Gotta wonder, if there's ever such a thing as standard mass - more and more fat people = less crops/woods/fish/animals. Weight could even out.

Dayne Crist tears up his other knee. Out for the season.

3. Psycho (1960) (11 of 20 lists - 188 points - highest rank #1 BigEdWalsh) Psycho is a 1960 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The film is based on the screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who adapted it from the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. The novel was based on the crimes of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein. The film depicts the encounter between a secretary, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), who is in hiding at a motel after embezzling from her employer, and the motel's owner, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), and the aftermath of their encounter. Psycho initially received mixed reviews, but outstanding box office returns prompted a re-review which was overwhelmingly positive and led to four Academy Award nominations. The film differs from many of the other horror films of early cinema, in that it takes place in the present day. Psycho is now considered one of Hitchcock's best films and is highly praised as a work of cinematic art by international critics. The film spawned two sequels, a prequel, a remake, and a television movie spin-off. The film is often categorized by multiple sources as a drama, horror, mystery and thriller film. Plot The "Psycho" set still stands on the Universal lot. At the time this picture was taken (1997), the car driven by Janet Leigh in the film was parked in front of the motel. Friday, December 11, Phoenix, Arizona, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) steals $40,000 from her employer to marry her boyfriend Sam Loomis (John Gavin) and then tries to flee to Sam's house, in Fairvale, with the money. Along the way, she trades in her car to evade authorities, and during a storm on the trip, she checks into the isolated Bates Motel, not far from Fairvale. The proprietor, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), invites her to dinner at his family house on the hill overlooking the motel. When he leaves to prepare dinner, Marion hears him arguing with his unseen mother, who tells him that she refuses to allow him "bringing in strange young girls for supper". Norman brings sandwiches to the motel to eat there instead. The two proceed to have a conversation over dinner, topics ranging from taxidermy to Norman's mother, who he says has been mentally ill since the death of her lover. When Marion suggests that his mother be institutionalized, he becomes very aggressive, saying he wants to do so but does not want to abandon her. He compares his life to being in a "trap," and observes that everyone is in a similar situation. Marion agrees with him, telling him that she "stepped into a private trap back in Phoenix." Afterward, Marion returns to her room, where she resolves to return the money. Norman, who has become intrigued with her, watches her undress through a hole in the wall, obscured by a painting (The Rape of the Sabine Women). After Marion counts the money, she takes a shower. During the shower, an anonymous female assailant enters the bathroom and stabs her to death. Back at the house, Norman calls out to his mother: "Mother! Oh, God, mother! Blood! Blood!" He runs to the motel where he finds the corpse and presumes his mother killed Marion, so he tries to erase all traces of the crime to protect her. He puts Marion's body and all her possessions, including the newspaper in which she had hidden the money, into the trunk of her car and drives to a nearby swamp where it sinks. Sam is contacted by Marion's sister, Lila (Vera Miles), and private detective Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam), who was hired by Crane's employer to recover the money. Arbogast traces Marion to the motel and questions Norman, who unconvincingly lies that Marion only stayed for one night. Arbogast wants to question Norman's mother, but Norman refuses to give permission, saying that she is ill. Arbogast calls Lila to update her and tells her he will call again after he questions Norman's mother. Arbogast returns to the house, and proceeds up the staircase. The same assailant who killed Marion emerges from the adjacent room and stabs him to death. Back at Sam's shop, Lila and Sam are puzzled that Arbogast has not returned for three hours, considering he said it would only be an hour. At the house, in an unseen conversation, Norman confronts his mother and urges her to hide in the fruit cellar, saying that more people will come looking for both Marion and Arbogast. She rejects the idea and orders him out of her room, but against her will Norman carries her down to the cellar. Lila and Sam go visit Deputy Sheriff Al Chambers (John McIntire), who is perplexed to learn that Arbogast saw Norman's mother in the window; he informs them that, 10 years before, Norman's mother had poisoned her lover and then committed suicide. Shocked, Lila and Sam realize that the only way to find out the truth is to go to the motel themselves. Posing as a married couple, Sam and Lila check into the motel and search Marion's room, where they find a scrap of paper stuck in the toilet with "$40,000" written on it. While Sam distracts Norman, Lila sneaks into the house. Sam suggests to Norman that he killed Marion for the money so he could buy a new motel. Realizing Lila is not around, Norman knocks Sam unconscious and rushes to the house. Lila sees him approaching and hides in the cellar where she discovers a woman sitting in a rocking chair with her back to her. She calls to the old woman—and discovers that it is in fact a mummified corpse. Seconds later, Norman rushes in wearing his mother's clothes and a wig and brandishing a knife. He tries to attack Lila, but Sam subdues him just in time. After Norman's arrest, a forensic psychiatrist tells Sam and Lila that Norman's dead mother is living in Norman's psyche as an alternate personality. After the death of Norman's father, the pair lived as if they were the only people in the world. When his mother found a lover, Norman went insane with jealousy and murdered them both. Consumed with guilt, Norman "erased the crime" by bringing his mother back to life in his own mind. He stole her corpse and preserved the body. When he was "Mother", he acted, talked and dressed as she would, and when Norman's own personality felt affection toward another person, such as Marion, the "Mother" side of his mind would become extremely jealous; he killed Marion, Arbogast, and two other missing women as "Mother". The psychiatrist concludes that the "Mother" personality now has complete control of Norman's mind. In the final scene, Norman sits in a cell, thinking in "Mother's" voice. It's sad when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son, but I couldn't allow them to believe that I would commit murder. They'll put him away now, as I should have years ago. He was always bad, and in the end, he intended to tell them I killed those girls and that man, as if I could do anything except just sit and stare, like one of his stuffed birds. Well, they know I can't even move a finger, and I won't. I'll just sit here and be quiet, just in case they do suspect me. [pause] They're probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I'm not even gonna swat that fly. I hope they are watching. They'll see. They'll see and they'll know, and they'll say, "Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly." The final shot shows Marion's car being recovered from the swamp. Cast * Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates * Janet Leigh as Marion Crane * Vera Miles as Lila Crane * John Gavin as Sam Loomis * Martin Balsam as Det. Milton Arbogast * Simon Oakland as Dr. Fred Richmond * John McIntire as Sheriff Al Chambers * Lurene Tuttle as Mrs. Chambers * Vaughn Taylor as George Lowery * Frank Albertson as Tom Cassidy * Patricia Hitchcock as Caroline. * John Anderson as California Charlie * Mort Mills as highway patrolman * Virginia Gregg, Jeanette Nolan, and Paul Jasmin (all uncredited) as the voice of Norma Bates * Ted Knight as a police officer (uncredited) The success of Psycho jump-started Perkins' career, who soon began to suffer from typecasting. However, when Perkins was asked whether he would have still taken the role knowing that he would be typecast afterward, he replied with a definite "yes". Until her death, Leigh continued to receive strange and sometimes threatening calls, letters, and even tapes detailing what they would like to do to Marion Crane. One letter was so "grotesque" that it was passed along to the FBI, two of whose agents visited Leigh and told her the culprits had been located and that she should notify the FBI if she received any more letters of that type. The mother of Norman Bates was voiced by Paul Jasmin, Virginia Gregg, and Jeanette Nolan, who also provided some screams for Lila's discovery of mother's corpse. The three voices were thoroughly mixed, except for the last speech, which is all Gregg's. Production Development Psycho is based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch and based on the case of convicted serial killer Wisconsin Ed Gein. Peggy Robertson, a production assistant to Alfred Hitchcock, read Anthony Boucher's positive review of the novel and decided to show the novel to Hitchcock even though readers at Hitchcock's home studio Paramount Pictures rejected its premise for a film. Hitchcock acquired rights to the novel and reportedly ordered Robertson to buy up copies to keep the novel's surprises for the film. Hitchcock chose to film Psycho to recover from two aborted projects with Paramount: Flamingo Feather and No Bail for the Judge. Hitchcock also faced genre competitors whose works were critically compared to his own and so wanted to film new material. The director also disliked stars' salary demands and trusted only a few people to choose prospective material, including Robertson. Executives at Paramount did not want to produce the film and refused to provide the budget that Hitchcock received from them for previous films with the studio. The director decided to plan for Psycho to be filmed quickly and inexpensively, similar to an episode of his ongoing television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents and hired the TV series crew. He proposed this cost-conscious approach to Paramount but executives again refused to finance the film, telling him their sound stages were occupied or booked even though production was known to be in a slump. Hitchcock countered with the offer to finance the film personally and to film it at Universal-International if Paramount would distribute. He also deferred his director's fee of $250,000 for a 60% ownership of the film negative. This offer was finally accepted. But Hitchcock also experienced resistance from producer Herbert Coleman and Shamley Productions executive Joan Harrison who did not think the film would be a success. Hitchcock acquired the film rights anonymously through an agent for $9,000. Novel adaptation James Cavanaugh, who had written some of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents television shows, wrote the original screenplay. Hitchcock rejected it, saying that the story dragged and read like a television short horror story.[18] His assistant recalls that the treatment was very dull. Hitchcock reluctantly agreed to meet with Stefano, who had worked on only one film before. Despite his newness to the industry, the meeting went well, and Stefano was hired. The screenplay is relatively faithful to the novel, with a few notable adaptations by Hitchcock and Stefano. Stefano found the character of Norman Bates (who, in the book, is middle-aged and more overtly unstable) unsympathetic, but became more intrigued when Hitchcock suggested the casting of youthful Anthony Perkins. Stefano eliminated Bates' drinking, which evidently necessitated removing Bates' switching to mother when in a drunken stupor. Also gone is Bates' interest in spiritualism and the occult. Hitchcock and Stefano elected to open the film with scenes in the life of Marion and not introduce Bates at all until 20 minutes into the film, rather than open with Bates reading a history book as Bloch does. Indeed, writer Joseph W. Smith notes that "Her story occupies only two of the novel's 17 chapters. Hitchcock and Stefano expanded this to nearly half the narrative". He likewise notes there is no hotel tryst between Marion and Sam in the novel. For Stefano, the conversation between Marion and Norman in the hotel parlor in which displays a maternal sympathy towards him makes it possible for the audience to switch their sympathies towards Norman Bates after Marion's murder. When Lila Crane is looking through Norman's room, in the film she opens a book with a blank cover whose contents we do not see. In the novel these are "pathologically pornographic" illustrations. Stefano wanted to give the audience "indications that something was quite wrong, but it couldn't be spelled out or overdone." Francois Truffaut in his book of interviews with Hitchcock notes that the novel cheats by having extended conversations between Norman and "Mother" and stating what Mother is "doing" at various given moments. For obvious reasons, these are omitted from the film. The name of the female protagonist was changed from Mary Crane to Marion Crane, since a real Mary Crane existed in Phoenix. Also changed is the novel's budding romance between Sam and Lila, now just a friendly relationship. Hitchcock preferred to focus audience's attention on the solution to the mystery rather than a budding romance and Stefano thought such a relationship would make Sam Loomis seem cheap. Instead of having Sam explain to Lila Norman's mental condition the film simply has a psychotherapist do the talking. (Stefano was in therapy dealing with his relationship with his own mother at the time of writing the film.) The novel is more violent than the film; for instance, Crane is beheaded in the shower, as opposed to being stabbed to death. Minor changes include changing Marion's telltale earring found after her death to a scrap of paper that failed to flush down the toilet. This provided some shock effect since toilets were virtually never seen on screen in the '60s. The location of Arbogast's death has been moved from the foyer to the stairwell. Stefano thought this would make it easier to conceal the truth about "Mother" without tipping that something was being hidden. It also gives both his death (as well as Marion's) a dynamism not in the novel. As Janet Leigh put it, this gave Hitchcock more options for his camera. Pre-production Paramount, whose contract guaranteed another film by Hitchcock, did not want Hitchcock to make Psycho. Paramount was expecting No Bail for the Judge starring Audrey Hepburn, who became pregnant and had to bow out, leading Hitchcock to scrap the production. Their official stance was that the book was "too repulsive" and "impossible for films", and nothing but another of his star-studded mystery thrillers. They did not like "anything about it at all" and denied him his usual budget. So, Hitchcock financed the film's creation through his own Shamley Productions, shooting at Universal Studios under the Revue television unit. Hitchcock's original Bates Motel and Psycho House movie set buildings, which were constructed on the same stage as Lon Chaney Sr.'s The Phantom of the Opera, are still standing at Universal Studios in Universal City near Hollywood and are a regular attraction on the studio's tour. As a further result of cost cutting, Hitchcock chose to film Psycho in black and white, keeping the budget under $1,000,000. Other reasons for shooting in black and white were his desire to prevent the shower scene from being too gory and his admiration for Les Diaboliques's use of black and white. To keep costs down and because he was most comfortable around them, Hitchcock took most of his crew from his television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including the cinematographer, set designer, script supervisor, and first assistant director. He hired regular collaborators Bernard Herrmann as music composer, George Tomasini as editor, and Saul Bass for the title design and storyboarding of the shower scene. In all, his crew cost $62,000. Through the strength of his reputation, Hitchcock cast Leigh for a quarter of her usual fee, paying only $25,000 (in the 1967 book Hitchcock/Truffaut, Hitchcock said that Leigh owed Paramount one final film on her seven-year contract which she had signed in 1953). His first choice, Leigh agreed after having only read the novel and making no inquiry into her salary. Her co-star, Anthony Perkins, agreed to $40,000. Both stars were experienced and proven box-office draws. Paramount did distribute the film, but four years later Hitchcock sold his stock in Shamley to Universal's parent company and his next six films were made at and distributed by Universal. After another four years, Paramount sold all rights to Universal. Filming The film, independently produced by Hitchcock, was shot at Revue Studios, the same location as his television show. Psycho was shot on a tight budget of $806,947.55, beginning on November 11, 1959 and ending on February 1, 1960. Filming started in the morning and finished by six or earlier on Thursdays (when Hitchcock and his wife would dine at Chasen's). Nearly the whole film was shot with 50 mm lenses on 35 mm cameras. This trick closely mimicked normal human vision, which helped to further involve the audience. Before shooting began in November, Hitchcock dispatched assistant director Hilton Green to Phoenix to scout locations and shoot the opening scene. The shot was supposed to be an aerial shot of Phoenix that slowly zoomed into the hotel window of a passionate Marion and Sam. Ultimately, the helicopter footage proved too shaky and had to be spliced with footage from the studio. Another crew filmed day and night footage on Highway 99 between Fresno and Bakersfield, California for projection when Marion drives from Phoenix. They also provided the location shots for the scene where she is pulled over by the highway patrolman. In one street scene shot in downtown Phoenix, Christmas decorations were discovered to be visible; rather than re-shoot the footage, Hitchcock chose to add a graphic to the opening scene marking the date as "Friday, December the Eleventh". Edward Hopper's The House by the Railroad used as the inspiration for the look of the Bates Motel Green also took photos of a prepared list of 140 locations for later reconstruction in the studio. These included many real estate offices and homes such as those belonging to Marion and her sister. He also found a girl who looked just like he imagined Marion and photographed her whole wardrobe, which would enable Hitchcock to demand realistic looks from Helen Colvig, the wardrobe supervisor. The look of the Bates Motel was modeled on Edward Hopper's famous painting The House by The Railroad. Both the leads, Perkins and Leigh, were given freedom to interpret their roles and improvise as long as it did not involve moving the camera. An example of Perkins' improvisation is Norman's habit of munching on candy corn. Throughout filming, Hitchcock created and hid various versions of the "Mother corpse" prop in Leigh's dressing room closet. Leigh took the joke well, and she wondered whether it was done to keep her on edge and thus more in character or to judge which corpse would be scarier for the audience. During shooting, Hitchcock was forced to uncharacteristically do retakes for some scenes. The final shot in the shower scene, which starts with an extreme close-up on Marion's eye and pulls up and out, proved very difficult for Leigh, since the water splashing in her face made her want to blink, and the cameraman had trouble as well since he had to manually focus while moving the camera. Retakes were also required for the opening scene, since Hitchcock felt that Leigh and Gavin were not passionate enough. Leigh had trouble saying "Not inordinately" for the real estate office scene, requiring additional retakes. Lastly, the scene in which the mother is discovered required complicated coordination of the chair turning around, Miles hitting the light bulb, and a lens flare, which proved to be the sticking point. Hitchcock forced retakes until all three elements were to his satisfaction. According to Hitchcock, a series of shots with Arbogast going up the stairs in the Bates house before he is stabbed were directed by Hilton Green, working with storyboard artist Saul Bass' drawings only while Hitchcock was incapacitated with the common cold. However, upon viewing the dailies of the shots, Hitchcock was forced to scrap them. He claimed they were "no good" because they did not portray "an innocent person but a sinister man who was going up those stairs". Hitchcock later re-shot the scene, though a little of the cut footage made its way into the film. Filming the murder of Arbogast proved problematic due to the overhead camera angle necessary to hide the film's twist. A camera track constructed on pulleys alongside the stairway together with a chair-like device had to be constructed and thoroughly tested over a period of weeks. Alfred Hitchcock's cameo is a signature occurrence in most of his films. In Psycho, he can be seen through a window, wearing a Stetson hat, standing outside Marion Crane's office. Wardrobe mistress Rita Riggs says that Hitchcock chose this scene for his cameo so that he could be in a scene with his daughter (who played one of Marion's colleagues). Others have suggested that he chose this early appearance to avoid distracting the audience. Shower scene The murder of Janet Leigh's character in the shower is the film's pivotal scene, and one of the most famous scenes in cinema history. As such, it spawned numerous myths and legends. It was shot from December 17 to December 23, 1959, and features 77 different camera angles. The scene "runs 3 minutes and includes 50 cuts." Most of the shots are extreme close-ups, except for medium shots in the shower directly before and directly after the murder. The combination of the close shots with the short duration between cuts makes the sequence feel longer, more subjective, more uncontrolled, and more violent than would the images if they were presented alone or in a wider angle. A silhouetted figure brandishes a knife towards the camera The shadowy mother figure from the infamous shower scene. In order to capture the straight-on shot of the shower head, the camera had to be equipped with a long lens. The inner holes on the spout were blocked and the camera placed farther back, so that the water appears to be hitting the lens but actually went around and past it. The soundtrack of screeching violins, violas, and cellos was an original all-strings piece by composer Bernard Herrmann entitled "The Murder." Hitchcock originally wanted the sequence (and all motel scenes) to play without music, but Herrmann begged him to try it with the cue he had composed. Afterward, Hitchcock agreed that it vastly intensified the scene, and he nearly doubled Herrmann's salary. The blood in the scene is in fact chocolate syrup, which shows up better on black-and-white film, and has more realistic density than stage blood. The sound of the knife entering flesh was created by plunging a knife into a melon. It is sometimes claimed that Leigh was not in the shower the entire time, and that a body double was used. However, in an interview with Roger Ebert, and in the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, Leigh stated that she was in the scene the entire time; Hitchcock used a live model as her stand-in only for the scenes in which Norman wraps up Marion's body in a shower curtain and places her body in the trunk of her car. However, the 2010 book The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower by Robert Graysmith contradicts this, identifying Marli Renfro as Leigh's body double for some of the shower scenes. Another popular myth is that in order for Leigh's scream in the shower to sound realistic, Hitchcock used ice-cold water. Leigh denied this on numerous occasions, saying that he was very generous with a supply of hot water. Also, all of the screams are Leigh's. Another myth was that Hitchcock only told Leigh to stand in the shower, and she had no idea that her character was actually going to be murdered, causing an authentic reaction. The most notorious urban legend arising from the production of Psycho began when Saul Bass, the graphic designer who created many of the title sequences of Hitchcock's films and storyboarded some of his scenes, claimed that he had actually directed the shower scene. This claim was refuted by several people associated with the film. Leigh, who is the focus of the scene, stated, "...absolutely not! I have emphatically said this in any interview I've ever given. I've said it to his face in front of other people... I was in that shower for seven days, and, believe me, Alfred Hitchcock was right next to his camera for every one of those seventy-odd shots." Hilton Green, the assistant director and cameraman, also denies Bass' claim: "There is not a shot in that movie that I didn't roll the camera for. And I can tell you I never rolled the camera for Mr. Bass." Roger Ebert, a longtime admirer of Hitchcock's work, was also amused by the rumor, stating, "It seems unlikely that a perfectionist with an ego like Hitchcock's would let someone else direct such a scene." However, commentators such as Stephen Rebello and Bill Krohn have established that Saul Bass did contribute to the creation of that scene in his capacity as a graphic artist. Bass is credited for the design of the opening credits, and also as "Pictorial Consultant" in the credits. When interviewing Hitchcock, François Truffaut asked about the extent of Bass' contribution to the film, to which Hitchcock said that Bass designed the titles as well as provided storyboards for the Arbogast murder (which he claimed to have rejected), but made no mention of Bass providing storyboards for the shower scene. According to Bill Krohn's Hitchcock At Work, Bass's first claim to have directed the scene was in 1970, when he provided a magazine with 48 drawings used as storyboards as proof. Krohn's analysis of the production of Psycho in his book Hitchcock at Work, while refuting Bass' claims for directing the scene, notes that these storyboards did introduce key aspects of the final scene—most notably, the fact that the killer appears as a silhouette, and details such as the shower curtain being torn down, the curtain rod being used as a barrier, and the transition from the hole of the drainage pipe to Marion Crane's dead eyes which (as Krohn notes) is highly reminiscent of the iris titles for Vertigo. Krohn's research also notes that Hitchcock shot the scene with two cameras: one a BNC Mitchell, the other a handheld camera called an Éclair which Orson Welles had used in Touch of Evil (1958). In order to create an ideal montage for the greatest emotional impact on the audience, Hitchcock shot a lot of footage of this scene which he trimmed down in the editing room. He even brought a Moviola on the set to gauge the footage required. The final sequence, which his editor George Tomasini worked on with Hitchcock's advice, went far beyond the basic paradigms set up by Bass' storyboards. According to Donald Spoto in The Dark Side of Genius, Hitchcock's wife, Alma Reville, spotted a blooper in one of the last screenings of Psycho before its official release: after Marion was supposedly dead, one could see her blink. According to Patricia Hitchcock, talking in Laurent Bouzereau's "making of" documentary, Alma spotted that Leigh's character appeared to take a breath. In either case, the postmortem activity was edited out and was never seen by audiences. Although Marion's eyes should be dilated after her death, the contacts necessary for this effect would have required six weeks of acclimatization to wear them, so Hitchcock decided to forgo them. It is often claimed that, despite its graphic nature, the "shower scene" never once shows a knife puncturing flesh. However, a frame by frame analysis of the sequence clearly shows one shot in which the knife penetrates Leigh's abdomen; actually a prosthetic prop used for this shot. There is an alternate theory that the apparent piercing was created by lighting and reverse motion. Leigh herself was so affected by this scene when she saw it, that she no longer took showers unless she absolutely had to; she would lock all the doors and windows and would leave the bathroom and shower door open. She never realized until she first watched the film "how vulnerable and defenseless one is". Leigh and Hitchcock fully discussed what the scene meant: Marion had decided to go back to Phoenix, come clean, and take the consequence, so when she stepped into the bathtub it was as if she were stepping into the baptismal waters. The spray beating down on her was purifying the corruption from her mind, purging the evil from her soul. She was like a virgin again, tranquil, at peace. Film theorist Robin Wood also discusses how the shower washes "away her guilt". He comments upon the "alienation effect" of killing off the "apparent center of the film" with which spectators had identified. Soundtrack Score Hitchcock insisted that Bernard Herrmann write the score for Psycho, in spite of the composer's refusal to accept a reduced fee for the film's lower budget. The resulting score, according to Christopher Palmer in The Composer in Hollywood (1990) is "perhaps Herrmann's most spectacular Hitchcock achievement." Hitchcock was pleased with the tension and drama the score added to the film, later remarking "33% of the effect of Psycho was due to the music." Herrmann used the lowered music budget to his advantage by writing for a string orchestra rather than a full symphonic ensemble. He thought of the single tone color of the all-string soundtrack as a way of reflecting the black and white cinematography of the film. Hollywood composer Fred Steiner, in an analysis of the score to Psycho, points out that string instruments gave Herrmann access to a wider range in tone, dynamics and instrumental special effects than any other single instrumental group would have. The main title music, a tense, contrapuntal piece, sets the tone of impending violence, and returns three times on the soundtrack. Though nothing shocking occurs during the first 15–20 minutes of the film, the title music remains in the audience's mind, lending tension to these early scenes. Herrmann also maintains tension through the slower moments in the film through the use of ostinato. There were rumors that Herrmann had used electronic means, including amplified bird screeches to achieve the shocking effect of the music in the Shower Scene. The effect was achieved, however, only with violins in a "screeching, stabbing sound-motion of extraordinary viciousness." The only electronic amplification employed was in the placing of the microphones close to the instruments, to get a harsher sound. Besides the emotional impact, the Shower Scene cue ties the soundtrack to birds. The association of the Shower Scene music with birds also telegraphs to the audience that it is Norman, the stuffed-bird collector, who is the murderer rather than his mother. Herrmann biographer Steven C. Smith writes that the music for the Shower Scene is "probably the most famous (and most imitated) cue in film music," but Hitchock was originally opposed to having music in this scene. When Herrmann played the Shower Scene cue for Hitchcock, the director approved its use in the film. Herrmann reminded Hitchcock of his instructions not to score this scene, to which Hitchcock replied, "Improper suggestion, my boy, improper suggestion." This was one of two important disagreements Hitchcock had with Herrmann, in which Herrmann ignored Hitchcock's instructions. The second one, over the score for Torn Curtain (1966), resulted in the end of their professional collaboration. A survey conducted by PRS for Music, in 2009, showed that the UK public consider the score from 'the shower scene' to be the scariest theme from any film. Recordings Several CDs of the film soundtrack have been released, including: * The 1970s soundtrack recording with Bernard Herrmann conducting the National Philharmonic Orchestra [unicorn CD, 1993]. * The 1997 Varèse Sarabande CD features all the music scored in the film, but the pieces were re-recorded in 1975 by the composer. * The 1998 Soundstage Records SCD 585 CD claims to feature the tracks from the original master tapes. However, it has been asserted that the release is a bootleg recording. Track listing (Psycho — Soundstage Records) All pieces by Bernard Herrmann. 1. "Prelude; The City; Marion and Sam; Temptation" 6:15 2. "Flight; The Patrol Car; The Car Lot; The Package; The Rainstorm" 7:21 3. "Hotel Room; The Window; The Parlour; The Madhouse; The Peephole" 8:52 4. "The Bathroom; The Murder; The Body; The Office; The Curtain; The Water; The Car; The Swamp" 6:58 5. "The Search; The Shadow; Phone Booth; The Porch; The Stairs; The Knife" 5:41 6. "The Search; The First Floor; Cabin 10; Cabin 1" 6:18 7. "The Hill; The Bedroom; The Toys; The Cellar; Discovery; Finale" 5:00 Controversy According to the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, the censors in charge of enforcing the Production Code for the MPAA wrangled with Hitchcock because some censors insisted they could see one of Leigh's breasts. Hitchcock held onto the print for several days, left it untouched, and resubmitted it for approval. Astoundingly, each of the censors reversed their positions – those who had previously seen the breast now did not, and those who had not, now did. They passed the film after the director removed one shot that showed the buttocks of Leigh's stand-in. The board was also upset by the racy opening, so Hitchcock said that if they let him keep the shower scene he would re-shoot the opening with them on the set. Since they did not show up for the re-shoot, the opening stayed. Another cause of concern for the censors was that Marion was shown flushing a toilet, with its contents (torn-up note paper) fully visible. Up until that time in mainstream film and television in the U.S., a toilet flushing was never heard, let alone seen. A possible exception is the Turner Classic Movies print of the 1959 Walt Disney film The Shaggy Dog, in which a toilet is heard flushing off-camera. However, because of the possibility of audio dubbing in restorations and reissues of the film over the years, today it is unclear whether or not the sound of the toilet flushing was in the original 1959 release. Also, according to the "Making of" featurette on the Collector's Edition DVD, some censors objected to the use of the word "transvestite" in the film's closing scenes. This objection was withdrawn after writer Joseph Stefano took out a dictionary and proved to them that the word carried no hidden sexual context, but merely referred to "a man who likes to wear women's clothing". Internationally, Hitchcock was forced to make minor changes to the film, mostly to the shower scene. Notably, in Britain the shot of Norman washing blood from his hands was objected to and in Singapore, though the shower scene was left untouched, the murder of Arbogast and a shot of Mother's corpse were removed. Promotion A large image of Hitchcock pointing at his watch. The words at the other side of the poster say "It is required that you see Psycho from the very beginning." There is a space for theatre staff to advertise the start of the next showing. Theatre poster providing notification of "no late admission" policy Hitchcock did most of the promotion on his own, forbidding Leigh and Perkins from making the usual television, radio, and print interviews for fear of their revealing the plot. Even critics were not given private screenings but rather had to see the film with the general public, which, despite possibly affecting their reviews, certainly preserved the plot. The film's original trailer features a jovial Hitchcock taking the viewer on a tour of the set, and almost giving away plot details before stopping himself. It is "tracked" with Bernard Herrmann's Psycho theme, but also jovial music from Hitchcock's comedy The Trouble with Harry; most of Hitchcock's dialogue is post-synchronized. The trailer was made after completion of the film, and since Janet Leigh was no longer available for filming, Hitchcock had Vera Miles don a blonde wig and scream loudly as he pulled the shower curtain back in the bathroom sequence of the preview. Since the title, "Psycho," instantly covers most of the screen, the switch went unnoticed by audiences for years. However a freeze-frame analysis clearly reveals that it is Vera Miles and not Janet Leigh in the shower during the trailer. The most controversial move was Hitchcock's "no late admission" policy for the film, which was unusual for the time. It was not entirely original as Clouzot had done the same in France for Les Diaboliques. Hitchcock thought that if people entered the theater late and never saw the star actress Janet Leigh, they would feel cheated. At first theater owners opposed the idea, claiming that they would lose business. However, after the first day, the owners enjoyed long lines of people waiting to see the film. The film was so successful that it was reissued to theaters in 1965. A year later, CBS purchased the television rights for $450,000. CBS planned to televise the film on September 23, 1966, but three days prior Valerie Percy, daughter of Illinois senate candidate Charles H. Percy, was murdered. As her parents slept mere feet away, she was stabbed a dozen times with a double-edged knife. In light of the murder, CBS agreed to postpone the screening, but as a result of the Apollo pad fire of January 27, 1967, the network washed its hands of Psycho, and shortly afterward Paramount included the film in its first syndicated package of post-1950 movies, "Portfolio I." WABC-TV in New York City was the first station in the country to air Psycho (with some scenes significantly edited), on its late-night movie series, The Best of Broadway, on June 24, 1967.[100] Following another successful theatrical reissue in 1969, the film finally made its way to general television airing in one of Universal's syndicated programming packages for local stations in 1970. Psycho was aired for twenty years in this format, then leased to cable for two years before returning to syndication as part of the "List of a Lifetime" package. Interpretations Subversion of romance through irony In Psycho, Hitchcock subverts the romantic elements that are seen in most of his work. The film is instead ironic as it prevents "clarity and fulfillment" of romance. The past is central to the film; the main characters "struggle to understand and resolve destructive personal histories" and ultimately fail. Lesley Brill writes, "The inexorable forces of past sins and mistakes crush hopes for regeneration and present happiness." The crushed hope is highlighted by the death of the protagonist, Marion Crane, halfway through the film. Marion is like Persephone of Greek mythology, who is abducted temporarily from the world of living. The myth does not sustain with Marion, who dies hopelessly in her room at Bates Motel. The room is wallpapered with floral print like Persephone's flowers, but they are only "reflected in mirrors, as images of images—twice removed from reality". In the scene of Marion's death, Brill describes the transition from the bathroom drain to Marion's lifeless eye, "Like the eye of the amorphous sea creature at the end of Fellini's La Dolce Vita, it marks the birth of death, an emblem of final hopelessness and corruption." Unlike heroines in Hitchcock's other films, she does not reestablish her innocence or discover love. Marion is deprived of "the humble treasures of love, marriage, home, and family", which Hitchcock considers elements of human happiness. There exists among Psycho's secondary characters a lack of "familial warmth and stability", which demonstrates the unlikelihood of domestic fantasies. The film contains ironic jokes about domesticity, such as when Sam writes a letter to Marion, agreeing to marry her, only after the audience sees her buried in the swamp. Sam and Marion's sister Lila, in investigating Marion's disappearance, develop an "increasingly connubial" relationship, a development that Marion is denied. Norman also suffers a similarly perverse definition of domesticity. He has "an infantile and divided personality" and lives in a mansion whose past occupies the present. Norman displays stuffed birds that are "frozen in time" and keeps childhood toys and stuffed animals in his room. He is hostile toward suggestions to move from the past, such as with Marion's suggestion to put his mother "someplace" and as a result kills Marion to preserve his past. Brill explains, "'Someplace' for Norman is where his delusions of love, home, and family are declared invalid and exposed." Light and darkness feature prominently in Psycho. The first shot after the intertitle is the sunny landscape of Phoenix before the camera enters a dark hotel room where Sam and Marion appear as bright figures. Marion is almost immediately cast in darkness; she is preceded by her shadow as she reenters the office to steal money and as she enters her bedroom. When she flees Phoenix, darkness descends on her drive. The following sunny morning is punctured by a watchful police officer with black sunglasses, and she finally arrives at Bates Motel in near darkness. Bright lights are also "the ironic equivalent of darkness" in the film, blinding instead of illuminating. Examples of brightness include the opening window shades in Sam and Marion's hotel room, vehicle headlights at night, the neon sign at Bates Motel, "the glaring white" of the bathroom tiles where Marion dies, and the fruit cellar's exposed light bulb shining on the corpse of Norman's mother. Such bright lights typically characterize danger and violence in Hitchcock's films. Motifs The film often features shadows, mirrors, windows, and, less so, water. The shadows are present from the very first scene where the blinds make bars on Marion and Sam as they peer out the window. The stuffed birds' shadows loom over Marion as she eats, and Norman's mother is seen in only shadows until the very end. More subtly, back-lighting turns the rakes in the hardware store into talons above Lila's head. Mirrors reflect Marion as she packs, her eyes as she checks the rear-view mirror, her face in the policeman's sunglasses, and her hands as she counts out the money in the car dealership's bathroom. A motel window serves as a mirror by reflecting Marion and Norman together. Hitchcock shoots through Marion's windshield and the telephone booth, when Arbogast phones Sam and Lila. The heavy downpour can be seen as foreshadowing of the shower, and it letting up can be seen as a symbol of Marion making up her mind to return to Phoenix. There are a number of references to birds. Marion's last name is Crane and she is from Phoenix. Norman's hobby is stuffing birds, and he comments that Marion eats like a bird. Psychoanalytic interpretation Psycho has been called "the first psychoanalytical thriller." The sex and violence in the film were unlike anything previously seen in a mainstream film. "[T]he shower scene is both feared and desired," wrote French film critic Serge Kaganski. "Hitchcock may be scaring his female viewers out of their wits, but he is turning his male viewers into potential rapists, since Janet Leigh has been turning men on ever since she appeared in her brassiere in the first scene." In his documentary The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, Slavoj Žižek remarks that Norman Bates' mansion has three floors, parallelling the three levels that psychoanalysis attributes to the human mind: the top floor would be the superego, where Bates' mother lives; the ground floor is then Bates' ego, where he functions as an apparently normal human being; and finally, the basement would be Bates' id. Žižek interprets Bates' moving his mother's corpse from top floor to basement as a symbol for the deep connection that psychoanalysis posits between superego and id. Reception Initial reviews of the film were thoroughly mixed. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, "There is not an abundance of subtlety or the lately familiar Hitchcock bent toward significant and colorful scenery in this obviously low-budget job." Crowther called the "slow buildups to sudden shocks" reliably melodramatic but contested Hitchcock's psychological points, reminiscent of Krafft-Ebing's studies, as less effective. While the film did not conclude satisfactorily for the critic, he commended the cast's performances as "fair". British writer C. A. Lejeune was so offended that she not only walked out before the end but permanently resigned her post as film critic for the Observer. Other negative reviews stated, "a blot on an honorable career", "plainly a gimmick movie", and "merely one of those television shows padded out to two hours." Positive reviews stated, "Anthony Perkins' performance is the best of his career... Janet Leigh has never been better", "played out beautifully", and "first American movie since Touch of Evil to stand in the same creative rank as the great European films." A good example of the mix is the New York Herald Tribune's review, which stated, "...rather difficult to be amused at the forms insanity may take... keeps your attention like a snake-charmer." The public loved the film, with lines stretching outside of theaters as people had to wait for the next showing. It broke box-office records in Japan, China and the rest of Asia, France, Britain, South America, the United States, and Canada, and was a moderate success in Australia for a brief period. It is one of the largest-grossing black-and-white films and helped make Hitchcock a multimillionaire and the third-largest shareholder in Universal. Psycho was, by a large margin, the top moneymaking film of Hitchcock's career, earning $11,200,000. In Great Britain, the film shattered attendance records at the London Plaza Cinema, but nearly all British critics panned it, questioning Hitchcock's taste and judgment. Reasons cited for this were the critics' late screenings, forcing them to rush their reviews, their dislike of the gimmicky promotion, and Hitchcock's expatriate status. Perhaps thanks to the public's response and Hitchcock's efforts at promoting it, the critics did a re-review, and the film was praised. Time magazine switched its opinion from "Hitchcock bears down too heavily in this one" to "superlative" and "masterly", and Bosley Crowther put it on his Top Ten list of 1960. Psycho was initially criticized for making other filmmakers more willing to show gore; three years later, Blood Feast, considered to be the first "gore film", was released. Psycho's success financially and critically had others trying to ride its coattails. Inspired by Psycho, Hammer Film Productions launched a series of mystery thrillers, most shot in black and white and all with twist endings, starting with Taste of Fear (1961), followed by Maniac and Paranoiac (both 1963), Nightmare (1964), Hysteria, Fanatic and The Nanny (all 1965), and Crescendo (1970). Other films inspired by the success of Psycho include William Castle's Homicidal (1961), followed by a whole slew of more than 13 other splatter films. Recognition Award Category Name Outcome Academy Awards (33rd) Director Alfred Hitchcock Nominated Best Supporting Actress Janet Leigh Nominated Best Cinematography, Black-and White John L. Russell Nominated Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White Joseph Hurley, Robert Clatworthy, George Milo Nominated Directors Guild of America Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures Alfred Hitchcock Nominated Edgar Allan Poe Awards Best Motion Picture Joseph Stefano (screenwriter), Robert Bloch (author) Won International Board of Motion Picture Reviewers Best Actor Anthony Perkins Tied Golden Globe Awards (18th) Best Supporting Actress Janet Leigh Won Writers Guild of America, East Best Written American Drama Joseph Stefano Nominated In 1992, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Actress Janet Leigh asserts, "no other murder mystery in the history of the movies has inspired such merchandising." Any number of items emblazoned with Bates Motel, stills, lobby cards, and highly valuable posters are available for purchase. In 1992, it was adapted scene-for-scene into three comic books by the Innovative Corporation. Psycho has appeared on a number of lists by websites, TV channels, and magazines. The shower scene was featured as number four on the list of Bravo Network's 100 Scariest Movie Moments, whilst the finale was ranked number four on Premiere's similar list. Entertainment Weekly's book titled The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time ranked the film as #11. Recognition by American Film Institute Recognition Year Ranking Notes AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies 1998 #18 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills 2001 #1 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains 2003 #2 Norman Bates (Villain) AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes 2005 #56 "A boy's best friend is his mother." AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores 2005 #4 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies 2007 #14 Sequels and remakes Three sequels were produced: Psycho II (1983), Psycho III (1986), and Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990), the last being a part-prequel TV movie written by the original screenplay author, Joseph Stefano. Anthony Perkins returned to his role of Norman Bates in all three sequels, and also directed the third film. The voice of Norman Bates' mother was maintained by noted radio actress Virginia Gregg with the exception of Psycho IV, where the role was played by Olivia Hussey. Vera Miles also reprised her role of Lila Crane in Psycho II.[124] The sequels were well received but considered inferior to the original. Bates Motel was a failed television pilot spin-off which later aired as a television movie (prior to the release of Psycho IV). Anthony Perkins declined to appear in the pilot, so Norman's cameo appearance was played by Kurt Paul, who was Perkins' stunt double on Psycho II and III. In 1998, Gus Van Sant directed a remake of Psycho. The film is in color and features a different cast, but aside from this it is a virtually shot-for-shot remake copying Hitchcock's camera movements and editing. A Conversation with Norman (2005), directed by Jonathan M. Parisen, was a film inspired by Psycho. As of 2010 a dramatic feature motion picture is in development based on the book by Stephen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. The film will be entitled Alfred Hitchcock Presents and will be directed by Ryan Murphy and star Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock. Cultural impact Psycho has become one of the most recognizable films in cinema history, and is arguably Hitchcock's best known film. The iconic shower scene is frequently spoofed, given homage to and referenced in popular culture, complete with the violin screeching sound effects (see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, among many others). The Simpsons in particular has spoofed the film on numerous occasions, while Principal Skinner's relationship with his mother is reminiscent of Norman Bates'. In his novel, Bloch used an uncommon plot structure: he repeatedly introduced sympathetic protagonists, then killed them off. This played on his reader's expectations of traditional plots, leaving them uncertain and anxious. Hitchcock recognized the effect this approach could have on audiences, and utilized it in his adaptation, killing off Leigh's character at the end of the first act. This daring plot device, coupled with the fact that the character was played by the biggest box-office name in the film, was a shocking turn of events in 1960. The most original and influential moment in the film is the "shower scene", which became iconic in pop culture because it is often regarded as one of the most terrifying scenes ever filmed. Part of its effectiveness was due to the use of startling editing techniques borrowed from the Soviet montage filmmakers, and to the iconic screeching violins in Bernard Herrmann's musical score. Psycho is a prime example of the type of film that appeared in the 1960s after the erosion of the Production Code. It was unprecedented in its depiction of sexuality and violence, right from the opening scene where Sam and Marion are shown as lovers sharing the same bed. In the Production Code standards of that time, unmarried couples shown in the same bed would be taboo. In addition, the censors were upset by the shot of a flushing toilet; at that time, the idea of seeing a toilet onscreen—let alone being flushed—was taboo in American films and television shows. According to Entertainment Weekly, "The Production Code censors... had no objection to the bloodletting, the Oedipal murder theme, or even the shower scene—but did ask that Hitchcock remove the word transvestite from the film. He didn't." At one point, Hitchcock actually considered releasing the film without censorial approval. Its box office success helped propel Hollywood toward more graphic displays of previously-censored themes. Psycho is also widely considered to be the first film in the slasher film genre. Psycho is (to an extent) referenced in films; examples include the 1978 horror film Halloween, the 1977 High Anxiety, the 1980 Fade to Black, the 1980 Dressed to Kill, Wes Craven's 1996 horror satire Scream, and the 2003 live-action/animated Looney Tunes: Back in Action. The television series Psych includes an episode ("Mr. Yin Presents") completely based on Alfred Hitchcock plot lines, including many from Psycho. Bernard Herrmann's musical work was also sampled by several music artists, such as rapper Busta Rhymes, who sampled the opening theme on his song "Gimme Some More". The Beastie Boys sampled the murder theme (among other samples) on the track "Egg Man" from their 1989 album Paul's Boutique. The Bates, a German punk rock band, refers to Norman Bates; additional the music video for "Billie Jean", a punk rock cover of the song originally performed by Michael Jackson, parodied the movie.

4. Night of the Living Dead (1968) (11 of 20 lists - 185 points - highest rank #1 ScottyDo) Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent black-and-white zombie film directed by George A. Romero. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a USD$114,000 budget. After decades of cinematic re-releases, it grossed some $12 million domestically and $30 million internationally. Night of the Living Dead was heavily criticized during its release because of its explicit content and similarities to the ongoing Vietnam war. However, it eventually received critical acclaim and was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as a film deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant." The film follows Ben (Duane Jones), Barbra (Judith O'Dea), and five others, who are trapped in a rural farmhouse in Pennsylvania and attempt to survive the night while the house is being attacked by mysteriously reanimated ghouls, otherwise known as zombies. Night of the Living Dead is the origin of six other Living Dead films directed by George A. Romero and became the inspiration for two remakes of the film, film of the same name directed by Tom Savini, and Night of the Living Dead 3D, which was directed by Jeff Broadstreet and contained a much different storyline. Plot Siblings Barbara (Judith O'Dea) and Johnny (Russell Streiner) drive to a rural Pennsylvania cemetery to visit their father's grave. Barbara is afraid of cemeteries; Johnny frightens her repeating, "They're coming to get you, Barbara!" A pale skinned man (Bill Hinzman) grabs Barbara. Johnny wrestles with the man but is killed when he falls and his head hits a tombstone. Barbara flees while being pursued by the man. She reaches an empty farmhouse where she discovers the half-eaten corpse of the homeowner. As she runs out into the yard, she realises several more ghoulish figures are swarming toward the house. Suddenly a young man named Ben (Duane Jones) arrives at the house, drags Barbara inside and boards up the doors and windows. Barbara then frantically insists they must rescue Johnny, then collapses in shock. The ghouls swarm around the house, searching for living human flesh. Hiding in the cellar are an angry married couple, Harry and Helen Cooper (Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman), their daughter Karen (Kyra Schon), and teenage couple Tom and Judy (Keith Wayne and Judith Ridley). Ben activates a radio while Barbara awakens. She is frightened by Tom and Harry emerging from the cellar. Harry and Ben argue. Ben thinks they should have left the cellar to help board the doors. Harry espouses hiding in the cellar but Ben deems it a "death trap" and remains upstairs. Tom agrees with Ben and asks Judy upstairs. Harry returns to the cellar to Helen and Karen, who was bitten on the arm by one of the attackers and has fallen ill. Radio reports explain that an epidemic of mass murder is sweeping across the eastern seaboard. Ben discovers a television; the emergency broadcaster horrifyingly reveals that the recently deceased have reanimated and are consuming the flesh of living humans. Experts, scientists, and the military do not know the cause; one scientist believes it is caused by radioactive contamination from a space probe that exploded in the Earth's atmosphere. A final report reveals that a gunshot or heavy blow to the head will stop the "ghouls" and that posses of armed men are patrolling the countryside to restore order. The Cooper family have been hiding in the cellar beneath the house. After the news reports reveal a series of local fortifications that the living are to retreat to for safety from the living dead, Ben devises a plan to escape from the house and head to the nearest one, for protection and to get medical help for Karen, who is barely concious. Ben suggests they escape using the truck he drove to the house, but it needs fuel. Ben and Tom drive the short distance to an outside gas pump while Harry hurls Molotov cocktails from an upper window to restrain the ghouls. Judy fears for Tom's safety and runs after him. They arrive at the pump but Tom spills fuel, setting the truck alight. Tom and Judy drive the truck from the pump to avoid further damage but it explodes, killing them. Ben returns to the house to find Harry boarding up the front door. Ben kicks the door down and furiously beats Harry. Ghouls approach the truck and feed on Tom and Judy's flesh. After the ghouls attempt to break into the house, Harry spots Ben's rifle and threatens to shoot him. Ben wrestles the gun from Harry and shoots him. The ghouls begin to tug Helen and Barbara through the windows. Harry stumbles into the cellar to find Karen has died from the infected bite on her arm, and Harry dies. Helen frees herself of the ghouls and proceeds to the cellar to find Karen reanimated and consuming Harry's flesh. Karen repeatedly stabs Helen with a cement trowel, killing her. Barbara spots Johnny in the group of ghouls; distracted, she is carried away and killed. Karen tries to attack Ben. He pushes her away and seals himself in the cellar, ironically the course of action he originally argued against. Ben shoots the reanimated Harry and Helen. He survives the night and falls asleep. In the morning a posse arrives. Ben hears the posse and proceeds to the window. A member of the posse mistakes him for a ghoul and shoots him in the head from a distance, killing him. Ben's body is placed onto a burning pyre. Production Development and background While attending Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Romero embarked upon his career in the film industry. In the 1960s, he directed and produced television commercials and industrial films for The Latent Image, a company he co-founded with friends John Russo and Russell Streiner. During this period, the trio grew bored making commercials and wanted to film a horror movie. According to Romero, they wanted to capitalize on the film industry's "thirst for the bizarre". He and Streiner contacted Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman, president and vice president respectively of a Pittsburgh-based industrial film firm called Hardman Associates, Inc., and pitched their idea for a then-untitled horror film. Convinced by Romero, a production company called Image Ten was formed which included Romero, Russo, Streiner, Hardman and Eastman. The initial budget was $6,000 with the ten members of the production company investing $600 each for a share of the profits. When it was found that another $6,000 was required another ten investors were found but this was also soon found to be inadequate. Image Ten eventually raised approximately $114,000 for the budget. Principal photography The small budget dictated much of the production process. According to Hardman, "We knew that we could not raise enough money to shoot a film on a par with the classic horror films with which we had all grown up. The best that we could do was to place our cast in a remote spot and then bring the horror to be visited on them in that spot". Scenes were filmed near Evans City, Pennsylvania, 30 miles (48 km) north of Pittsburgh in rural Butler County; the opening sequence was shot at the Evans City Cemetery on Franklin Road, south of the borough. The indoor scenes (upstairs) were filmed in a downtown Evans City home that later became the offices of a prominent local physician and family doctor (Allsop). This home is still standing on South Washington St. (locally called Mars-Evans City Road), between the intersecting streets of South Jackson and Van Buren. The outdoor, indoor (downstairs) and basement scenes were filmed at a location northeast of Evans City, near a park. The basement door (external view) shown in the film was cut into a wall by the production team and led nowhere. As this house was scheduled for demolition damage during filming was permitted. The site is now a turf farm. Props and special effects were fairly simple and limited by the budget. The blood, for example, was Bosco Chocolate Syrup drizzled over cast members' bodies. Consumed flesh was roasted ham and entrails donated by one of the actors who also owned a chain of butchers shops. Costumes consisted of second-hand clothing from cast members and Goodwill. Zombie makeup varied during the film. Initially makeup was limited to "Raccoon" faces, white skin with blackened eyes, but as filming progressed mortician's wax was used to simulate wounds and decay to make the zombies more frightening. As filming was not linear, the "Raccoon" faces appear sporadically. Eastman supervised the special effects, wardrobe and makeup. Filming took place between June and December 1967 under the working title Night of Anubis and later Night of the Flesh Eaters. The small budget led Romero to shoot on 35 mm black-and-white film. The completed film ultimately benefited from the decision, as film historian Joseph Maddrey describes the black-and-white filming as "guerrilla-style", resembling "the unflinching authority of a wartime newsreel". Maddrey adds, it "seem as much like a documentary on the loss of social stability as an exploitation film". Post-production Members of Image Ten were involved in filming and post-production, participating in loading camera magazines, gaffing, constructing props, recording sounds and editing. Production stills were shot and printed by Karl Hardman, who stated in an interview that a "number of cast members formed a production line in the darkroom for developing, washing and drying of the prints as I made the exposures. As I recall, I shot over 1,250 pictures during the production". Upon completion of post-production, Image Ten found it difficult to secure a distributor willing to show the film with the gruesome scenes intact. Columbia and American International Pictures declined after requests to soften it and re-shoot the final scene were rejected by producers. Romero admitted that "none of us wanted to do that. We couldn't imagine a happy ending. . . . Everyone want[ed] a Hollywood ending, but we stuck to our guns". The Manhattan-based Walter Reade Organization agreed to show the film uncensored, but changed the title from Night of the Flesh Eaters to Night of the Living Dead because a film had already been produced under a similar title to the former. While changing the title, the copyright notice was accidentally deleted from the early releases of the film. Writing Co-written as a horror comedy by John Russo and George A. Romero under the title Monster Flick, an early screenplay draft concerned the exploits of teenage aliens who visit Earth and befriend human teenagers. A second version of the script featured a young man who runs away from home and discovers rotting human corpses that aliens use for food scattered across a meadow. The final draft, written mainly by Romero during three days in 1967, focused on reanimated human corpses — Romero refers to them as ghouls — that feast on the flesh of the living. In a 1997 interview with the BBC's Forbidden Weekend, Romero explained that the script developed into a three-part short story. Part one became Night of the Living Dead. Sequels Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985) were adapted from the two remaining parts. Romero drew inspiration from Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (1954), a horror/science fiction novel about a plague that ravages a futuristic Los Angeles. The infected in I Am Legend become vampire-like creatures and prey on the uninfected. Discussing the creation of Night of the Living Dead, Romero remarked, "I had written a short story, which I basically had ripped off from a Richard Matheson novel called I Am Legend." Romero further explained: “ I thought I Am Legend was about revolution. I said if you’re going to do something about revolution, you should start at the beginning. I mean, Richard starts his book with one man left; everybody in the world has become a vampire. I said we got to start at the beginning and tweak it up a little bit. I couldn’t use vampires because he did, so I wanted something that would be an earth-shaking change. Something that was forever, something that was really at the heart of it. I said, so what if the dead stop staying dead? ... And the stories are about how people respond or fail to respond to this. That’s really all [the zombies] ever represented to me. In Richard’s book, in the original I Am Legend, that’s what I thought that book was about. There’s this global change and there’s one guy holding out saying, wait a minute, I’m still a human. He’s wrong. Go ahead. Join them. You’ll live forever! In a certain sense he’s wrong but on the other hand, you’ve got to respect him for taking that position. ” Official film adaptations of Matheson's novel appeared in 1964 as The Last Man on Earth, in 1971 as The Omega Man, and the 2007 release I Am Legend. Matheson was not impressed by Romero's interpretation, feeling that "It was ... kind of cornball", though he later said, "George Romero's a nice guy, though. I don't harbor any animosity toward him". Regarding Romero's use of I Am Legend as inspiration, critic Danél Griffin remarked, "Romero freely admits that his film was a direct rip-off of Matheson's novel; I would be a little less harsh in my description and say that Romero merely expanded the author’s ideas with deviations so completely original that [Night of the Living Dead] is expelled from being labeled a true 'rip-off'." Russo and Romero revised the screenplay while filming. Karl Hardman attributed the edits to lead actor Duane Jones: “ The script had been written with the character Ben as a rather simple truck driver. His dialogue was that of a lower class / uneducated person. Duane Jones was a very well educated man [and he] simply refused to do the role as it was written. As I recall, I believe that Duane himself upgraded his own dialogue to reflect how he felt the character should present himself. ” Eastman modified cellar scenes featuring dialogue between Helen and Harry Cooper. According to lead actress Judith O'Dea, much of the dialogue was improvised. She told an interviewer, "I don't know if there was an actual working script! We would go over what basically had to be done, then just did it the way we each felt it should be done". One example offered by O'Dea concerns a scene where Barbra tells Ben about Johnny's death: “ The sequence where Ben is breaking up the table to block the entrance and I'm on the couch and start telling him the story of what happened [to Johnny] it's all ad-libbed. This is what we want to get across [...] tell the story about me and Johnny in the car and me being attacked. That was it [...] all improv. We filmed it once. There was a concern we didn't get the sound right, but fortunately they were able to use it. ” Casting Lead cast Duane Jones ... Ben Judith O'Dea ... Barbara Karl Hardman ... Harry Marilyn Eastman ... Helen Keith Wayne ... Tom Judith Ridley ... Judy Kyra Schon ... Karen Cooper Charles Craig ... Newscaster / Zombie Bill Heinzman ... Cemetery Zombie (original and new scenes) George Kosana ... Sheriff McClelland Rusell Streiner ... Johnny The lead role of Ben was played by unknown stage actor Duane Jones. His performance depicted Ben as a "comparatively calm and resourceful Negro", according to a contemporary (1969) movie reviewer. Casting Jones as the hero was, in 1968, potentially controversial. At that time, it was not typical for an African American man to be the hero of a film when the rest of the cast was composed entirely of white actors and actresses. Social commentators saw that casting as significant; on the other hand, Romero said that Jones "simply gave the best audition". After Night of the Living Dead, he co-starred in Ganja and Hess (1973), Vampires (1986), Negatives (1988) and To Die For (1989) before his death in 1988. Despite his other film roles, Jones worried that people only recognized him as Ben. Judith O'Dea, a 23-year-old commercial and stage actress, played Barbra. She had once worked for Hardman and Eastman in Pittsburgh, so they called her to audition. O'Dea was in Hollywood seeking to enter the movie business. She remarked in an interview that starring in the film was a positive experience for her, although she admitted that horror movies terrified her, particularly Vincent Price's House of Wax (1953). Besides acting, O'Dea performed her own stunts, which she jokingly says amounted to "lots of running". Assessing Night of the Living Dead, she states "I honestly had no idea it would have such a lasting impact on our culture". She was just as surprised by the renown the film brought her: "People treat you differently. [i'm] ho-hum Judy O'Dea until they realize [i'm] Barbra from Night of the Living Dead. All of a sudden [i'm] not so ho-hum anymore!" Following Night of the Living Dead, O'Dea appeared in the television film The Pirate in 1978 and feature films Claustrophobia, October Moon, and The Ocean. The supporting cast had no experience in the film industry prior to Night of the Living Dead. The role of Tom remained Keith Wayne's only film role (he committed suicide in 1995). Judith Ridley later co-starred in Romero's There's Always Vanilla (1971). The cemetery zombie who kills Johnny in the first scene was played by S. William Hinzman (credited as Bill Hinzman), in a role that launched his horror film career. Hinzman was later involved in the films Season of the Witch (1973), Flesheater (1988), Legion of the Night (1995), Santa Claws (1996), and Evil Ambitions (1996). Cast members Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman and Russell Streiner performed prominent acting roles. Hardman and Eastman co-starred as Harry and Helen Cooper (Eastman also played the female zombie who plucks an insect off a tree and eats it) while Streiner played Johnny, Barbra's brother. Hardman's 11-year-old daughter, Kyra Schon, played Karen Cooper. Image Ten's production manager, George Kosana, played Sheriff McClelland. Romero's friends and acquaintances were recruited as zombie extras. Romero stated, "We had a film company doing commercials and industrial films so there were a lot of people from the advertising game who all wanted to come out and be zombies, and a lot of them did". He adds amusingly, "Some people from around Evans City who just thought it was a goof came out to get caked in makeup and lumber around". Directing Night of the Living Dead was the first feature-length film directed by George A. Romero. His initial work involved filming shorts for Pittsburgh public broadcaster WQED's children's series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Romero's decision to direct Night of the Living Dead essentially launched his career as a horror director. He took the helm of the sequels as well as Season of the Witch, The Crazies (1973), Martin (1977), Creepshow (1982) and The Dark Half (1993). Critics saw the influence of the horror and science-fiction films of the 1950s in Romero's directorial style. Stephen Paul Miller, for instance, witnessed "a revival of fifties schlock shock... and the army general's television discussion of military operations in the film echoes the often inevitable calling-in of the army in fifties horror films". Miller admits, however, that "Night of the Living Dead takes greater relish in mocking these military operations through the general's pompous demeanor" and the government's inability to source the zombie epidemic or protect the citizenry. Romero describes the mood he wished to establish: "The film opens with a situation that has already disintegrated to a point of little hope, and it moves progressively toward absolute despair and ultimate tragedy". According to film historian Carl Royer, Romero "employs chiaroscuro (film noir style) lighting to emphasize humanity's nightmare alienation from itself". While some critics dismissed Romero's film because of the graphic scenes, writer R. H. W. Dillard claimed that the "open-eyed detailing" of taboo heightened the film's success. He asks, "What girl has not, at one time or another, wished to kill her mother? And Karen, in the film, offers a particularly vivid opportunity to commit the forbidden deed vicariously." Romero featured social taboos as key themes, particularly cannibalism. Although zombie cannibals were inspired by Matheson's I Am Legend, film historian Robin Wood sees the flesh-eating scenes of Night of the Living Dead as a late-1960s critique of American capitalism. Wood asserts that the zombies represent capitalists, and "cannibalism represents the ultimate in possessiveness, hence the logical end of human relations under capitalism." He argues that the zombies' victims symbolized the repression of "the Other" in bourgeoisie American society, namely civil rights activists, feminists, homosexuals and counterculturalists in general. Music and sound effects The music score of Night of the Living Dead was not composed for the film; Karl Hardman told an interviewer that the music came from the extensive film music library of WRS Studio. Much of what was used in the film was purchased from the library of Capitol Records, and an album of the soundtrack was released at one point. Stock music selections included works by WRS sound tech Richard Lococo, Philip Green, Geordie Hormel, Ib Glindemann, William Loose, John Seely, Jack Meakin and Spencer Moore. Some of the music in the film had previously been used on the soundtrack for the science-fiction B-movie Teenagers from Outer Space (1959). The eerie musical piece during the tense scene in the film where Ben finds the rifle in the closet inside the farmhouse as the radio reports of mayhem play in the background can be heard in longer and more complete form during the opening credits and the beginning of The Devil's Messenger (1961) starring Lon Chaney Jr. Another piece, accompanying Barbra's flight from the cemetery zombie, was taken from the score for The Hideous Sun Demon (1959) and had also been used in the final episode of television's The Fugitive, which had aired one year earlier. According to WRS, "We chose a selection of music for each of the various scenes and then George made the final selections. We then took those selections and augmented them electronically". Sound tech R.Lococo's choices worked well, as Film historian Sumiko Higashi believes that the music "signifies the nature of events that await". Sound effects were created by WRS Studio in Pittsburgh. "Sound engineer Richard Lococo recorded all of the live sound effects used in the film". Lococo recalled, "Of all the sound effects that we created, the one that still gives me goose bumps when I hear it, is Marilyn's screaming as [Helen Cooper] is killed by her daughter. Judy O'Dea's screaming is a close second. Both were looped in and out of echo over and over again". A soundtrack album featuring music and dialogue cues from the film was compiled and released by Varèse Sarabande in 1982; however, it has never been reissued on CD. In November 2008, recording group 400 Lonely Things released the album Tonight of the Living Dead, "an instrumental album composed entirely of ambient music and sound effects sampled from Romero's 1968 horror classic". On 25 May 2010, the record company Zero Day Releasing released the CD They Won't Stay Dead!: Music from the soundtrack of Night of the Living Dead. It features all-new digitally restored audio from original library LPs and reels and it's the most comprehensive Night of the Living Dead soundtrack ever released in any format. It contains much more music than the Varese release, having 40 tracks. Reception Night of the Living Dead premiered on October 1, 1968 at the Fulton Theater in Pittsburgh. Nationally, it was shown as a Saturday afternoon matinée — as was typical for horror films at the time — and attracted an audience consisting of pre-teens and adolescents. The MPAA film rating system was not in place until November 1968, so even young children were not prohibited from purchasing tickets. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times chided theater owners and parents who allowed children access to the film. "I don't think the younger kids really knew what hit them," he said. "They were used to going to movies, sure, and they'd seen some horror movies before, sure, but this was something else." According to Ebert, the film affected the audience immediately: “ The kids in the audience were stunned. There was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying... It's hard to remember what sort of effect this movie might have had on you when you were six or seven. But try to remember. At that age, kids take the events on the screen seriously, and they identify fiercely with the hero. When the hero is killed, that's not an unhappy ending but a tragic one: Nobody got out alive. It's just over, that's all. ” One commentator asserts that the film garnered little attention from critics, "except to provoke argument about censoring its grisly scenes". Despite the controversy, five years after the premiere Paul McCullough of Take One observed that Night of the Living Dead was the "most profitable horror film ever [...] produced outside the walls of a major studio". The film had earned between $12 and $15 million at the American box office after a decade. It was translated into more than 25 languages and released across Europe, Canada and Australia. Night of the Living Dead grossed $30 million internationally, and the Wall Street Journal reported that it was the top grossing film in Europe in 1969. More than 40 years after its release, the film enjoys a reputation as a classic and still receives positive reviews; Night of the Living Dead currently holds a 96% "Certified Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, and it is regarded by many as one of the best films of 1968. In 2008, the film was selected by Empire magazine as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. The New York Times also placed the film on their Best 1000 Movies Ever list. Night of the Living Dead was also awarded two distinguished honors decades after its debut. The Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry in 1999 with other films deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". In 2001, the film was ranked #93 by the American Film Institute on their 100 Years...100 Thrills list, a list of America's most heart-pounding movies. The zombies in the picture were also a candidate for AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains, in the villains category, but failed to make the official list. The Chicago Film Critics Association named it the 5th scariest film ever made. The film also ranked #9 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments. Reviews Reviewers disliked the film's gory special effects. Variety labeled Night of the Living Dead an "unrelieved orgy of sadism" and questioned the "integrity and social responsibility of its Pittsburgh-based makers". New York Times critic Vincent Canby referred to the film as a "junk movie" as well as "spare, uncluttered, but really silly." Nevertheless, some reviewers cited the film as groundbreaking. Pauline Kael called the film "one of the most gruesomely terrifying movies ever made — and when you leave the theatre you may wish you could forget the whole horrible experience. . . . The film's grainy, banal seriousness works for it — gives it a crude realism". A Film Daily critic commented, "This is a pearl of a horror picture which exhibits all the earmarks of a sleeper." While Roger Ebert criticized the matinée screening, he admitted that he "admires the movie itself". Critic Rex Reed wrote, "If you want to see what turns a B movie into a classic [...] don't miss Night of the Living Dead. It is unthinkable for anyone seriously interested in horror movies not to see it." Since the release, critics and film historians have seen Night of the Living Dead as a subversive film that critiques 1960s American society, international Cold War politics and domestic racism. Elliot Stein of The Village Voice saw the film as an ardent critique of American involvement in Vietnam, arguing that it "was not set in Transylvania, but Pennsylvania — this was Middle America at war, and the zombie carnage seemed a grotesque echo of the conflict then raging in Vietnam". Film historian Sumiko Higashi concurs, arguing that Night of the Living Dead was a horror film about the horrors of the Vietnam era. While she asserts that "there are no Vietnamese in Night of the Living Dead, [...] they constitute an absent presence whose significance can be understood if narrative is construed". She points to aspects of the Vietnam War paralleled in the film: grainy black-and-white newsreels, search-and-destroy operations, helicopters, and graphic carnage. While George Romero denies he hired Duane Jones simply because he was black, reviewer Mark Deming notes that "the grim fate of Duane Jones, the sole heroic figure and only African-American, had added resonance with the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X fresh in the minds of most Americans." Stein adds, "In this first-ever subversive horror movie, the resourceful black hero survives the zombies only to be killed by a redneck posse". The deaths of Ben, Barbra and the supporting cast offered audiences an uncomfortable, nihilistic glimpse unusual for the genre. Other prevalent themes included "disillusionment with government and patriarchal nuclear family" and "the flaws inherent in the media, local and federal government agencies, and the entire mechanism of civil defense". Film historian Linda Badley explains that the film was so horrifying because the monsters were not creatures from Outer Space or some exotic environment, "They're us". Romero confessed that the film was designed to reflect the tensions of the time: "It was 1968, man. Everybody had a 'message'. The anger and attitude and all that's there is just because it was the Sixties. We lived at the farmhouse, so we were always into raps about the implication and the meaning, so some of that crept in." Influence Romero revolutionized the horror film genre with Night of the Living Dead; per Almar Haflidason, of the BBC, the film represented "a new dawn in horror film-making". The film has also effectively redefined the use of the term Zombie. Early zombie films like Victor Halperin's White Zombie (1932) and Jacques Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie (1943) concerned living people enslaved by a Voodoo witch doctor; many were set in the Caribbean. The film and its successors spawned countless imitators that borrowed elements instituted by Romero: Tombs of the Blind Dead, Zombie, Hell of the Living Dead, Night of the Comet, Return of the Living Dead, Night of the Creeps, Children of the Living Dead, and the video game series Resident Evil (later adapted as films in 2002, 2004, and 2007), Dead Rising, and House of the Dead. Night of the Living Dead is parodied in films such as Night of the Living Bread and Shaun of the Dead, and in episodes of The Simpsons ("Treehouse of Horror III", 1992; "Treehouse of Horror XIII", 2004 and "Treehouse of Horror XX", 2009), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, South Park ("Pink Eye", 1997; "Night of the Living Homeless", 2007), Medium (TV series) ("Bite Me", 2009) and Invader Zim (Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom 2001 and FBI Warning of Doom 2002). The word zombie is never used, but Romero's film introduced the theme of zombies as reanimated, flesh-eating cannibals. Night of the Living Dead ushered in the splatter film sub-genre. As one film historian points out, horror prior to Romero's film had mostly involved rubber masks and costumes, cardboard sets, or mysterious figures lurking in the shadows. They were set in locations far removed from rural and suburban America. Romero revealed the power behind exploitation and setting horror in ordinary, unexceptional locations and offered a template for making an "effective and lucrative" film on a "minuscule budget". Slasher films of the 1970s and 80s such as John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980), and Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), for example, "owe much to the original Night of the Living Dead". Night of the Living Dead also spawned a new generation of independent films using similar terms and concepts. Revisions The first revisions of Night of the Living Dead involved colorization by home video distributors. Hal Roach Studios released a colorized version in 1986 that featured ghouls with pale green skin. Another colorized version appeared in 1997 from Anchor Bay Entertainment with grey-skinned zombies. In 2004, Legend Films produced a new colorized version. Technology critic Gary W. Tooze wrote that "The colorization is damn impressive", but noticed the print used was not as sharp as other releases of the film. In 2009, Legend Films coproduced a colorized 3-D version of the film with PassmoreLab, a company that converts 2-D film into 3-D format. This version will receive a full theatrical release in Europe, followed by a limited theatrical release in the United States According to Legend Films founder Barry Sandrew, Night of the Living Dead is the first entirely live action 2-D film to be converted to 3-D. In 1999, co-writer John A. Russo released a modified version called Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition. He filmed additional scenes and recorded a revised soundtrack composed by Scott Vladimir Licina. In an interview with Fangoria magazine, Russo explained that he wanted to "give the movie a more modern pace". Russo took liberties with the original script. The additions are neither clearly identified nor even listed. However, Entertainment Weekly reported "no bad blood" between Russo and Romero. The magazine, however, quoted Romero as saying, "I didn't want to touch Night of the Living Dead". Critics panned the revised film, notably Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News. Knowles promised to permanently ban anyone from his publication who offered positive criticism of the film. A sequel called Children of the Living Dead followed in 2001. A collaborative animated project known as Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated is currently playing several film festivals and was released onto DVD on July 27, 2010 by Wild Eye Releasing. This project aims to "reanimate" the 1968 film by replacing Romero's celluloid images with animation done in a wide variety of styles by artists from around the world, laid over the original audio from Romero's version. Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated premiered theatrically on October 10, 2009 in Ramsey, New Jersey at the Zombie Encounter and Film Festival. NOTLDR was nominated in the category of Best Independent Production (film, documentary or short) for the 8th Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards, but lost to American Scary, a documentary on television horror movie hosts. Film series Romero's Dead Films Night of the Living Dead is the first of six ...of the Dead films directed by George Romero. Following the 1968 film, Romero released Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead. Each film traces the evolution of the living dead epidemic in the United States and humanity's desperate attempts to cope with it. As in Night of the Living Dead, Romero peppered the other films in the series with critiques specific to the periods in which they were released. Return of the Living Dead series The same year Day of the Dead premiered, Night of the Living Dead co-writer John Russo released a film titled Return of the Living Dead that offers an alternate continuity to the original film than Dawn of the Dead, but acted more as a parody or satire and is not considered a sequel to the original 1968 film. Russo's film spawned four sequels. Return of the Living Dead sparked a legal battle with Romero, who believed Russo marketed his film in direct competition with Day of the Dead as a sequel to the original film. In the case Dawn Associates v. Links, Romero accused Russo of "appropriat[ing] part of the title of the prior work", plagiarizing Dawn of the Dead's advertising slogan ("When there is no more room in hell [...] the dead will walk the earth"), and copying stills from the original 1968 film. Romero was ultimately granted a restraining order that forced Russo to cease his advertising campaign. Russo, however, was allowed to retain his title. Remakes and prequels Night of the Living Dead has been remade twice, with a third announced for a 2010 release. The first remake, debuting in 1990, was directed by special effects artist Tom Savini. The remake was based on the original screenplay, but included more gore and a revised plot that portrayed Barbara (Patricia Tallman) as a capable and active heroine. Tony Todd played the role of Ben. Film historian Barry Grant saw the new Barbara as a corrective on the part of Romero. He suggests that the character was made stronger to rectify the depiction of female characters in the original film. The second remake was in 3-D and released in September 2006 under the title Night of the Living Dead 3-D. Directed by Jeff Broadstreet. Unlike Savini's 1990 film, Broadstreet's project was not affiliated with Romero. On September 15, 2009, it was announced that Simon West planned a 3D prequel to the original movie, to be titled Night of the Living Dead: Origins 3D. The movie is being written and directed by Zebediah de Soto. The cast includes Tony Todd as Ben, Danielle Harris as Barbara, Joe Pilato as Harry Cooper, Alona Tal as Helen Cooper, Bill Moseley as Johnny and newcomers Erin Braswell as Judy and Michael Diskint as Tom. Copyright status Night of the Living Dead entered the public domain because the original theatrical distributor, the Walter Reade Organization, neglected to place a copyright indication on the prints. In 1968, United States copyright law required a proper notice for a work to maintain a copyright. Image Ten displayed such a notice on the title frames of the film beneath the original title, Night of the Flesh Eaters. The distributor removed the statement when it changed the title.[120] According to George Romero, Walter Reade "ripped us off". Because of the public domain status, the film is sold on home video by several distributors. As of 2006, the Internet Movie Database lists 23 copies of Night of the Living Dead retailing on DVD and nineteen on VHS. The original film is available to view or download free on Internet sites such as Google Video, Internet Archive and YouTube. As of September 21, 2010, it is the Internet Archive's second most downloaded film, with 705,419 downloads.

Aaron Rowand's probably all, "Not this s*** again..."

5. Halloween (1978) (9 of 20 lists - 168 points - highest rank #2 GoSox05) Halloween is a 1978 American independent horror film directed, produced, and scored by John Carpenter, co-written with Debra Hill, and starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut. The film is set in the fictional midwestern town of Haddonfield, Illinois. On Halloween, six year old Michael Myers murders his older sister. Fifteen years later, he escapes from a psychiatric hospital, returns home, and stalks teenager Laurie Strode and her friends. Michael's psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis suspects Michael's intentions, and follows him to Haddonfield to try to prevent this from happening. Halloween was produced on a budget of $320,000 and grossed $47 million at the box office in the United States, and $60 million worldwide, equivalent to over $203 million as of 2010, becoming one of the most profitable independent films. Many critics credit the film as the first in a long line of slasher films inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). Halloween had many imitators and originated several clichés found in low-budget horror films of the 1980s and 1990s. Unlike many of its imitators, Halloween contains little graphic violence and gore. In 2006, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Some critics have suggested that Halloween may encourage sadism and misogyny by identifying audiences with its villain. Other critics have suggested the film is a social critique of the immorality of youth and teenagers in 1970s America, with many of Myers's victims being sexually promiscuous substance abusers, while the lone heroine is depicted as chaste and innocent hence her survival (the lone survivor is seen smoking marijuana in one scene). Carpenter dismisses such analyses. Several of Halloween's techniques and plot elements, although not founded in this film, have nonetheless become a standard slasher movie trope. Plot On October 31, 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers (Will Sandin) murders his fifteen-year-old sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) with a large kitchen knife at their home in Haddonfield, Illinois. His parents arrive home minutes later and find him in a trance-like state. Michael is incarcerated in Smith's Grove Warren County Sanitarium, where he is placed under the care of child psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence). Eight years of treatment convince Loomis that Michael is pure evil. An additional seven years is spent trying to keep Michael locked up. On October 30, 1978 Michael turns 21 and is to be brought to court to determine if he is competent enough to stand trial for his crime. Loomis and his assistant Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens) arrive at Smith's Grove to take Myers to court. Michael attacks them, nearly killing Marion, steals the car and escapes. Loomis goes in pursuit of Myers. He learns that Judith Myers's tombstone is missing, and is convinced that Michael will return home. Michael (Nick Castle), wearing a mechanic's coveralls and a mask, indeed returns to his now derelict home in Haddonfield. He stalks teenager Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), and follows her and her friends Annie Brackett (Nancy Kyes) and Lynda Van Der Klok (P.J. Soles) as they walk home from school. Laurie becomes unnerved after spotting Michael several times that day, but Lynda and Annie dismiss her concerns. That evening, Laurie meets Annie, who is babysitting Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) across the street from where Laurie is babysitting Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews). During the evening Michael watches Annie through the windows of the Wallace house. Annie later arranges to pick up her boyfriend, and takes Lindsey across the street to stay with Laurie. When Annie gets into her car, Michael emerges from the backseat, strangles her, and cuts her throat. Tommy sees Michael carrying Annie's body into the Wallace house and thinks he is the Boogeyman. Laurie dismisses this and sends Tommy and Lindsey to bed. Lynda arrives at the Wallace house with her boyfriend Bob Simms. They learn that Annie and Lindsey are out, and have sex. When Bob goes into the kitchen he is killed by Michael. Michael dons a bed sheet and Bob's glasses and goes upstairs. Linda assumes it is Bob wearing the sheet. Michael strangles Lynda with a phone cord as she calls Laurie. Laurie is worried by the telephone call consisting of muffled gasps. She walks across to the Wallace house to investigate. There she discovers the three bodies plus Judith Myers's tombstone. Michael attacks Laurie at the top of the stairs, but she falls down the staircase. Michael gives chase, but Laurie manages to escape back to the Doyle house. Michael gains entry to the house, but Laurie jabs a knitting needle into his neck. She goes upstairs to check the children but Michael has survived and followed her. She tells the children to escape and call the police, locking herself in a closet. Michael breaks through the closet door and Laurie stabs him in the eye with a wire clothes hanger, causing him to drop the knife. She stabs him in the torso with the knife and he falls to the floor. Loomis sees the panicked children running from the house and enters. Behind Laurie, Michael gets up and begins to throttle her. Loomis appears and shoots him six times, sending Michael through a window and off the balcony. Loomis assures Laurie that everything is all right. When he looks over the balcony, Michael's body has disappeared. Production After viewing Carpenter's film Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) at the Milan Film Festival, independent film producer Irwin Yablans and financier Moustapha Akkad sought out Carpenter to direct a film for them about a psychotic killer that stalked babysitters. In an interview with Fangoria magazine, Yablans stated, "I was thinking what would make sense in the horror genre, and what I wanted to do was make a picture that had the same impact as The Exorcist." Carpenter and his then-girlfriend Debra Hill began drafting a story originally titled The Babysitter Murders, but, as Carpenter told Entertainment Weekly, Yablans suggested setting the movie on Halloween night and naming it Halloween instead. Akkad fronted the $320,000 for the film's budget, considered low at the time (Carpenter's previous film, Assault on Precinct 13, had an estimated budget of $100,000). Akkad worried over the tight, four-week schedule, low budget, and Carpenter's limited experience as a filmmaker, but told Fangoria, "Two things made me decide. One, Carpenter told me the story verbally and in a suspenseful way, almost frame for frame. Second, he told me he didn't want to take any fees, and that showed he had confidence in the project". Carpenter received $10,000 for directing, writing, and composing the music, retaining rights to 10 percent of the film's profits. Because of the low budget, wardrobe and props were often crafted from items on hand or that could be purchased inexpensively. Carpenter hired Tommy Lee Wallace as production designer, art director, location scout and co-editor. Wallace created the trademark mask worn by Michael Myers throughout the film from a Captain Kirk mask purchased for $1.98. Carpenter recalled how Wallace "widened the eye holes and spray-painted the flesh a bluish white. In the script it said Michael Myers's mask had 'the pale features of a human face' and it truly was spooky looking. It didn't look anything like William Shatner after Tommy got through with it." Hill adds that the "idea was to make him almost humorless, faceless — this sort of pale visage that could resemble a human or not." Many of the actors wore their own clothes, and Curtis' wardrobe was purchased at J.C. Penney for around a hundred dollars. The limited budget also dictated the filming location and time schedule. Halloween was filmed in 21 days in the spring of 1978 in South Pasadena, California and Sierra Madre, California (cemetery). An abandoned house owned by a church stood in as the Myers house. Two homes on Orange Grove Avenue (near Sunset Boulevard) in Hollywood were used for the film's climax. The crew had difficulty finding pumpkins in the spring, and artificial fall leaves had to be reused for multiple scenes. Local families dressed their children in Halloween costumes for trick-or-treat scenes. In August 2006, Fangoria reported that Synapse Films had discovered boxes of negatives containing footage cut from the film. One was labeled "1981" suggesting that it was additional footage for the television version of the film. Synapse owner Don May, Jr. said, "What we've got is pretty much all the unused original camera negative from Carpenter's original Halloween. Luckily, Billy [Kirkus] was able to find this material before it was destroyed. The story on how we got the negative is a long one, but we'll save it for when we're able to showcase the materials in some way. Kirkus should be commended for pretty much saving the Holy Grail of horror films." It was later reported, "We just learned from Sean Clark, long time Halloween genius, that the footage found is just that: footage. There is no sound in any of the reels so far, since none of it was used in the final edit." Writing Yablans and Akkad ceded most of the creative control to writers Carpenter and Hill (whom Carpenter wanted as producer), but Yablans did offer several suggestions. According to a Fangoria interview with Hill, "Yablans wanted the script written like a radio show, with 'boos' every 10 minutes." Hill explained that the script took three weeks to write and much of the inspiration behind the plot came from Celtic traditions of Halloween such as the festival of Samhain. Although Samhain is not mentioned in the plot of the first film, Hill asserts that: “ ...the idea was that you couldn't kill evil, and that was how we came about the story. We went back to the old idea of Samhain, that Halloween was the night where all the souls are let out to wreak havoc on the living, and then came up with the story about the most evil kid who ever lived. And when John came up with this fable of a town with a dark secret of someone who once lived there, and now that evil has come back, that's what made Halloween work. ” Hill wrote most of the female characters' dialogue, while Carpenter drafted Loomis' speeches on the evilness of Michael Myers. Many script details were drawn from Carpenter's and Hill's adolescence and early careers. The fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois was derived from Haddonfield, New Jersey, where Hill grew up, and most of the street names were taken from Carpenter's hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky. Laurie Strode was the name of one of Carpenter's old girlfriends and Michael Myers was the name of an English producer who had previously entered, with Yablans, Assault on Precinct 13 in various European film festivals. In Halloween, Carpenter pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock with two characters' names; Tommy Doyle is named after Lt. Det. Thomas J. Doyle (Wendell Corey) of Rear Window (1954), and Dr. Loomis' name was taken from Sam Loomis (John Gavin) of Psycho, the boyfriend of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh, who is the real-life mother of Jamie Lee Curtis). Sheriff Leigh Brackett shared the name of a film screenwriter. Casting Jamie Lee Curtis, in her feature film debut, plays Laurie Strode, the heroine of the film.The cast of Halloween included veteran actor Donald Pleasence and then-unknown actress Jamie Lee Curtis. The low budget limited the number of big names that Carpenter could attract, and most of the actors received very little compensation for their roles. Pleasence was paid the highest amount at $20,000, Curtis received $8,000, and Nick Castle earned $25 a day. The role of Dr. Sam Loomis was offered to Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee; both declined the part due to the low pay (though Lee would later tell Carpenter that declining the role was his biggest career mistake). English actor Pleasence — Carpenter's third choice — agreed to star. Pleasence has been called "John Carpenter's big landing." Americans were already acquainted with Pleasence as the villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967). In an interview, Carpenter admits that "Jamie Lee wasn't the first choice for Laurie. I had no idea who she was. She was 19 and in a TV show at the time, but I didn't watch TV." He originally wanted to cast Anne Lockhart, the daughter of June Lockhart from Lassie, as Laurie Strode. However, Lockhart had commitments to several other film and television projects. Hill says of learning that Jamie Lee was the daughter of Psycho actress Janet Leigh, "I knew casting Jamie Lee would be great publicity for the film because her mother was in Psycho." Halloween was Curtis' feature film debut and launched her career as a "scream queen" horror star. Another relatively unknown actress, Nancy Kyes (credited in the film as Nancy Loomis) was cast as Laurie's friend Annie Brackett, daughter of Haddonfield sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers). Kyes had previously starred in Assault on Precinct 13 (as had Cyphers) and happened to be dating Halloween's art director Tommy Lee Wallace when filming began. Carpenter chose P. J. Soles to play Lynda Van Der Klok, another friend of Laurie's, best remembered in the film for dialogue peppered with the word "totally." Soles was an actress known for her supporting role in Carrie (1976) and her minor part in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). According to one source, "Carpenter realized she had captured the aura of a happy go lucky teenage girl in the 70s." The role of "The Shape" — as the masked Michael Myers character was billed in the end credits — was played by Nick Castle, who befriended Carpenter while they attended the University of Southern California. After Halloween, Castle became a director, taking the helm of films such as The Last Starfighter (1984), The Boy Who Could Fly (1986), Dennis the Menace (1993) and Major Payne (1995). Direction Historian Nicholas Rogers notes that film critics contend that Carpenter's direction and camera work made Halloween a "resounding success". Roger Ebert remarks, "It's easy to create violence on the screen, but it's hard to do it well. Carpenter is uncannily skilled, for example, at the use of foregrounds in his compositions, and everyone who likes thrillers knows that foregrounds are crucial ...." Opening title of HalloweenThe opening title, featuring a jack-o'-lantern placed against a black backdrop, sets the mood for the entire movie. The camera slowly moves toward the jack-o'-lantern's left eye as the main title theme plays eerily. After the camera fully closes in, the jack-o'-lantern's light dims and goes out. Film historian J.P. Telotte says that this scene "clearly announces that [the film's] primary concern will be with the way in which we see ourselves and others and the consequences that often attend our usual manner of perception". During the conception of the plot, Yablans instructed "that the audience shouldn't see anything. It should be what they thought they saw that frightens them". Carpenter seemingly took Yablans' advice literally, filming many of the scenes from Michael Myers's point-of-view that allowed audience participation. Carpenter is not the first director to employ this method or use of a steadicam; for instance, the first scene of Psycho offers a voyeuristic look at lovers in a seedy hotel. Telotte argues, "As a result of this shift in perspective from a disembodied, narrative camera to an actual character's eye ... we are forced into a deeper sense of participation in the ensuing action". Along with the 1974 Canadian horror film Black Christmas, Halloween made use of seeing events through the killer's eyes. The documentary titled Halloween Un-masked, featured in the 22nd anniversary DVD of Halloween, John Carpenter states he instructed Nick Castle to tilt his head a couple of times as if he was observing the corpse. It was also said that the lighting of that scene (as well as all the scenes shot inside a house) was all inspired from the lighting from the movie, Chinatown (1974). Music Another major reason for the success of Halloween is the moody musical score, particularly the main theme. Lacking a symphonic soundtrack, the film's score consists of a piano melody played in a 5/4 meter composed by director John Carpenter. Critic James Berardinelli calls the score "relatively simple and unsophisticated", but admits that "Halloween's music is one of its strongest assets". Carpenter stated in an interview, "I can play just about any keyboard, but I can't read or write a note." In the end credits, Carpenter bills himself as the "Bowling Green Philharmonic Orchestra" for performing the film's score, but he did receive assistance from composer Dan Wyman, a music professor at San José State University. Some songs can be heard in the film, one being an untitled song performed by Carpenter and a group of his friends who formed a band called The Coupe DeVilles. The song is heard as Laurie steps into Annie's car on her way to babysit Tommy Doyle. Another song, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by classic rock band Blue Öyster Cult, appears in the film. The soundtrack was first released in the United States in October 1983, by Varese Sarabande. It was subsequently released on compact disc in 1985, re-released in 1990, and again in 2000. Original Tracklist No. Title Length 1. "Halloween Theme Main Title" 2. "Laurie's Theme" 3. "Shape Escapes" 4. "Myers' House" 5. "Michael Kills Judith" 6. "Loomis And Shape's Car" 7. "The Haunted House" 8. "The Shape Lurks" 9. "Laurie Knows" 10. "Better Check The Kids" 11. "The Shape Stalks" 20th Anniversary Edition No. Title Length 1. "Halloween Theme" 2. "Halloween 1963" 3. "The Evil Is Gone!" 4. "Halloween 1978" 5. "The Boogieman Is Coming" 6. "The Shape" 7. "The Hedge" 8. "He Came Home" 9. "Trick Or Treat" 10. "The Haunted House" 11. "The Devil's Eyes" 12. "The Boogieman Is Outside" 13. "Damn You For Letting Him Go!" 14. "Empty Street" 15. "See Anything You Like?" 16. "Lock the Door" 17. "He's Here?" 18. "Light's Out" 19. "Cut It Out" 20. "Tombstone" 21. "The Shape Stalks Laurie" 22. "Turn Around" 23. "Lock The Door" 24. "The Hanger" 25. "Call The Police" 26. "Last Assault" 27. "Was That The Boogieman?" 28. "End Credits/Halloween Theme (Reprise)" Release Theatrical run Halloween premiered on October 25, 1978 in Kansas City (whether Kansas City, Missouri or Kansas City, Kansas, is unclear) and sometime afterward in Chicago, Illinois, and in New York City. It opened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on November 22, 1978. The film grossed $47 million in the United States and an additional $8 million internationally, making the theatrical total around $55 million, equivalent to over $176 million today. While most of the film's success came from American movie-goers, Halloween premiered in several international locations after 1979 with moderate results. The film was shown mostly in the European countries of France, the United Kingdom, West Germany, Italy, Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Yugoslavia, and Iceland. Admissions in West Germany totaled around 750,000 and 118,606 in Sweden, earning SEK 2,298,579 there. The film was also shown at theaters in Canada, Australia, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, Peru, the Philippines, Argentina and Chile. Halloween grossed AU$900,000 in Australia, which was a large and impressive amount of money for a film to gross at the box office in Australia at the time, and HKD 450,139 in Hong Kong. Television rights In 1980, the television rights to Halloween were sold to NBC for $4 million. After a debate among Carpenter, Hill and NBC's Standards & Practices over censoring of certain scenes, Halloween appeared on television for the first time. To fill the two-hour time slot, Carpenter filmed twelve minutes of additional material during the production of Halloween II. The newly filmed scenes include Dr. Loomis at a hospital board review of Michael Myers and Dr. Loomis talking to a then 6-year-old Michael at Smith's Grove, telling him, "You've fooled them, haven't you Michael? But not me." Another extra scene features Dr. Loomis at Smith's Grove examining Michael's abandoned cell after his escape and seeing the word "Sister" scratched into the door. Finally, a scene was added in which Lynda comes over to Laurie's house to borrow a silk blouse before Laurie leaves to babysit, just as Annie telephones asking to borrow the same blouse. The new scene had Laurie's hair hidden by a towel, since Curtis was by then wearing a much shorter hairstyle than she had worn in 1978. Home video release Since Halloween's premiere, it has been released on VHS, laserdisc, DVD, UMD and Blu-Ray HD format. In its first year of release on VHS, the film earned $18.5 million in the United States from rentals.[14] Early VHS versions were released by Media Home Entertainment and Blockbuster Video issued a commemorative edition in 1995. Anchor Bay Entertainment has released several restored editions of Halloween on VHS and DVD, with the most recent being the 2007 single-disc restored version, with improved picture and sound quality. In 2007, the movie was released on Blu-ray as well, marking the film's first ever Blu-ray release. While this Blu-ray version is restored and an improvement over previous DVD editions, many people prefer the 2003 two-disc Divimax 25th Anniversary edition over the 2007 Blu-ray due to the fact that there are many more bonus features on the Divimax DVD. The 2-disc edition came with a shining foil cover and a commentary track including separately recorded contributions by Carpenter, Hill and Curtis plus the documentary Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest. Reception Critical reception Critical response to the film was mostly positive. Although Halloween performed well with little advertising — relying mostly on word-of-mouth — many critics seemed uninterested or dismissive of the film. Pauline Kael wrote a scathing review in The New Yorker suggesting that "Carpenter doesn't seem to have had any life outside the movies: one can trace almost every idea on the screen to directors such as Hitchcock and Brian De Palma and to the Val Lewton productions" and claiming that "Maybe when a horror film is stripped of everything but dumb scariness — when it isn't ashamed to revive the stalest device of the genre (the escaped lunatic) — it satisfies part of the audience in a more basic, childish way than sophisticated horror pictures do." The first glowing review by a prominent film critic came from Tom Allen of The Village Voice in November 1978, Allen noted that the film was sociologically irrelevant but applauded Carpenter's camera work as "duplicitous hype" and "the most honest way to make a good schlock film". Allen pointed out the stylistic similarities to Psycho and George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). The following month, Voice lead critic Andrew Sarris wrote a follow-up feature on cult films, citing Allen's appraisal of Halloween and saying in the lead sentence that the film "bids fair to become the cult discovery of 1978. Audiences have been heard screaming at its horrifying climaxes". Renowned American critic Roger Ebert gave the film similar praise in his 1979 review in the Chicago Sun-Times, and selected it as one of his top ten films of 1978. Once-dismissive critics were impressed by Carpenter's choice of camera angles and simple music, and surprised by the lack of blood, gore, and graphic violence. Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reports 93% of critics gave the film positive write-ups based on 42 reviews, with a rating of 8.4 out of 10. Many compared the film with the work of Alfred Hitchcock, although TV Guide calls comparisons made to Psycho "silly and groundless" and critics in the late 1980s and early 1990s blame the film for spawning the slasher sub genre, which they felt had rapidly descended into sadism and misogyny. Almost a decade after its premiere, Mick Martin and Marsha Porter critiqued the first-person camera shots that earlier film reviewers had praised and later slasher-film directors utilized for their own films (for example, Friday the 13th (1980)). Claiming it encouraged audience identification with the killer, Martin and Porter pointed to the way "the camera moves in on the screaming, pleading, victim, 'looks down' at the knife, and then plunges it into chest, ear, or eyeball. Now that's sick." More than 30 years after its debut, Halloween enjoys a reputation as a classic and is considered by many as one of the best films of 1978. Themes and analysis Many criticisms of Halloween and other slasher films come from postmodern academia. Some feminist critics, according to historian Nicholas Rogers, "have seen the slasher movies since Halloween as debasing women in as decisive a manner as hard-core pornography." Critics such as John Kenneth Muir point out that female characters such as Laurie Strode survive not because of "any good planning" or their own resourcefulness, but sheer luck. Although she manages to repel the killer several times, in the end, Strode is rescued in Halloween and Halloween II only when Dr. Loomis arrives to shoot Myers. On the other hand, other feminist scholars such as Carol J. Clover argue that despite the violence against women, slasher films turned women into heroines. In many pre-Halloween horror films, women are depicted as helpless victims and are not safe until they are rescued by a strong masculine hero. Despite the fact that Loomis saves Strode, Clover asserts that Halloween initiates the role of the "final girl" who ultimately triumphs in the end. Strode herself fought back against Myers and severely wounds him. Had Myers been a normal man, Strode's attacks would have killed him; even Loomis, the male hero of the story, who shoots Michael repeatedly at near point blank range with a large caliber handgun, cannot kill him. Other critics have seen a deeper social critique present in Halloween and subsequent slasher films. According to Vera Dika, the films of the 1980s spoke to the conservative family values advocates of Reagan America. Tony Williams says Myers and other slashers were "patriarchal avengers" who "slaughtered the youthful children of the 1960s generation, especially when they engaged in illicit activities involving sex and drugs." Other critics tend to downplay this interpretation, arguing that the portrayal of Myers as a demonic, superhuman monster inhibited his influence among conservatives. Carpenter himself dismisses the notion that Halloween is a morality play, regarding it as merely a horror movie. According to Carpenter, critics "completely missed the point there." He explains, "The one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife. She's the most sexually frustrated. She's the one that's killed him. Not because she's a virgin but because all that sexually repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy." Awards Halloween was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Horror Film by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films in 1979, but lost to The Wicker Man (1973). In 2001, Halloween ranked #68 on the American Film Institute TV program 100 Years...100 Thrills. The film was #14 on Bravo's The 100 Scariest Movie Moments (2004). Similarly, the Chicago Film Critics Association named it the 3rd scariest film ever made. In 2006, Halloween was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2007, the AOL 31 Days of Horror countdown named Halloween the greatest horror movie. In 2008, Halloween was chosen by Empire magazine as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. In 2010, Total Film selected the film as one of The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. Influence Halloween has influenced countless horror films, particularly during the early to mid 1980s. While Canadian horror film Black Christmas (1974), directed by Bob Clark, preceded the stylistic techniques and several plot elements that were made famous in Halloween, the latter is generally credited by film historians, genre fans and critics for initiating the slasher film craze of the 1980s. Halloween made significant use of first-person camera perspectives, unexceptional settings, and female heroines, all of which now define the slasher film genre. These heroines were almost always depicted as being the only chaste, innocent and virginal character in the films onslaught of victims, while the others are depicted as being sexually promiscuous substance abusers. Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is sometimes given the distinction of also starting the slasher craze and preceding Halloween in originating the stylistic techniques as well as the usual plot devices. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, released five years prior to Halloween, has several things in common with the film: a group of free-spirited teenagers falling into the clutches of a sadistic, weapon-wielding masked villain (Leatherface) with a lone heroine. The film has also gone onto significantly influence the horror genre, much like Halloween. Several subsequent films with similar stylistic elements and themes became popular with audiences, including Friday the 13th, beginning in 1980, and later, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984-onwards). Countless other slasher films, owe some of their success and inspiration to Halloween. The survival of the chaste and temperate character became a common device in subsequent slasher films. The 1981 horror movie spoof Student Bodies parodied this plot device; characters are slain when about to engage in sex. Director Wes Craven's Scream (1996) details the "rules" for surviving a horror movie, even using Halloween as the primary example: no sex, no alcohol or illicit drugs, and never say "I'll be right back". Adaptations A mass market paperback novelization by Curtis Richards, titled Halloween, was published by Bantam Books in 1979. It was reissued in 1982; it later went out of print. The novel elaborates on aspects not featured in the film such as the origins of the curse of Samhain and Michael Myers's life in Smith's Grove Sanitarium. For example, the opening reads: The horror started on the eve of Samhain, in a foggy vale in northern Ireland, at the dawn of the Celtic race. And once started, it trod the earth forevermore, wreaking its savagery suddenly, swiftly, and with incredible ferocity. In 1983, Halloween was adapted as a video game for the Atari 2600 by Wizard Video. None of the main characters in the game were named. Players take on the role of a teenage babysitter who tries to save as many children from an unnamed, knife-wielding killer as possible. The game was not popular with parents or players and the graphics were simple, as was typical in Atari 2600 games. In another effort to save money, most versions of the game did not even have a label on the cartridge. It was simply a piece of tape with "Halloween" written in marker. The game contained more gore than the film, however. When the babysitter is killed, her head disappears and is replaced by blood pulsating from the neck. The game's primary similarity to the film is the theme music that plays when the killer appears onscreen. Sequels and remake Halloween spawned seven sequels, a 2007 remake of the same name and directed by Rob Zombie — and a 2009 sequel to the remake, Halloween II, which is unrelated to the sequel of the original.[67] Of these films, only Halloween II (1981) was written by Carpenter and Hill. Halloween II begins exactly where Halloween ends and was intended to finish the story of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode. Halloween II was hugely successful, becoming the highest grossing horror film of 1981. Carpenter did not direct any of the subsequent films in the Halloween series, although he did produce Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), the plot of which is unrelated to the other films in the series. He also composed the music for the second and third films, along with Alan Howarth. The sequels feature more explicit violence and gore, and are generally dismissed by mainstream film critics. They were filmed on larger budgets than the original: In contrast to Halloween's modest budget of $320,000, Halloween II's budget was around $2.5 million, while the final sequel to the original, Halloween: Resurrection (2002), boasted a budget of $15 million. Financier Moustapha Akkad continued to work closely with the Halloween franchise, acting as executive producer of every sequel until his death in the 2005 Amman bombings. With the exception of Halloween III, the sequels further develop the character of Michael Myers and the Samhain theme. Even without considering the third film, the Halloween series contains continuity issues, which some sources attribute to the different writers and directors involved in each film. The 10 Halloween films, including the 2007 remake and its sequel, have had eight directors. Only Rick Rosenthal and Rob Zombie directed more than one Halloween film: Rosenthal directed Halloween II and Halloween: Resurrection, while Zombie directed the remake and its sequel.

I messed up again... dammit. Adjusting list.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Oct 29, 2010 -> 03:30 PM) The Psycho shower scene has to be one of the most overrated scenes in movie history. It's incredibly awkward and Janet Leigh looks like she's dancing through the latter half of the attack. I really find it difficult to believe anyone would be scared by it. I freaked out more by seeing his mother. ...of course, I was 12.

There's a couple more!

6. Jaws (1975) (9 of 20 lists - 167 points - highest rank #1 whitesoxfan99, Milkman delivers, Tex) Jaws is a 1975 American thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. The police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark by closing the beach, only to be overruled by the town council, which wants the beach to remain open to draw a profit from tourists during the summer season. After several attacks, the police chief enlists the help of a marine biologist and a professional shark hunter. Roy Scheider stars as police chief Martin Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as marine biologist Matt Hooper, Robert Shaw as shark hunter Quint, Murray Hamilton as the Mayor of Amity Island, and Lorraine Gary as Brody's wife, Ellen. Jaws is regarded as a watershed film in motion picture history, the father of the summer blockbuster film and one of the first "high concept" films. Due to the film's success in advance screenings, studio executives decided to distribute it in a much wider release than ever before. The Omen followed suit in the summer of 1976 and then Star Wars one year later in 1977, cementing the notion for movie studios to distribute their big-release action and adventure pictures (commonly referred to as tentpole pictures) during the summer. Jaws is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. It was number 48 on American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movies, a list of the greatest American films of all time, dropping down to number 56 on the 10 Year Anniversary list. It ranked second on a similar list for thrillers, 100 Years... 100 Thrills and was number one on Bravo's list of The 100 Scariest Movie Moments. The film was followed by three sequels, none with the participation of Spielberg or Benchley. A video game titled Jaws Unleashed was produced in 2006. Plot During a late night beach party on the fictional Amity Island in New England, a 23-year-old woman named Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie) goes skinny dipping only to be pulled under by an unseen force. Amity's new police chief, Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), is notified that Chrissie is missing, and deputy Lenny Hendricks (Jeffrey Kramer) finds her remains. The medical examiner informs Brody that the death was due to a shark attack. Brody plans to close the beaches but is overruled by town mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), who fears that reports of a shark attack will ruin the summer tourist season. The medical examiner reverses his diagnosis and attributes the death to a boating accident. Brody reluctantly goes along with the explanation. A short time later, a boy is brutally killed by a shark at the beach. The boy's mother places a bounty on the shark, sparking an amateur shark hunting frenzy and attracting the attention of local professional shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw). Brought in by Brody, ichthyologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) examines Chrissie's remains and concludes she was killed by a shark. A large tiger shark is caught by a group of fishermen, leading the town to believe the problem is solved, but Hooper is unconvinced that the shark is the killer and asks to examine its stomach contents. Vaughn refuses to make the "operation" public, so Brody and Hooper return after dark and discover the dead shark does not contain human remains. Scouting aboard Hooper's boat, they come across the half-sunken wreckage of a boat belonging to local fisherman Ben Gardener. Hooper explores the vessel underwater and discovers a massive shark's tooth, but also Gardener's severed head, which makes him drop the tooth in a panic. Vaughn refuses to close the beaches, and on the Fourth of July numerous tourists arrive. After a prank by two boys causes a panic, the shark enters an estuary, kills a man and causes Brody's son go into shock after witnessing it. Brody forces Vaughn to hire Quint. Brody and Hooper join the hunter on his fishing boat, the Orca, and the trio set out to kill the shark. Brody is given the task of laying a chum line while Quint uses deep-sea fishing tackle to try to hook the shark. As Brody continues chumming, an enormous great white shark looms up behind the boat; the trio watch the great white circle the Orca and estimate it weighs 3 short tons (2.7 t) and is 25 feet (7.6 m) long. Quint harpoons the shark with a line attached to a flotation barrel, designed to prevent the shark from submerging and to track it on the surface, but the shark pulls the barrel under and disappears. Night falls without another sighting, so the men retire to the boat's cabin, where Quint tells of his experience with sharks as a survivor of the World War II sinking of the USS Indianapolis. The shark reappears, damaging the boat's hull before slipping away. In the morning, the men make repairs to the engine. Attempting to call the Coast Guard for help, Brody is stopped by Quint, who destroys the radio with a baseball bat. The shark attacks again, and after a long chase Quint harpoons another barrel to it. The men tie the barrels to the stern, but the shark drags the boat backwards, forcing water onto the deck and into the engine, flooding it. Quint harpoons the shark again, adding a third barrel, while the shark continues towing them. Quint is about to cut the ropes with his machete when the cleats are pulled off the stern. The shark continues attacking the boat and Quint heads toward shore with the shark in pursuit, hoping to draw the animal into shallow waters, where it will be beached and drown. In his obsession to kill the shark, Quint overtaxes Orca's engine, causing it to seize. With the boat immobilized, the trio try a desperate approach: Hooper dons his SCUBA gear and enters the ocean inside a shark proof cage in order to stab the shark in the mouth with a hypodermic spear filled with strychnine. The shark destroys the cage but gets tangled in the remains, allowing Hooper to hide on the seabed. As Quint and Brody raise the remnants of the cage, the shark throws itself onto the boat, crushing the transom. As the boat sinks, Quint slides down the slippery deck and is eaten by the shark. Brody retreats to the boat's partly submerged cabin. When the shark attacks him there, he shoves a pressurized air tank into the shark's mouth, then takes Quint's M1 Garand and climbs the Orca's mast. Brody begins shooting at the air tank wedged in the shark's mouth, causing it to explode and blow the shark to pieces. As the shark's carcass drifts toward the seabed, Hooper reappears on the surface. The survivors briefly lament the loss of Quint, then cobble together a raft from debris and paddle to Amity Island. Production Development Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, producers at Universal Pictures, heard about Peter Benchley's novel at the same time at different locations. Brown came across it in the fiction department of Cosmopolitan, a lifestyle magazine then edited by his wife, Helen Gurley Brown. A small card gave a detailed description of the plot, concluding with the comment "might make a good movie". The producers each read it overnight and agreed the next morning that it was "the most exciting thing that they had ever read" and that, although they were unsure how they would accomplish it, they wanted to produce the film. Brown claimed that had they read the book twice they would have never have made the film because of the difficulties in executing some of the sequences. They purchased the film rights to Benchley's novel in 1973 for approximately $175,000. Zanuck and Brown had originally planned to hire John Sturges to direct the film, before considering Dick Richards. However, they grew irritated by Richards' vision of continually calling the shark "the whale"; Richards was subsequently dropped from the project. Zanuck and Brown then signed Spielberg in June 1973 to direct before the release of his first theatrical film, The Sugarland Express (also a Zanuck/Brown production). Spielberg wanted to take the novel's basic concept, removing Benchley's many subplots. Zanuck, Brown and Spielberg removed the novel's adulterous affair between Ellen Brody and Matt Hooper because it would compromise the camaraderie between the men when they went out on the Orca. When they purchased the rights to his novel, the producers guaranteed that the author would write the first draft of the screenplay. Overall, Benchley wrote three drafts before deciding to bow out of the project (although he appeared in the final film, a cameo appearance as a news reporter). Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Howard Sackler happened to be in Los Angeles when the filmmakers began looking for another writer and offered to do an uncredited rewrite, and since the producers and Spielberg were unhappy with Benchley's drafts, they quickly accepted his offer. Spielberg sent the script to Carl Gottlieb (who appears in a supporting acting role in the film as Meadows, the politically connected editor of the local paper), asking for advice. Gottlieb rewrote most scenes during principal photography, and John Milius contributed dialogue polishes. Spielberg has claimed that he prepared his own draft, although it is unclear if the other screenwriters drew on his material. The authorship of Quint's monologue about the fate of the cruiser USS Indianapolis has caused substantial controversy as to who deserves the most credit for the speech. Spielberg described it as a collaboration among John Milius, Howard Sackler, and actor Robert Shaw. Gottlieb gives primary credit to Shaw, downplaying Milius' contribution. Casting Spielberg offered the role of Brody to Robert Duvall, but the actor was only interested in portraying Quint. According to Spielberg, Charlton Heston expressed a desire for the role, but Spielberg felt that Heston was too large a personality, as Spielberg intended the film's primary "star" to be the shark. Roy Scheider became interested in the project after overhearing a screenwriter and Spielberg at a party talking about having the shark jump up onto a boat. Spielberg was initially apprehensive of hiring Scheider, fearing he would portray a "tough guy", similar to his role in The French Connection. The role of Quint was originally offered to actors Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden, both of whom passed. Producers Zanuck and Brown had just finished working with Robert Shaw on The Sting, and suggested him to Spielberg as a possible Quint. For the role of Hooper, Spielberg initially wanted Jon Voight. Richard Dreyfuss initially passed on the role of Matt Hooper, but after being disappointed by his own performance in a pre-release screening of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, a film he had just completed, he immediately called Spielberg and accepted the role, fearing that no one would want to hire him once Kravitz was released. Due to the film's dissimilarities to the novel, Spielberg asked Dreyfuss not to read the book before offering the role. The first person actually cast for the film was Lorraine Gary, the wife of then-studio chief, Sid Sheinberg. Filming Principal photography began in May 1974. Three mechanical sharks were made for the production: a full version for underwater shots, one that moved from camera-left to right (with its hidden side completely exposing the internal machinery), and an opposite model with its right flank uncovered. Their construction was supervised by production designer Joe Alves and special effects artist Bob Mattey. After the sharks were completed, they were shipped to the shooting location, but had only been tested in controlled conditions in a pool. The platform used to tow the two "side model" sharks capsized as it was being lowered to the ocean floor, forcing a team of divers to retrieve it. The model required 14 operators to control all of the moving parts. Location shooting occurred on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, chosen because the ocean had a sandy bottom 12 miles (19 km) out at sea and never dropped below thirty-five feet. This helped the mechanical sharks to operate smoothly and still provide a realistic location. The film nonetheless had a troubled shoot and went considerably over budget. David Brown said that the budget "was $4 million and the picture wound up costing $9 million". Shooting at sea led to many delays: unwanted sailboats drifted into frame, cameras got soaked, and the Orca once began to sink with the actors onboard. The mechanical shark frequently malfunctioned, due to the hydraulic innards being corroded by salt water. The three mechanical sharks were collectively nicknamed "Bruce" by the production team after Spielberg's lawyer, Bruce Raimer. Disgruntled crew members gave the film the nickname "Flaws". To some degree, the delays in the production proved serendipitous. The script was refined during production, and the unreliable mechanical sharks forced Spielberg to shoot most of the scenes with the shark only hinted at. For example, for much of the shark hunt, its location is represented by the floating yellow barrels. Spielberg also included multiple shots of just the dorsal fin due to its ease of filming. This forced restraint is widely thought to have increased the suspense of these scenes, giving it a Hitchcockian tone. The scene where Hooper discovers fisherman Ben Gardner's head in the hull of his wrecked boat was added after an initial screening of the film. After reactions to that screening, Spielberg said he was greedy for "one more scream" and, with $3,000 of his own money, financed the scene after he was denied funding from Universal Pictures. Actor Craig Kingsbury had to press his head into a latex mold to make an exact copy, which was then attached to a fake body and placed in the wrecked boat's hull. The underwater scene was shot in film editor Verna Fields' swimming pool. Footage of real sharks was shot by Ron and Valerie Taylor in the waters off Australia, with a dwarf actor in a miniature shark cage to create the illusion that the shark was enormous. Originally, the script, following the novel, had the shark killing Hooper in the shark cage, but during filming one of the sharks became trapped in the girdle of the cage and proceeded to tear the cage apart. The crew found the footage of this incident to be so visually stunning, they were eager to incorporate it into the final film. However, no one had been in the cage at the time, so the script was changed to have Matt Hooper escape, thus providing an explanation for the empty cage. Although filming was scheduled to take 55 days, it eventually ended in September 1974 after 159 days. Spielberg, reflecting on the extended delay, stated: "I thought my career as a filmmaker was over. I heard rumors ... that I would never work again because no one had ever taken a film 100 days over schedule." Spielberg himself was not present for the shooting of the final scene where the shark explodes. He believed that the crew were planning to throw him in the water when this scene was complete. It has since become a tradition for Spielberg to be absent when the final scene of a film he directs is being filmed. A fourth shark model was built months after the original three were built. It was later placed at the entrance to the Universal Studios Theme Park until it was removed in 1990. It was recovered at a Sun Valley junkyard in June 2010, with Alves and Arbogast confirming its authenticity. Reception Box office performance Jaws was the first film to successfully use "wide release" as a distribution pattern. As such, it is an important film in the history of film distribution and marketing.[33] Prior to the release of Jaws, films typically opened slowly, usually in a few theaters in major cities, which allowed for a series of "premieres." As the success of a film increased, and word of mouth grew, distributors would forward the prints to additional cities across the country. Some films eventually achieved a wide release, such as The Godfather, but even that blockbuster had originally debuted in just five theaters. Jaws was the first film to successfully open nationwide on hundreds of screens simultaneously, coupled with a national marketing campaign—a then-unheard of practice. (A month earlier, Columbia had done the same with a Charles Bronson thriller, Breakout, but the box office was middling at best.) The film became the first to use extensive television advertising. The media blitz "included approximately twenty-five thirty-second advertisements per night on prime-time network TV" between 18–20 June 1975. Universal executive Sidney Sheinberg's rationale was that nationwide marketing costs would be amortized at a more favorable rate per print than if a slow, scaled release were carried out. Sheinberg's gamble paid off, with Jaws becoming a box office smash hit and the father of the summer blockbuster. After the release of Jaws, journalists and critics detailed its impact on how films were released in theaters. Peter Biskind wrote, "[The film] diminish[ed] the importance of print reviews, making it virtually impossible for a film to build slowly, finding its audience by dint of mere quality. ... In a sense, Spielberg was the Trojan horse through which the studios began to reassert their power." Author Thomas Schatz also wrote on the film's impact: "If any single film marked the arrival of the New Hollywood, it was Jaws, the Spielberg-directed thriller that recalibrated the profit potential of the Hollywood hit, and redefined its status as a marketable commodity and cultural phenomenon as well. The film brought an emphatic end to Hollywood's five-year recession, while ushering in an era of high-cost, high-tech, high-speed thrillers." Following the success of Jaws, major studio films have almost universally been distributed and marketed on a national scale. In addition, when summer was usually a season to dump films likely to be poor performers, the success of Jaws caused studios to shift their action and thriller films out of winter releases. When Jaws was released on June 20, 1975, it opened at 464 theaters. The release was subsequently expanded on July 25 to a total of 675 theaters, the largest simultaneous distribution of a film in motion picture history at the time. During the first weekend of wide release, Jaws grossed more than $7 million, and was the top grosser for the following five weeks. During its run in theaters, the film beat the $89 million domestic rental record of the reigning box-office champion, The Exorcist, becoming the first film to reach more than $100 million in U.S. box office receipts. Jaws eventually grossed more than $470 million worldwide ($1.9 billion in 2010 dollars) and was the highest grossing box office film until Star Wars debuted two years later. It is currently the 92nd highest grossing film of all time. Jaws and Star Wars are retrospectively considered to have marked the beginning of the new business model in American filmmaking and the beginning of the end of the New Hollywood period. Critical reception The film received universal aclaim. It holds a rare 100% "Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes. In his original review, Roger Ebert called it "a sensationally effective action picture, a scary thriller that works all the better because it's populated with characters that have been developed into human beings". Variety's A.D. Murphy praised Spielberg's directorial skills, and called Robert Shaw's performance "absolutely magnificent". Pauline Kael called it "the most cheerfully perverse scare movie ever made... [with] more zest than an early Woody Allen picture, a lot more electricity, [and] it's funny in a Woody Allen sort of way". Frank Rich of The New York Times wrote "Spielberg is blessed with a talent that is absurdly absent from most American filmmakers these days: this man actually knows how to tell a story on screen. ... It speaks well of this director's gifts that some of the most frightening sequences in Jaws are those where we don't even see the shark. The film was not without its detractors. Vincent Canby, of The New York Times, said "It's a measure of how the film operates that not once do we feel particular sympathy for any of the shark's victims...In the best films, characters are revealed in terms of the action. In movies like Jaws, characters are simply functions of the action. They're at its service. Characters are like stage hands who move props around and deliver information when it's necessary", but also noted that "It's the sort of nonsense that can be a good deal of fun". Los Angeles Times critic Charles Champlin disagreed with the film's PG rating, saying that "Jaws is too gruesome for children, and likely to turn the stomach of the impressionable at any age." He goes on to say: "It is a coarse-grained and exploitative work which depends on excess for its impact. Ashore it is a bore, awkwardly staged and lumpily written." The most widespread criticism of the film is the artificiality of the mechanical shark. Accolades Jaws won Academy Awards for Film Editing, Music (Original Score) and Sound. It was also nominated for Best Picture, losing to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. In 2008, Jaws was selected by Empire magazine as the fifth greatest film ever made. Quint was also placed at #50 on Empire's list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time. In 2003, The New York Times included the film on its list of the best 1000 movies ever made. In 2010, Total Film selected the film as one of The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. Jaws was number 48 on American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movies, a list of the greatest American films of all time, dropping down to number 56 on the 10 Year Anniversary list. It was ranked second on a similar list for thrillers, 100 Years... 100 Thrills. Jaws was number one in the Bravo network's five-hour miniseries The 100 Scariest Movie Moments (2004). Similarly, the Chicago Film Critics Association named it the 6th scariest film ever made. The shark was anointed number 18 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 2005, the American Film Institute voted Roy Scheider's line "You're gonna need a bigger boat" as number 35 on its list of the top 100 movie quotes. John Williams's score was ranked at number six on AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores. In 2006, the screenplay of Jaws was selected by the Writers Guild of America as the 63rd best screenplay of all time. Inspirations and influences A large replica of the film's shark hangs from a wooden frame. A sign next to it says "Jaws" and a man standing nearby is about a third of the height of the shark. A pulley and rope are used to pretend to hold the shark's mouth open. "JAWS" on display at Universal Studios Jaws bears similarities to several literary and artistic works, most notably Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. The character of Quint strongly resembles Captain Ahab, the obsessed captain of the Pequod who devotes his life to hunting a sperm whale. Quint's monologue reveals his similar vendetta against sharks, and even his boat, the Orca, is named after the only natural enemy of the white shark. In the novel and original screenplay, Quint dies after being dragged under the ocean by a harpoon tied to his leg, similar to Ahab's death in Melville's novel. A direct reference to these similarities may be found in the original screenplay, which introduced Quint by showing him watching the film version of Moby-Dick. His laughter throughout makes people get up and leave the theater (Wesley Strick's screenplay for Cape Fear features a similar scene). However, the scene from Moby-Dick could not be licensed from Gregory Peck, the owner of the rights. In the novel and original screenplay, when the Orca, like the Pequod, is sunk by the creature, only the character of Brody survives. Some have also noticed the influences of two 1950s horror films, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Monster That Challenged the World. Critics such as Neil Sinyard have noticed similarities to Henrik Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People. The Ibsen work features a doctor who discovers that a seaside town's medicinal hot springs, a major tourist attraction and form of revenue, are contaminated. When the doctor attempts to convince the townspeople of the danger, he loses his job and is shunned. This plotline is paralleled in Jaws by Brody's conflict with Mayor Vaughn, who refuses to acknowledge the presence of a shark that may dissuade summer beachgoers from coming to Amity. In the film, Brody is vindicated when more shark attacks occur at the crowded beach in broad daylight. Sinyard calls the film a "deft combination of Watergate and Ibsen's play". Jaws was a key film in establishing the benefits of a wide national release backed by heavy media advertising, rather than a progressive release that let a film slowly enter new markets and build support over a period of time. Rather than let the film gain notice by word-of-mouth, Hollywood launched a successful television marketing campaign for the film, which added another $700,000 to the cost. Similar to the fear of showers created by the pivotal scene in the 1960 film Psycho, Jaws caused many viewers to be afraid to enter the ocean. The film was credited with reduced beach attendance in the summer of 1975. Although it is considered a thriller-horror classic, the film is widely recognized as being responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes about sharks and their behavior. Author Peter Benchley stated that he would not have written the original novel had he known what sharks are really like in the wild. Benchley later wrote Shark Trouble, a non-fiction book about shark behavior, and Shark Life, another non-fiction book describing his dives with sharks. Conservation groups have bemoaned the fact that the film has made it considerably harder to convince the public that sharks should be protected. Jaws set the template for many future horror films, so much so that the script for Ridley Scott's 1979 science fiction film Alien was pitched to studio executives with one tag line: "Jaws in space." Music John Williams contributed the film score, which was ranked sixth on the American Film Institute's 100 Years of Film Scores. The main "shark" theme, a simple alternating pattern of two notes, E and F, became a classic piece of suspense music, synonymous with approaching danger (see leading-tone). Williams described the theme as having the "effect of grinding away at you, just as a shark would do, instinctual, relentless, unstoppable." The soundtrack piece was performed by tuba player Tommy Johnson. When asked by Johnson why the melody was written in such a high register and not played by the more appropriate French horn, Williams responded that he wanted it to sound "a little more threatening". When the piece was first played for Spielberg, he was said to have laughed at Williams, thinking that it was a joke. Spielberg later said that without Williams' score the film would have been only half as successful, and Williams acknowledges that the score jumpstarted his career. He had previously scored Spielberg's feature film debut The Sugarland Express and went on to collaborate with him on almost all of his films. The score contains echoes of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, particularly the opening of "The Adoration of the Earth" and "Auguries of Spring". The music has drawn comparisons to Bernard Herrman's score for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and the ominous music for the off-screen hunter in Bambi, in which the music enhances the presence of an unseen terror, in this case the shark. There are various interpretations of the meaning and effectiveness of the theme. Some have thought the two-note expression is intended to mimic the shark's heartbeat, beginning slow and controlled as the killer hunts and rising to a frenzied, shrieking climax as it approaches its prey. Others have stated that the music at first sounds like the creaking and groaning of a boat, and therefore is inaudible when it begins so that it never seems to start, but simply rises out of the sounds of the film. One critic believes the true strength of the score is its ability to create a "harsh silence", abruptly cutting away from the music right before it climaxes. Furthermore, the audience is conditioned to associate the shark with its theme, since the score is never used as a red herring. It only plays when the real shark appears. This is later exploited when the shark suddenly appears with no musical introduction. Regardless of the meaning behind it, the theme is widely acknowledged as one of the most recognized scores of all time. The original soundtrack for Jaws was released by MCA in 1975, and as a CD in 1992, including roughly a half hour of music that John Williams redid for the album. In 2000, two versions of the score were released: one in a re-recording of the entire Jaws score performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conducted by Joel McNeely; and another to coincide with the release of the 25th anniversary DVD by Decca/Universal, featuring the entire 51 minutes of the original score. Many fans prefer the Decca release over the Varèse Sarabande re-recording. Releases, sequels and merchandise Universal "devised and co-ordinated a highly innovative plan" for the first film's distribution and exhibition. The studio and publisher Bantam designed a logo which would appear on both the paperback and on all film advertising. "Both publisher and distributor recognized the mutual benefits that a joint promotion strategy would bring." Producers Zanuck and Brown toured six cities to promote the paperback and the film. Once the film was released, more merchandising was created, including shark-illustrated swimming towels and T-shirts, plastic shark fins for swimmers to wear, and shark-shaped inflatables for them to float on. The Ideal Toy Company produced a game where the player had to use a hook to fish out items from the shark's mouth before the jaws closed. The first Laserdisc title marketed in North America was the MCA DiscoVision release of Jaws in 1978. A second Laserdisc was released in 1991, before a third and final release came under the MCA/Universal Home Video's "Signature Collection" imprint in 1995. This release was an elaborate boxset, which included the film, along with deleted scenes and outtakes, a new two-hour documentary on the making of the film, a copy of the novel Jaws, and a CD of John Williams' soundtrack. A year after its MCA DiscoVision release, it returned to theaters for a special 2 week limited engagement. It was also released on VHS by MCA Home Video in the mid-80s and in 1995 by MCA Universal Home Video as a Collector's Edition featuring a Making-of retrospective. MCA Universal Home Video released it on VHS again in 1997 as a THX-certified Special Widescreen Edition featuring a 10-minute special introduction at the beginning of the tape which was shown previously on the 1995 VHS. Jaws was first released on DVD in 2000 for the film's 25th anniversary. It featured a 50-minute documentary on the making of the film (an edited version of the one featured on the 1995 laserdisc release), with interviews from Steven Spielberg, Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Benchley and other cast and crew members. Other extras included deleted scenes, outtakes, trailers, production photos, and storyboards. In June 2005, on the 30th anniversary of the film's release, a festival named JawsFest was held in Martha's Vineyard. Jaws was then re-released on DVD, this time including the full two-hour documentary produced by Laurent Bouzereau for the LaserDisc. As well as containing most of the same bonus features the previous DVD contained, it included a previously unavailable interview with Spielberg conducted on the set of Jaws in 1974. In the 2000s, an independent group of fans produced a feature length documentary. The Shark is Still Working features interviews with a range of cast and crew from the film, and some from the sequels. It is narrated by Roy Scheider and dedicated to Peter Benchley who died in 2006. The film spawned three sequels, all of which failed to match the success of the original. Indeed, their combined domestic grosses barely cover half of the original's. Spielberg was unavailable to do a sequel, as he was working on Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Richard Dreyfuss. Jaws 2 was directed by Jeannot Szwarc; Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary and Murray Hamilton reprised their roles from the original film. It is generally regarded as the best of the sequels. The next film, Jaws 3-D, directed by Joe Alves, was released in the 3-D format, although the effect did not transfer to television or home video, where it was renamed Jaws 3. Dennis Quaid as Michael Brody and Louis Gossett, Jr. starred in the movie. Jaws: The Revenge, directed by Joseph Sargent, featured the return of Lorraine Gary and is considered one of the worst movies ever made. While all three sequels made a profit at the box office (Jaws 2 and Jaws 3-D are among the top 20 highest-grossing films of their respective years), critics and audiences were generally dissatisfied with the films. In February 2010, film website Cinema Blend reported that a source from Universal Pictures has indicated that Universal is "strongly considering" remaking Jaws in 3-D, following the commercial success of Avatar. The source also reported that 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan was considered to portray Matt Hooper in the remake, which they say could be more comedic and make more use of special effects.[99] The studio has not officially commented upon the rumor. Aristocrat made an officially licensed slot machine based on the movie. Adaptations The film has been adapted into two video games, two theme park rides at Universal Studios Florida and Universal Studios Japan, and two musicals: JAWS The Musical!, which premiered in the summer of 2004 at the Minnesota Fringe Festival; and Giant Killer Shark: The Musical, which premiered in the summer of 2006 at the Toronto Fringe Festival.

I liked the new King Kong. It was different than the old one enough that it was like a new movie. I don't watch it much because it makes me sad. Poor monkey.

Outside of The Thing, there is not one horror remake that's as good as the original.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 05:46 PM) It depends on how many miles and what kind of shape the car is in. 2 years ago, I would have taken my 1993 Camry pretty much anywhere, and sort of did...I drove from Vermillion to Bismarck quite a few times, down to Sioux City several times, up to Minneapolis, to Fargo, and I was ready to go to Denver in it too (but the plans got canceled at the last second). Now that engine is beginning to go out, I'm afraid to make a 1 hour drive. The problem with trips that long is, that cars that age start showing stuff like that. Before you know it, the car blows up and you've had to steal a short bus from the school of the blind in order to stop your girlfriend from watching a video tape that you accidentally mailed to her.

There's a couple more!

7. Dawn of the Dead (1978) (8 of 20 lists - 142 points - Highest rank #1 GoSox05) Dawn of the Dead (also known as Zombi internationally) is a 1978 zombie film, written and directed by George A. Romero. It was the second film made in Romero's Living Dead series, but contains no characters or settings from Night of the Living Dead, and shows in larger scale a zombie epidemic's apocalyptic effects on society. In the film, a pandemic of unknown origin has caused the reanimation of the dead, who prey on human flesh, which subsequently causes mass hysteria. The cast features David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger and Gaylen Ross as survivors of the outbreak who barricade themselves inside a suburban shopping mall. Dawn of the Dead was shot over approximately four months, from late 1977 to early 1978, in the Pennsylvania cities of Pittsburgh and Monroeville. Its primary filming location was the Monroeville Mall. The film was made on a relatively modest budget estimated at $650,000 US, and was a significant box office success for its time, grossing an estimated $55 million worldwide. Since opening in theaters in 1978, and despite heavy gore content, reviews for the film have been nearly unanimously positive. Cultural and film historians read significance into the film's plot, linking it to critiques of large corporations as well as American consumerism and of the social decadence and the social and commercial excess present in America during the late 1970s. In 2008, Dawn of the Dead was chosen by Empire magazine as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time, along with Night of the Living Dead. In addition to four official sequels, the film has spawned numerous parodies and pop culture references. A remake of the movie premiered in the United States on March 19, 2004. It was labeled a "re-imagining" of the original film's concept. It retains several major themes of the original film along with the primary setting in a shopping mall. Plot Following the scenario set up in Night of the Living Dead, the United States (and possibly the entire world) has been devastated by a phenomenon which reanimates recently deceased human beings and turns them into flesh-eating zombies. The cause of this phenomenon is unknown. Despite desperate efforts by the US Government and local civil authorities to control the situation, society has effectively collapsed and the remaining survivors seek refuge. Some rural citizens and the military have been effective in fighting the zombies, but cities, with their high populations and close quarters, are essentially deathtraps. The chaos has apparently spread throughout the country, evident by infrequent television and radio broadcasts. Confusion reigns at the WGON television studio in Philadelphia. Staff member Stephen, the pilot of the station's traffic helicopter, and his girlfriend Francine are planning to steal the helicopter to escape the zombie threat. Meanwhile, Roger and his SWAT team raid an apartment building where the residents are ignoring the martial law imposition of delivering the dead over to National Guardsmen. Some residents attack with rifles, and are slaughtered by the SWAT operatives, and by their own reanimated dead. During the raid, Roger meets Peter, part of another SWAT team. They find the basement is packed with zombies, placed there by the living residents, and kill them. Roger, who knows of Stephen's plan, suggests they desert their SWAT teams and flee the city. Late that night, Roger and Peter escape Philadelphia with Francine and Stephen. Following some close calls while stopping for fuel, the group comes across a shopping mall, which becomes their private sanctuary. To make the mall safe for habitation, they kill the mall's zombie population and block the large glass doors with trucks to keep the undead gathered outside from entering. During the operation, the impulsive Roger becomes reckless and is bitten, dooming him to death. After clearing the mall of its zombie inhabitants, the four settle in, each indulging their every material desire. Time passes as the undead paw at the mall entrances and society beyond those doors continues to collapse. As the novelty of their materialistic utopia wears thin, they begin to realize their refuge has become their prison. It is revealed that Francine is about four months pregnant. Roger eventually succumbs to his wounds, reanimates and is shot by Peter as his last dying request. All emergency broadcast transmissions have ceased. A gang of bikers break into the mall, which also allows hundreds of the zombies inside. Stephen foolishly initiates a gun battle with the bikers; he is shot in the arm and then attacked by zombies. The ravenous zombies feast upon many of the bikers, and the surviving bikers make a hasty retreat from the mall, having paid a hefty price for what little loot they managed to gain from it. Stephen dies from his wounds and reanimates as a zombie, leading a group of the creatures to Francine and Peter's hideout. Peter kills Stephen while Francine escapes to the roof. Peter decides to stay and contemplates suicide before heading to the roof to join Francine, and the two fly away in the partially fueled helicopter to an uncertain future. Alternate ending The ending in the final cut of the film was not what Romero had originally planned. According to the original screenplay, Peter was to shoot himself in the head instead of making a heroic escape and Fran would commit suicide by thrusting her head into the helicopter's propeller blades. The end credits would run over a shot of the helicopter's blades turning until the engine winds down, showing that Fran and Peter would not have had enough fuel to escape. During production it was decided to change the ending of the film. Much of the lead-up to the two suicides was left in the film. Fran stands by the running helicopter waiting for Peter as zombies approach, and Peter puts a gun to his head, ready to shoot himself. However, he suddenly decides to escape with Fran. Romero has stated that the original ending was scrapped before being shot, although behind the scenes photos show the original version was at least tested. The head appliance made for Fran's suicide was used in the film as the head blown off during the SWAT raid on the apartment building. It was made-up to resemble a bearded African American male. Cast Ken Foree as Peter Washington Gaylen Ross as Francine Parker David Emge as Stephen Andrews Scott H. Reiniger as Roger DeMarco Development Pre-production The history of Dawn of the Dead began in 1974, when George Romero was invited by friend Mark Mason of Oxford Development Company—whom Romero knew from an acquaintance at his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon—to visit the Monroeville Mall, which Mason's company managed. After showing Romero hidden parts of the mall, during which Romero noted the bliss of the consumers, Mason jokingly suggested that someone would be able to survive in the mall should an emergency ever occur. With this inspiration, Romero began to write the screenplay for the film. Romero and his producer, Richard P. Rubinstein, were unable to procure any domestic investors for the new project. By chance, word of the sequel reached Italian horror director Dario Argento. A fan of Night of the Living Dead and an early critical proponent of the film, Argento was eager to help the horror classic receive a sequel. He met Romero and Rubinstein, helping to secure financing in exchange for international distribution rights. Argento invited Romero to Rome so he would have a change of scenery while writing the screenplay. The two could also then discuss plot developments. Romero was able to secure the availability of Monroeville Mall as well as additional financing through his connections with the mall's owners at Oxford Development. Once the casting was completed, principal shooting was scheduled to begin in Pennsylvania on November 13, 1977. Production Principal photography for Dawn of the Living Dead (its working title at the time) began on November 13, 1977 at the Monroeville Mall. Use of an actual, open shopping mall during the Christmas shopping season caused numerous time constraints. Filming began nightly once the mall closed, starting at 11 PM and ending at 7 AM, when automated music came on. As December arrived, the production decided against having the crew remove and replace the Christmas decorations — a task that had proved to be too time consuming. Filming was shut down during the last three weeks of the year to avoid the possible continuity difficulties and unavoidable lost shooting time. Production would resume on January 3, 1978. During the break in filming, Romero took the opportunity to begin editing his existing footage. The airfield scenes were filmed at the Harold W. Brown Memorial Airfield in Monroeville,[12] an airport located about 10 miles from the mall that is still in use. The scenes of the group's hideout at the top of the mall were filmed on a set built at Romero's then-production company, The Latent Image. The elevator shaft was located there as well, as no such area of the mall actually existed. The gun store was also not located in the mall — for filming, the crew used Firearms Unlimited, a shop that existed in the East Liberty district of Pittsburgh at the time. Principal photography on Dawn of the Dead ended February 1978, and Romero's process of editing would begin. By using numerous angles during the filming, Romero allowed himself an array of possibilities during editing — choosing from these many shots to reassemble into a sequence that could dictate any number of responses from the viewer simply by changing an angle or deleting or extending portions of scenes. This amount of superfluous footage is evidenced by the numerous international cuts, which in some cases affects the regional version's tone and flow. Make-up and effects Tom Savini, who had been offered the chance to do special effects and make-up for Romero's first zombie film, Night of the Living Dead, before being drafted to go to Vietnam, made his debut as an effects artist on Dawn of the Dead. Savini had been known for his make-up in horror for sometime, prior to Dawn of the Dead. He had a crew of eight to assist in applying gray makeup to two to three hundred extras each weekend during the shoot. One of his assistants during production was Joseph Pilato, who played a police captain in the film and would go on to play the lead villain in the film's sequel, Day of the Dead. The makeup for the multitudes of extras in the film was a basic blue or gray tinge to the face of each extra. Some featured zombies, who would be seen close-up or on-screen longer than others, had more time spent on their look. Many of the featured zombies became part of the fanfare, with nicknames based upon their look or activity—such as Machete Zombie, Sweater Zombie, and Nurse Zombie. "Sweater zombie" Clayton Hill, was described by a crew member as "one of the most convincing zombies of the bunch" citing his skill at maintaining his stiff pose and rolling his eyes back into his head, including heading down the wrong way in an escalator while in character. A cast of Gaylen Ross' head that was to be used in the original ending of the film (involving a suicide rather than the escape scene finally used) ended up as an exploding head during the tenement building scene. The head, filled with food scraps, was shot with an actual shotgun to get the head to explode. One of the unintentional standout effects was the bright, fluorescent color of the fake blood that was used in the film. Savini was an early opponent of the blood, produced by 3M, but Romero thought it added to the film, claiming it emphasised the comic book feel of the movie. Critics today[who?] have gone onto describe that the look of the blood and the use of colour has contributed to the film's "dreamlike" aura. Music The film's music varies with each of the various cuts. For Romero's theatrical version, musical cues and selections were chosen from the De Wolfe Music Library, a compilation of stock music scores and cues. In the montage scene featuring the rednecks and National Guard, the song played in the background is called "Cause I'm a Man" by the Pretty Things. The song was first released on the group's LP Electric Banana. The music heard playing in a sequence in the mall, and over the film's end credits, was actually not the mall's music — it was a song titled "The Gonk" — a polka style song from the DeWolfe Library, with a chorus of zombie moans added by Romero. For Dario Argento's international cut of Dawn of the Dead, the Italian director used the band Goblin (incorrectly credited as "The Goblins") extensively. Goblin was a four-piece Italian band that did mostly contract work for film soundtracks. Argento, who received a credit for original music alongside Goblin, collaborated with the group to get songs for his cut of the film. Romero used three of their pieces in his version. The Goblin score would later find its way onto a heavily Dawn of the Dead-inspired film, Hell of the Living Dead. Post-production and releases Dawn of the Dead has received a number of re-cuts and re-edits, due mostly to Dario Argento's rights to edit the film for international foreign language release. Romero controlled the final cut of the film for English-language territories. In addition, the film was edited further by censors or distributors in certain countries. Romero, acting as the editor for his film, completed a hasty 139-minute version of the film (now known as the Extended, or Director's, Cut) for premiere at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival. This was later pared down to 126 minutes for the U.S. theatrical release. In an era before the NC-17 rating was available from the Motion Picture Association of America, the US theatrical cut of the film earned the taboo rating of X (which was and still is typically used for pornography) from the association because of its graphic violence. Rejecting this rating, Romero and the producers chose to release the film unrated so as to help the film's commercial success. United Artists eventually agreed to release it domestically in the United States. It premiered in the US in New York on April 20, 1979. Internationally, Argento controlled the final cut for non-English speaking countries. The version he created clocked in at 119 minutes. It included changes such as more music from Goblin than the two cuts completed by Romero, removal of some expository scenes, and a faster cutting pace. Released in Italy in September 1978, it actually debuted nearly nine months before the US theatrical cut. In Italy it was released under the full title Zombi: L’alba dei Morti Viventi, followed in March 1979 by France as Zombie: Le Crépuscule des Morts Vivants, in Spain as Zombi: El Regreso de los Muertos Vivientes, in the Netherlands as Zombie: In De Greep van de Zombies, by Germany’s Constantin Film as Zombie, and in Denmark as Zombie: Rædslernes Morgen. Despite the various alternate versions of the film available, Dawn of the Dead was successful internationally. Its success in then-West Germany earned it the Golden Screen Award, given to films that have at least 3 million admissions within 18 months of release. Majority of these versions were released on DVD in the 2004 Special Edition, and have previously been released on VHS. The Photographer Richard Burker of the Pittsburgh Magazine released in May 2010 the first exclusive Behind-the-Scenes pictures from the set. Reception Dawn of the Dead premiered theatrically in the New York City, New York on April 20, 1979, and a month afterward in Los Angeles, California on May 11, 1979. Dawn of the Dead performed well thanks both to commercial advertising and word-of-mouth. Ad campaigns and posters declared the film "the most intensely shocking motion picture experience for all times". The film earned $900,000 on its opening weekend in the United States (total estimate at 5 million), an international gross of 40 million, followed by a worldwide gross revenue of $55 million, making it the most profitable in the Dead series. Reviews Dawn of the Dead — unlike many other "gory" horror staples of its time — received heavy praise film reviews since its initial release. The film was regarded by many as one of the best films of 1978, and it currently holds a very positive 95 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The 25th anniversary issue of Fangoria named it the best horror film of 1979 (although it was released a year earlier), and Entertainment Weekly ranked it #27 on a list of "The Top 50 Cult Films." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it four out of four stars and proclaimed it "one of the best horror films ever made." While conceding Dawn of the Dead to be "gruesome, sickening, disgusting, violent, brutal and appalling," Ebert said that "nobody ever said art had to be in good taste." Steve Biodrowski of Cinefantastique praised the film, calling it a "broader" version of Night of the Living Dead, and gave particular credit to the acting and themes explored: "the acting performances are uniformly strong; and the script develops its themes more explicitly, with obvious satirical jabs at modern consumer society, as epitomized by the indoor shopping mall where a small band of human survivors take shelter from the zombie plague sweeping the country." He went onto say that Dawn of the Dead was a "savage (if tongue-in-cheek) attack on the foibles of modern society", showcasing explicit gore and horror and turning them into "a form of art". Dawn of the Dead was not without its detractors. Similar to the preceding Night of the Living Dead, some critical reviewers did not like the gory special effects. Particularly displeased at the large amount of gore and graphic violence was The New York Times critic Janet Maslin, one of the few negative reviewers, who claimed she walked out after the first 15 minutes due to "a pet peeve about flesh-eating zombies who never stop snacking,"[40] and Gene Shalit of NBC's Today show dismissed it as "Yawn of the Living." Others, particularly Variety Magazine, attacked the film's writing, claiming that the violence and gore detracts from any development of character, making them "uninteresting", resulting loss of impact in the writing. Variety wrote: "Dawn pummels the viewer with a series of ever-more-grisly events - decapitations, shootings, knifings, flesh tearings - that make Romero's special effects man, Tom Savini, the real 'star' of the film - the actors are as woodenly uninteresting as the characters they play. Romero's script is banal when not incoherent - those who haven't seen Night of the Living Dead may have some difficulty deciphering exactly what's going on at the outset of Dawn." Dawn of the Dead is now widely considered a classic. The film was selected as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time by Empire magazine in 2008. It was also named as one of The Best 1000 Movies Ever Made, a list published by The New York Times. Home video Dawn of the Dead Ultimate Edition DVD In 2004, after numerous VHS, Laserdisc and DVD releases of several different versions of the film from various companies, Anchor Bay Entertainment released a definitive Ultimate Edition DVD box set of Dawn of the Dead, following a single-disc U.S. theatrical cut released earlier in the year. The set features all three widely-available versions of the film, along with different commentary tracks for each version, documentaries and extras. Also rereleased with the DVD set was Roy Frumkes' Document of the Dead, which chronicled the making of Dawn of the Dead and Romero's career to that point. The Ultimate Edition earned a Saturn Award for Best Classic Film Release. The U.S. theatrical cut of Dawn of the Dead was released in high definition on the Blu-ray Disc format on October 7, 2007. 3D version It has been announced recently that the film producer, Richard Rubinstein, is planning to re-release the original Dawn in 3D, as Dawn of the Dead 3-D. Rubinstein has plans to create a new sequel to the film as well. Series In January 2010 Bloody Disgusting announced that MTV is planning a TV series, it is a spin-off of the original story. As of August 2010, no new developments have been released regarding the television series.

8. Alien (1979) (8 of 20 lists - 141 points - highest rank #1 OilCan) Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto. The film's title refers to its primary antagonist: a highly aggressive extraterrestrial creature which stalks and kills the crew of a spaceship. Dan O'Bannon wrote the screenplay from a story by him and Ronald Shusett, drawing influence from previous works of science fiction and horror. The film was produced through Brandywine Productions and distributed by 20th Century Fox, with producers David Giler and Walter Hill making significant revisions and additions to the script. The titular Alien and its accompanying elements were designed by Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger, while concept artists Ron Cobb and Chris Foss designed the human aspects of the film. Alien garnered both critical acclaim and box office success, receiving an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction for Scott, and Best Supporting Actress for Cartwright, and a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, along with numerous other award nominations. It has remained highly praised in subsequent decades, being inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2002 for historical preservation as a film which is "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and being ranked by the American Film Institute in 2008 as the seventh-best film in the science fiction genre. The success of Alien spawned a media franchise of novels, comic books, video games, and toys, as well as three sequel and two prequel films. It also launched Weaver's acting career by providing her with her first lead role, and the story of her character Ripley's encounters with the Alien creatures became the thematic thread that ran through the sequels Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), and Alien Resurrection (1997). The subsequent prequels Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) abandoned this theme in favor of a crossover with the Predator franchise. Plot The commercial towing spaceship Nostromo is on a return trip from Thedus to Earth, hauling a refinery and twenty million tons of mineral ore and carrying its seven-member crew in stasis. Upon receiving a transmission of unknown origin from a nearby planetoid, the ship's computer awakens the crew. Acting on orders from their corporate employers, the crew detaches the Nostromo from the refinery and lands on the planetoid, resulting in some damage to the ship. Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt), and Navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) set out to investigate the signal's source while Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm), and Engineers Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) and Parker (Yaphet Kotto) stay behind to monitor their progress and make repairs. Dallas, Kane, and Lambert discover that the signal is coming from a derelict alien spacecraft. Inside it they find the remains of a large alien creature whose ribs appear to have been exploded outward from the inside. Meanwhile, the Nostromo's computer partially deciphers the signal transmission, which Ripley determines to be some type of warning. Kane discovers a vast chamber containing numerous eggs, one of which releases a creature that attaches itself to his face. Dallas and Lambert carry the unconscious Kane back to the Nostromo, where Ash allows them inside against Ripley's orders to follow the ship's quarantine protocol. They unsuccessfully attempt to remove the creature from Kane's face, discovering that its blood is an extremely corrosive acid. Eventually the creature detaches on its own and is found dead. With the ship repaired, the crew resume their trip back to Earth. Kane awakens seemingly unharmed, but during a meal before re-entering stasis he begins to choke and convulse until an alien creature bursts from his chest, killing him and escaping into the ship. Lacking conventional weapons, the crew attempt to locate and capture the creature by fashioning motion trackers, electric prods, and flamethrowers. Brett follows the crew's cat into a large room where the now-fully-grown Alien attacks him and disappears with his body into the ship's air shafts. Dallas enters the shafts intending to force the Alien into an airlock where it can be expelled into space, but it ambushes him. Lambert implores the remaining crew members to escape in the ship's shuttle, but Ripley, now in command, explains that the shuttle will not support four people. Accessing the ship's computer, Ripley discovers that Ash has been ordered to return the Alien to the Nostromo's corporate employers even at the expense of the crew. Ash attacks her, but Parker intervenes and decapitates him with a blow from a fire extinguisher, revealing Ash to be an android. Before Parker incinerates him, Ash predicts that the other crew members will not survive. The remaining three crew members plan to arm the Nostromo's self-destruct mechanism and escape in the shuttle, but Parker and Lambert are killed by the Alien while gathering the necessary supplies. Ripley initiates the self-destruct sequence and heads for the shuttle with the cat, but finds the Alien blocking her way. She unsuccessfully attempts to abort the self-destruct, then returns to find the Alien gone and narrowly escapes in the shuttle as the Nostromo explodes. As she prepares to enter stasis, Ripley discovers that the Alien is aboard the shuttle. She puts on a space suit and opens the hatch, causing explosive decompression which forces the Alien to the open doorway. She shoots it with a grappling gun which propels it out, but the gun is caught in the closing door, tethering the Alien to the shuttle. It attempts to crawl into one of the engines, but Ripley activates them and blasts the Alien into space. Ripley puts herself and the cat into stasis for the return trip to Earth. Origins While studying cinema at the University of Southern California, Dan O'Bannon had made a science fiction comedy film with director John Carpenter and concept artist Ron Cobb entitled Dark Star. The film included an alien which had been created using a spray-painted beach ball, and the experience left O'Bannon "really wanting to do an alien that looked real." A few years later he began working on a similar story that would focus more on horror: "I knew I wanted to do a scary movie on a spaceship with a small number of astronauts", he later recalled, "Dark Star as a horror movie instead of a comedy." Ronald Shusett, meanwhile, was working on an early version of what would eventually become Total Recall. Impressed by Dark Star, he contacted O'Bannon and the two agreed to collaborate on their projects, choosing to work on O'Bannon's film first as they believed it would be less costly to produce. O'Bannon had written twenty-nine pages of a script entitled Memory comprising what would become the film's opening scenes: a crew of astronauts awaken to find that their voyage has been interrupted because they are receiving a signal from a mysterious planetoid. They investigate and their ship breaks down on the surface. He did not yet, however, have a clear idea as to what the alien antagonist of the story would be. O'Bannon soon accepted an offer to work on a film adaptation of Dune, a project which took him to Paris for six months. Though the project ultimately fell through, it introduced him to several artists whose works gave him ideas for his science fiction story including Chris Foss, H. R. Giger, and Jean "Moebius" Giraud. O'Bannon was impressed by Foss' covers for science fiction books, while he found Giger's work "disturbing": "His paintings had a profound effect on me. I had never seen anything that was quite as horrible and at the same time as beautiful as his work. And so I ended up writing a script about a Giger monster." After the Dune project collapsed O'Bannon returned to Los Angeles to live with Shusett and the two revived his Memory script. Shusett suggested that O'Bannon use one of his other film ideas, about gremlins infiltrating a B-17 bomber during World War II, and set it on the spaceship as the second half of the story. The working title of the project was now Star Beast, but O'Bannon disliked this and changed it to Alien after noting the number of times that the word appeared in the script. He and Shusett liked the new title's simplicity and its double meaning as both a noun and adjective. Shusett came up with the idea that one of the crew members could be implanted with an alien embryo that would later burst out of him, feeling that this was an interesting plot device by which the alien creature could get onboard the ship. In writing the script O'Bannon drew inspiration from many previous works of science fiction and horror. He later stated that "I didn't steal Alien from anybody. I stole it from everybody!" The Thing from Another World (1951) inspired the idea of professional men being pursued by a deadly alien creature through a claustrophobic environment. Forbidden Planet (1956) gave O'Bannon the idea of a ship being warned not to land, and then the crew being killed one by one by a mysterious creature when they defy the warning. Planet of the Vampires (1965) contains a scene in which the heroes discover a giant alien skeleton; this influenced the Nostromo crew's discovery of the alien creature in the derelict spacecraft. O'Bannon has also noted the influence of "Junkyard" (1953), a short story by Clifford D. Simak in which a crew lands on an asteroid and discovers a chamber full of eggs. He has also cited as influences Strange Relations by Philip José Farmer (1960), which covers alien reproduction, and various EC Comics horror titles carrying stories in which monsters eat their way out of people. With roughly eighty-five percent of the plot completed, Shusett and O'Bannon presented their initial script to several studios, pitching it as "Jaws in space." They were on the verge of signing a deal with Roger Corman's studio when a friend offered to find them a better deal and passed the script on to Walter Hill, David Giler, and Gordon Carroll, who had formed a production company called Brandywine with ties to 20th Century Fox. O'Bannon and Shusett signed a deal with Brandywine, but Hill and Giler were not satisfied with the script and made numerous rewrites and revisions to it. This caused tension with O'Bannon and Shusett, since Hill and Giler had very little experience with science fiction and according to Shusett: "They weren't good at making it better, or in fact at not making it even worse." O'Bannon believed that they were attempting to justify taking his name off of the script and claiming it as their own. Hill and Giler did add some substantial elements to the story, however, including the android character Ash which O'Bannon felt was an unnecessary subplot, but which Shusett later described as "one of the best things in the movie...That whole idea and scenario was theirs." In total Hill and Giler went through eight different drafts of the script, mostly concentrating on the Ash subplot but also making the dialogue more natural and trimming some sequences set on the alien planetoid. Despite the multiple rewrites, 20th Century Fox did not express confidence in financing a science fiction film. However, after the success of Star Wars in 1977 the studio's interest in the genre rose substantially. According to Carroll: "When Star Wars came out and was the extraordinary hit that it was, suddenly science fiction became the hot genre." O'Bannon recalled that "They wanted to follow through on Star Wars, and they wanted to follow through fast, and the only spaceship script they had sitting on their desk was Alien". Alien was greenlit by 20th Century Fox at an initial budget of $4.2 million. Direction and design O'Bannon had originally assumed that he would direct Alien, but 20th Century Fox instead asked Hill to direct. Hill declined due to other film commitments as well as not being comfortable with the level of visual effects that would be required. Peter Yates, Jack Clayton, and Robert Aldrich were considered for the task, but O'Bannon, Shusett, and the Brandywine team felt that these directors would not take the film seriously and would instead treat it as a B monster movie. Giler, Hill, and Carroll had been impressed by Ridley Scott's debut feature film The Duellists (1977) and made an offer to him to direct Alien, which Scott quickly accepted. Scott created detailed storyboards for the film in London, which impressed 20th Century Fox enough to double the film's budget from $4.2 million to $8.4 million. His storyboards included designs for the spaceship and space suits, drawing influences from films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars. However, he was keen on emphasizing horror in Alien rather than fantasy, describing the film as "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre of science fiction". O'Bannon introduced Scott to the artwork of H. R. Giger; both of them felt that his painting Necronom IV was the type of representation they wanted for the film's antagonist and began asking the studio to hire him as a designer. 20th Century Fox initially believed Giger's work was too ghastly for audiences, but the Brandywine team were persistent and eventually won out. According to Gordon Carroll: "The first second that Ridley saw Giger's work, he knew that the biggest single design problem, maybe the biggest problem in the film, had been solved." Scott flew to Zürich to meet Giger and recruited him to work on all aspects of the Alien and its environment including the surface of the planetoid, the derelict spacecraft, and all four forms of the Alien from the egg to the adult. I resent films that are so shallow they rely entirely on their visual effects, and of course science fiction films are notorious for this. I've always felt that there's another way to do it: a lot of effort should be expended toward rendering the environment of the spaceship, or space travel, whatever the fantastic setting of your story should be–as convincingly as possible, but always in the background. That way the story and the characters emerge and they become more real. –Ron Cobb on his designs for Alien. O'Bannon brought in artists Ron Cobb and Chris Foss (with whom he had worked on Dark Star and Dune, respectively) to work on designs for the human aspects of the film such as the spaceship and space suits. Cobb created hundreds of preliminary sketches of the interiors and exteriors of the ship, which went through many design concepts and possible names such as Leviathan and Snark as the script continued to develop. The final name of the ship was derived from the title of Joseph Conrad's 1904 novel Nostromo, while the escape shuttle, called Narcissus in the script, was named after Conrad's 1897 novella The n***** of the 'Narcissus'. The production team particularly praised Cobb's ability to depict the interior settings of the ship in a realistic and believable manner. Under Ridley Scott's direction the design of the Nostromo shifted towards an 800-foot (240 m)-long tug towing a refining platform 2 miles (3.2 km) long and 1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide. Cobb also created some conceptual drawings of the Alien, but these were not used. Moebius was attached to the project for a few days as well, and his costume renderings served as the basis for the final space suits created by costume designer John Mollo. Casting Casting calls and auditions for Alien were held in both New York and London. With only seven human characters in the story, Scott sought to hire strong actors so that he could focus most of his energy on the film's visual style. He employed casting director Mary Selway, who had worked with him on The Duellists, to head the casting in the United Kingdom, while Mary Goldberg handled casting in the United States. In developing the story O'Bannon had focused on writing the Alien first, putting off developing the characters for a later draft. He and Shusett had therefore written all of the roles as generic males with a note in the script explicitly stating that "The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women." This left Scott, Selway, and Goldberg free to interpret the characters as they liked and to cast accordingly. They wanted the Nostromo's crew to resemble working astronauts in a realistic environment, a concept summed up as "truckers in space". Scott has stated that this concept was inspired partly by Star Wars, which deviated from the pristine future often depicted in science fiction films of the time. The principal cast members of Alien were: * Bolaji Badejo as The Alien. A Nigerian design student, Badejo was discovered in a bar by a member of the casting team, who put him in touch with Ridley Scott. Scott believed that Badejo, at 7 feet 2 inches (218 cm) and with a slender frame, could portray the Alien and look as if his arms and legs were too long to be real, creating the illusion that there could not possibly be a human being inside the costume. Stuntmen Eddie Powell and Roy Scammell also portrayed the Alien in some scenes. * Veronica Cartwright as Lambert, the Nostromo's navigator. Cartwright had previous experience in horror and science fiction films, having acted in The Birds (1963) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). She originally read for the role of Ripley, and was not informed that she had instead been cast as Lambert until she arrived in London for wardrobe. She disliked the character's emotional weakness, but nevertheless accepted the role: "They convinced me that I was the audience's fears; I was a reflection of what the audience is feeling." Cartwright won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. * Ian Holm as Ash, the ship's Science Officer who is revealed to be an android under orders to bring the Alien back to the Nostromo's corporate employers. Holm, a character actor who in 1979 had already been in twenty films, was the most experienced actor cast for Alien. * John Hurt as Kane, the Executive Officer who becomes the host for the Alien. Hurt was Scott's first choice for the role but was contracted on a film in South Africa during Alien's filming dates, so Jon Finch was cast as Kane instead. However, Finch became ill during the first day of shooting and was diagnosed with severe diabetes, which had also exacerbated a case of bronchitis. By this point, Hurt was in London, his South African project having fallen through, and he quickly replaced Finch. His performance earned him a nomination for a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. * Yaphet Kotto as Parker, the Chief Engineer. Kotto was chosen partly to add diversity to the cast and give the Nostromo crew an international flavor. * Tom Skerritt as Dallas, the Captain of the Nostromo. Skerritt had been approached early in the film's development but declined as it did not yet have a director and had a very low budget. Later, when Scott was attached as director and the budget had been doubled, Skerritt accepted the role of Dallas. * Harry Dean Stanton as Brett, the Engineering Technician. Stanton's first words to Scott during his audition were "I don't like sci fi or monster movies." Scott was amused and convinced Stanton to take the role after reassuring him that Alien would actually be a thriller more akin to Ten Little Indians. * Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, the Warrant Officer onboard the Nostromo. The decision to make the lead character a woman was made by Giler and Hill, who felt that this would help Alien stand out in the otherwise male-dominated genre of science fiction. Weaver, who had Broadway experience but was relatively unknown in film, impressed Scott, Giler, and Hill with her audition. She was the last actor to be cast for the film, and performed most of her screen tests in-studio as the sets were being built. The role of Ripley was Weaver's first leading role in a motion picture, and earned her nominations for a Saturn Award for Best Actress and a BAFTA award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Role. To assist the actors in preparing for their roles, Ridley Scott wrote several pages of backstory for each character explaining their histories. He filmed many of their rehearsals in order to capture spontaneity and improvisation, and tensions between some of the cast members, particularly towards the less-experienced Weaver, translated convincingly on film as tension between their respective characters. Film critic Roger Ebert has noted that the actors in Alien were older than was typical in thriller films at the time, and that this helped make the characters more convincing: [N]one of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, Hurt was 39 but looked older, Holm was 48, Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, and only Veronica Cartwright at 29 and Weaver at 30 were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, Alien achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth. David McIntee, author of Beautiful Monsters: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Alien and Predator Films, has praised the acting and characterizations in Alien. He notes that part of the film's effectiveness in frightening viewers "comes from the fact that the audience can all identify with the characters...Everyone aboard the Nostromo is a normal, everyday, working Joe just like the rest of us. They just happen to live and work in the future." Set design and filming Alien was filmed over fourteen weeks from July 5 to October 21, 1978. Principal photography took place at Shepperton Studios in London, while model and miniature filming was done at Bray Studios in Water Oakley. Production time was short due to the film's low budget and pressure from 20th Century Fox to finish on schedule. A crew of over 200 workmen and technicians constructed the three principal sets: The surface of the alien planetoid and the interiors of the Nostromo and derelict spacecraft. Art Director Les Dilley created 1/24th scale miniatures of the planetoid's surface and derelict spacecraft based on Giger's designs, then made moulds and casts and scaled them up as diagrams for the wood and fiberglass forms of the sets. Tons of sand, plaster, fiberglass, rock, and gravel were shipped into the studio to sculpt a desert landscape for the planetoid's surface, which the actors would walk across wearing space suit costumes. The suits themselves were thick, bulky, and lined with nylon, had no cooling systems and, initially, no venting for their exhaled carbon dioxide to escape. Combined with a heat wave, these conditions nearly caused the actors to pass out and nurses had to be kept on-hand with oxygen tanks to help keep them going. For scenes showing the exterior of the Nostromo a 58-foot (18 m) landing leg was constructed to give a sense of the ship's size. Ridley Scott still did not think that it looked large enough, so he had his two sons and the son of one of the cameramen stand in for the regular actors, wearing smaller space suits in order to make the set pieces seem larger. The same technique was used for the scene in which the crew members encounter the dead alien creature in the derelict spacecraft. The children nearly collapsed due to the heat of the suits, and eventually oxygen systems were added to assist the actors in breathing. The sets of the Nostromo's three decks were each created almost entirely in one piece, with each deck occupying a separate stage and the various rooms connected via corridors. To move around the sets the actors had to navigate through the hallways of the ship, adding to the film's sense of claustrophobia and realism. The sets used large transistors and low-resolution computer screens to give the ship a "used", industrial look and make it appear as though it was constructed of "retrofitted old technology". Ron Cobb created industrial-style symbols and color-coded signs for various areas and aspects of the ship. The company that owns the Nostromo is not named in the film, and is referred to by the characters as "the company". However, the name and logo of "Weylan-Yutani" appears on several set pieces and props such as computer monitors and beer cans. Cobb created the name to imply a business alliance between Britain and Japan, deriving "Weylan" from the British Leyland Motor Corporation and "Yutani" from the name of his Japanese neighbor. The 1986 sequel Aliens named the company as "Weyland-Yutani", and it has remained a central aspect of the film franchise. Art Director Roger Christian used scrap metal and parts to create set pieces and props in order to save money, a technique he had used while working on Star Wars. Some of the Nostromo's corridors were created from portions of scrapped bomber aircraft, and a mirror was used to create the illusion of longer corridors in the below-deck area. Special effects supervisors Brian Johnson and Nick Allder made many of the set pieces and props actually function, including moving chairs, computer monitors, motion trackers, and flamethrowers. Four matching cats were used to portray Jones, the Nostromo crew's pet. During filming Sigourney Weaver discovered that she was allergic to the combination of cat hair and the glycerin placed on the actors' skin to make them appear sweaty. By removing the glycerin she was able to continue working with the cats. In the center of a large, darkened chamber, with strange designs on the floor and walls, is a circular dais on which sits a dead alien creature reclining on a long chair under a large telescope-like device. Giger airbrushed the "space jockey" set by hand. Children stood in for the regular actors to make the set seem larger on screen. It was redressed to double as the egg chamber. H.R. Giger designed and worked on all of the alien aspects of the film, which he designed to appear organic and biomechanical in contrast to the industrial look of the Nostromo and its human elements. For the interior of the derelict spacecraft and egg chamber he used dried bones together with plaster to sculpt much of the scenery and elements. Veronica Cartwright described Giger's sets as "so erotic...it's big vaginas and penises...the whole thing is like you're going inside of some sort of womb or whatever...it's sort of visceral". The set with the deceased alien creature, which the production team nicknamed the "space jockey", proved problematic as 20th Century Fox did not want to spend the money for such an expensive set that would only be used for one scene. Ridley Scott described the set as the cockpit or driving deck of the mysterious ship, and the production team was able to convince the studio that the scene was important to impress the audience and make them aware that this was not a B movie. To save money only one wall of the set was created, and the "space jockey" sat atop a disc that could be rotated to facilitate shots from different angles in relation to the actors. Giger airbrushed the entire set and the "space jockey" by hand. The origin of the jockey creature was not explored in the film, but Scott later theorized that it might have been the ship's pilot, and that the ship might have been a weapons carrier capable of dropping Alien eggs onto a planet so that the Aliens could use the local lifeforms as hosts. In early versions of the script the eggs were to be located in a separate pyramid structure which would be found later by the Nostromo crew and would contain statues and hieroglyphs depicting the Alien reproductive cycle, offering a contrast of the human, Alien, and space jockey cultures. Cobb, Foss, and Giger each created concept artwork for these sequences, but they were eventually discarded due to budgetary concerns and the need to trim the length of the film. Instead the egg chamber was set inside the derelict ship and was filmed on the same set as the space jockey scene; the entire disc piece supporting the jockey and its chair were removed and the set was redressed to create the egg chamber. Alien originally was to conclude with the destruction of the Nostromo while Ripley escapes in the shuttle Narcissus. However, Ridley Scott conceived of a "fourth act" to the film in which the Alien appears on the shuttle and Ripley is forced to confront it. He pitched the idea to 20th Century Fox and negotiated an increase in the budget in order to film the scene over several extra days. Scott had wanted the Alien to bite off Ripley's head and then make the final log entry in her voice, but the producers vetoed this idea as they believed that the Alien had to die at the end of the film. Special effects and creature design Spaceships and planets The spaceships and planets for the film were shot using models and miniatures. These included models of the Nostromo, its attached mineral refinery, the escape shuttle Narcissus, the alien planetoid, and the exterior and interior of the derelict spacecraft. Visual Effects Supervisor Brian Johnson, supervising modelmaker Martin Bower, and their team worked at Bray Studios, roughly 30 miles (48 km) from Shepperton Studios where principal filming was taking place.[49][50] The designs of the Nostromo and its attachments were based on combinations of Ridley Scott's storyboards and Ron Cobb's conceptual drawings. The basic outlines of the models were made of wood and plastic, and most of the fine details were added from model kits of battleships, tanks, and World War II bombers. Three models of the Nostromo were made: a 12-inch (30 cm) version for medium and long shots, a 4-foot (1.2 m) version for rear shots, and a 12-foot (3.7 m), 7-short-ton (6.4 t) rig for the undocking and planetoid surface sequences. Scott insisted on numerous changes to the models even as filming was taking place, leading to conflicts with the modeling and filming teams. The Nostromo was originally yellow, and the team filmed shots of the models for six weeks before Johnson left to work on The Empire Strikes Back. Scott then ordered it changed to gray, and the team had to begin shooting again from scratch. He ordered more and more pieces added to the model until the final large version with the refinery required a metal framework so that it could be lifted by a forklift. He also took a hammer and chisel to sections of the refinery, knocking off many of its spires which Bower had spent weeks creating. Scott also had disagreements with lighting technician Denny Ayling over how to light the models. A separate model, approximately 40 feet (12 m) long, was created for the Nostromo's underside from which the Narcissus would detach and from which Kane's body would be launched during the funeral scene. Bower carved Kane's burial shroud out of wood and it was launched through the hatch using a small catapult and filmed at high speed, then slowed down in editing. Only one shot was filmed using blue screen compositing: that of the shuttle racing past the Nostromo. The other shots were simply filmed against black backdrops, with stars added via double exposure. Though motion control photography technology was available at the time, the film's budget would not allow for it. The team therefore used a camera with wide-angle lenses mounted on a drive mechanism to make slow passes over and around the models filming at 2½ per second, giving them the appearance of motion. Scott added smoke and wind effects to enhance the illusion. For the scene in which the Nostromo detaches from the refinery, a 30-foot (9.1 m) docking arm was created using pieces from model railway kits. The Nostromo was pushed away from the refinery by the forklift, which was covered in black velvet, causing the arm to extend out from the refinery. This created the illusion that the arm was pushing the ship forward. Shots from outside the ship in which the characters are seen through windows moving around inside were filmed using larger models which contained projection screens showing pre-recorded footage. A separate model was created for the exterior of the derelict alien spacecraft. Matte paintings were used to fill in areas of the ship's interior as well as exterior shots of the planetoid's surface. The surface as seen from space during the landing sequence was created by painting a globe white, then mixing chemicals and dyes onto transparencies and projecting them onto it. The planetoid was not named in the film, but some drafts of the script gave it the name Acheron after the river which in Greek mythology is described as the "stream of woe", a branch of the river Styx, and which forms the border of Hell in Dante's Inferno. The 1986 sequel Aliens named the planetoid as "LV-426", and both names have been used for it in subsequent expanded universe media such as comic books and video games. In Alien the planetoid is said to be located somewhere in the Zeta2 Reticuli system. Egg and facehugger The scene of Kane inspecting the egg was shot during post-production. A fiberglass egg was used so that actor John Hurt could shine his light on it and see movement inside, which was provided by Ridley Scott fluttering his hands inside the egg while wearing rubber gloves. The top of the egg opened via hydraulics, and the innards were made of a cow's stomach and tripe. Initial test shots of the eggs were filmed using hen's eggs, and this footage was used in early teaser trailers. For this reason a hen's egg was used as the primary image for the film's advertising poster, and became a lasting image for the series as a whole rather than the Alien egg that actually appears in the film. The "facehugger" and its proboscis, which was made of a sheep's intestine, were shot out of the egg using high-pressure air hoses. The shot was acted out and filmed in reverse, then reversed and slowed down in editing to prolong the effect and show more detail. The facehugger itself was the first creature that Giger designed for the film, going through several versions in different sizes before deciding on a small creature with humanlike fingers and a long tail. Dan O'Bannon drew his own version based on Giger's design, with help from Ron Cobb, which became the final version. Cobb came up with the idea that the creature could have a powerful acid for blood, a characteristic that would carry over to the adult Alien and would make it impossible for the crew to kill it by conventional means such as guns or explosives, since the acid would burn through the ship's hull. For the scene in which the dead facehugger is examined, Scott used pieces of fish and shellfish to create its viscera. Chestburster The design of the "chestburster" was inspired by Francis Bacon's 1944 painting Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. Giger's original design resembled a plucked chicken, which was redesigned and refined into the final version seen onscreen. For the filming of the chestburster scene the cast members knew that the creature would be bursting out of Hurt, and had seen the chestburster puppet, but they had not been told that fake blood would also be bursting out in every direction from high-pressure pumps and squibs. The scene was shot in one take using an artificial torso filled with blood and viscera, with Hurt's head and arms coming up from underneath the table. The chestburster was shoved up through the torso by a puppeteer who held it on a stick. When the creature burst through the chest a stream of blood shot directly at Veronica Cartwright, shocking her enough that she fell over and went into hysterics. According to Tom Skerritt: "What you saw on camera was the real response. She had no idea what the hell happened. All of a sudden this thing just came up." The creature then runs off-camera, an effect accomplished by cutting a slit in the table for the puppeteer's stick to go through and passing an air hose through the puppet's tail to make it whip about. The real-life surprise of the actors gave the scene an intense sense of realism and made it one of the film's most memorable moments. During preview screenings the crew noticed that some viewers would move towards the back of the theater so as not to be too close to the screen during the sequence. In subsequent years the chestburster scene has often been voted as one of the most memorable moments in film. In 2007 the British film magazine Empire named it as the greatest 18-rated moment in film as part of its "18th birthday" issue, ranking it above the decapitation scene in The Omen (1976) and the transformation sequence in An American Werewolf in London (1981). The Alien Giger made several conceptual paintings of the adult Alien before crafting the final version. He sculpted the creature's body using plasticine, incorporating pieces such as vertebrae from snakes and cooling tubes from a Rolls-Royce. The creature's head was manufactured separately by Carlo Rambaldi, who had worked on the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Rambaldi followed Giger's designs closely, making some modifications in order to incorporate the moving parts which would animate the jaw and inner mouth. A system of hinges and cables was used to operate the creature's rigid tongue, which protruded from the main mouth and had a second mouth at the tip of it with its own set of movable teeth. The final head had about nine hundred moving parts and points of articulation. Part of a human skull was used as the "face", and was hidden under the smooth, translucent cover of the head. Rambaldi's original Alien jaw is now on display in the Smithsonian Institution, while in April 2007 the original Alien suit was sold at auction. Copious amounts of K-Y Jelly were used to simulate saliva and to give the Alien an overall slimy appearance. The creature's vocalizations were provided by Percy Edwards, a voice artist famous for providing bird sounds for British television throughout the 1960s and 1970s as well as the whale sounds for Orca: Killer Whale (1977). For most of the film's scenes the Alien was portrayed by Bolaji Badejo, a Nigerian design student. A latex costume was specifically made to fit Badejo's 7-foot-2-inch (218 cm) slender frame, made by taking a full-body plaster cast of him. Scott later commented that "It's a man in a suit, but then it would be, wouldn't it? It takes on elements of the host – in this case, a man." Badejo attended tai chi and mime classes in order to create convincing movements for the Alien. For some scenes, such as when the Alien lowers itself from the ceiling to kill Brett, the creature was portrayed by stuntmen Eddie Powell and Roy Scammell; in that scene a costumed Powell was suspended on wires and then lowered in an unfurling motion. I've never liked horror films before, because in the end it's always been a man in a rubber suit. Well, there's one way to deal with that. The most important thing in a film of this type is not what you see, but the effect of what you think you saw. –Ridley Scott Scott chose not to show the Alien in full through most of the film, showing only pieces of it while keeping most of its body in shadow in order to heighten the sense of terror and suspense. The audience could thus project their own fears into imagining what the rest of the creature might look like: "Every movement is going to be very slow, very graceful, and the Alien will alter shape so you never really know exactly what he looks like." The Alien has been referred to as "one of the most iconic movie monsters in film history" in the decades since the film's release, being noted for its biomechanical appearance and sexual overtones. Roger Ebert has remarked that "Alien uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh throughout the movie: It evolves the nature and appearance of the creature, so we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do...The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from the chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its 'open, dripping vaginal mouth.'" Ash For the scene in which Ash is revealed to be an android and has his head knocked off, a puppet was created of the character's torso and upper body which was operated from underneath by a small puppeteer. During a preview screening of the film this scene caused a female usher to faint. In the following scene Ash's head is placed on a table and re-activated; for portions of this scene an animatronic head was made using a face cast of actor Ian Holm. However the latex of the head shrank while drying and the result was not entirely convincing. For the bulk of the scene Holm knelt under the table with his head coming up through a hole and milk, caviar, pasta, and glass marbles were used to show the android's inner workings and fluids. Music The musical score for Alien was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, conducted by Lionel Newman, and performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra. Ridley Scott had originally wanted the film to be scored by Isao Tomita, but 20th Century Fox wanted a more familiar composer and Goldsmith was recommended by then-President of Fox Alan Ladd, Jr. Goldsmith wanted to create a sense of romanticism and lyrical mystery in the film's opening scenes, which would build throughout the film to suspense and fear. Scott did not like Goldsmith's original main title piece, however, so Goldsmith rewrote it as "the obvious thing: weird and strange, and which everybody loved." Another source of tension was editor Terry Rawlings' choice to use pieces of Goldsmith's music from previous films, including a piece from Freud: The Secret Passion, and to use the andante from Howard Hanson's Symphony No.2 ("Romantic") for the end credits. Scott and Rawlings had also become attached to several of the musical cues they had used for the temporary score while editing the film, and re-edited some of Goldsmith's cues and re-scored several sequences to match these cues and even left the temporary score in place in some parts of the finished film. Goldsmith later remarked that "you can see that I was sort of like going at opposite ends of the pole with the filmmakers of the picture." Nevertheless, Scott praised Goldsmith's score as "full of dark beauty" and "seriously threatening, but beautiful." It was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, a Grammy Award for Best Soundtrack Album, and a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music. The score has been released as a soundtrack album in several versions with different tracks and sequences. Editing Editing and post-production work on Alien took roughly twenty weeks to complete. Terry Rawlings served as Editor, having previously worked with Scott on editing sound for The Duellists. Scott and Rawlings edited much of the film to have a slow pace in order to build suspense for the more tense and frightening moments. According to Rawlings: "I think the way we did get it right was by keeping it slow, funny enough, which is completely different from what they do today. And I think the slowness of it made the moments that you wanted people to be sort of scared...then we could go as fast as we liked because you've sucked people into a corner and then attacked them, so to speak. And I think that's how it worked." The first cut of the film was over three hours long; further editing trimmed the final version to just under two hours. One scene that was cut from the film occurred during Ripley's final escape from the Nostromo: she encounters Dallas and Brett who have been partially cocooned by the Alien. O'Bannon had intended the scene to indicate that Brett was becoming an Alien egg while Dallas was held nearby to be implanted by the resulting facehugger. Production Designer Michael Seymour later suggested that Dallas had "become sort of food for the alien creature", while Ivor Powell suggested that "Dallas is found in the ship as an egg, still alive." Scott remarked that "they're morphing, metamorphosing, they are changing into...being consumed, I guess, by whatever the Alien's organism is...into an egg." The scene was cut partly because it did not look realistic enough and partly because it slowed the pace of the escape sequence. Tom Skerritt remarked that "The picture had to have that pace. Her trying to get the hell out of there, we're all rooting for her to get out of there, and for her to slow up and have a conversation with Dallas was not appropriate." The footage was included amongst other deleted scenes as a special feature on the Laserdisc release of Alien, and a shortened version of it was re-inserted into the 2003 "Director's Cut" which was re-released in theaters and on DVD. Release and reception It was the most incredible preview I've ever been in. I mean, people were screaming and running out of the theater. –Editor Terry Rawlings describing the film's screening in Dallas. An initial screening of Alien for 20th Century Fox representatives in St. Louis suffered from poor sound in the theater. A subsequent screening in a newer theater in Dallas went significantly better, eliciting genuine fright from the audience. Two theatrical trailers were shown to the public. The first consisted of rapidly-changing still images set to some of Jerry Goldsmith's electronic music from Logan's Run. The second used test footage of a hen's egg set to part of Goldsmith's Alien score. The film was previewed in various American cities in the spring of 1979 and was promoted by the tagline "In space no one can hear you scream." Alien opened in theaters on May 25, 1979. It was rated "R" in the United States, "X" in the United Kingdom, and "M" in Australia. The film had no official premier in the United States, yet moviegoers lined up for blocks to see it at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood where a number of models, sets, and props were displayed outside to promote it during its first run. Religious zealots set fire to the model of the space jockey, believing it to be the work of the devil. Alien did have a formal premiere in the United Kingdom at the Odeon Leicester Square on September 6, 1979, but it did not open widely in Britain until January 13, 1980. Critical reaction to the film was initially mixed. Some critics who were not usually favorable towards science fiction, such as Barry Norman of the BBC's Film series, were positive about the film's merits. Others, however, were not: Reviews by Variety, Sight and Sound, Vincent Canby and Leonard Maltin were mixed or negative. A review by Time Out said the film was an "empty bag of tricks whose production values and expensive trickery cannot disguise imaginative poverty". The film was a commercial success, making $78,900,000 in the United States and £7,886,000 in the United Kingdom during its first run. It ultimately grossed $80,931,801 in the United States and $24,000,000 internationally, bringing its total worldwide gross to $104,931,801. Accolades Alien won the 1979 Academy Award for Visual Effects and was also nominated for Best Art Direction (for Michael Seymour, Leslie Dilley, Roger Christian, and Ian Whittaker). It won Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction for Ridley Scott, and Best Supporting Actress for Veronica Cartwright, and was also nominated in the categories of Best Actress for Sigourney Weaver, Best Make-up for Pat Hay, Best Special Effects for Brian Johnson and Nick Allder, and Best Writing for Dan O'Bannon. It was also nominated for British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards for Best Costume Design for John Mollo, Best Editing for Terry Rawlings, Best Supporting Actor for John Hurt, and Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Role for Sigourney Weaver. It also won a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and was nominated for a British Society of Cinematographers award for Best Cinematography for Derek Vanlint, as well as a Silver Seashell award for Best Cinematography and Special Effects at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. Jerry Goldsmith's score received nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, the Grammy Award for Best Soundtrack Album, and a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music. Merchandising Around and shortly after Alien's release in theaters, a number of merchandise items and media were released and sold to coincide with the film. These included a novelization by Alan Dean Foster, in both adult and "junior" versions, which was adapted from the film's shooting script. Heavy Metal magazine published a comic strip adaptation of the film entitled Alien: The Illustrated Story, as well as a 1980 Alien calendar. Two behind-the-scenes books were released in 1979 to accompany the film: The Book of Alien contained many production photographs and details on the making of the film, while Giger's Alien contained much of H.R. Giger's concept artwork for the movie. A soundtrack album was released as an LP featuring selections of Goldsmith's score, and a single of the main theme was released in 1980. A twelve-inch tall model kit of the Alien was released by the Model Products Corporation in the United States and by Airfix in the United Kingdom. Kenner also produced a larger-scale Alien action figure, as well as a board game in which players raced to be first to reach the shuttle pod while Aliens roamed the Nostromo's corridors and air shafts. Official Halloween costumes of the Alien were released for October 1979. Several computer games based on the film were released, but not until several years after its theatrical run. Sequels Sigourney Weaver became the star of the Alien films, reprising her role as Ripley in three sequels between 1986 and 1997. She did not appear in either of the Alien vs. Predator crossovers of the 2000s, but has expressed interest in doing a fifth Alien film. The success of Alien led 20th Century Fox to finance three direct sequels over the next eighteen years, each by different writers and directors. Sigourney Weaver remained the only recurring actor through all four films, and the story of her character Ripley's encounters with the Aliens became the thematic thread running through the series. James Cameron's Aliens (1986) focused more on action and involved Ripley returning to the planetoid accompanied by marines to confront hordes of Aliens. David Fincher's Alien 3 (1992) had nihilistic tones and found her on a prison planet battling another Alien, ultimately sacrificing herself to prevent her employers from acquiring the creatures. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Alien Resurrection (1997) saw Ripley resurrected through cloning to battle more Aliens even further in the future. The success of the film series resulted in the creation of a media franchise with numerous novels, comic books, video games, toys, and other media and merchandise appearing over the years. A number of these began appearing under the Alien vs. Predator crossover imprint, which brought the Alien creatures together with the titular Predators of the Predator franchise. The film series eventually followed suit, with Paul W. S. Anderson's Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Colin and Greg Strause's Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) abandoning the Ripley character in favor of prequel stories set in the 2000s. Despite not appearing in either prequel, Sigourney Weaver has expressed interest in reuniting with Ridley Scott to revive her character for another Alien film. In the 2003 commentary track for the Alien DVD included in the Alien Quadrilogy set, she and Scott both speculated on the possibility, with Weaver stating: "There is an appetite for a fifth one, which is something I never expected...it's really hard to come up with a fifth story that's new and fresh...but I have wanted to go back into space...I think outer space adventure is a good thing for us right now, 'cause Earth is so grim...so we've been talking about it, but very generally." Scott remarked that, if the series were to continue, the most logical course would be to explore the origins of the space jockey and the Aliens. Weaver supported this idea, stating that "I think it would be great to go back, because I'm asked that question so many times: 'Where did the Alien come from?' People really want to know in a very visceral way." David Giler stated that he, Walter Hill, and Gordon Carroll, the producers of the first five films in the series, would not be willing to produce another unless it was about the Aliens' homeworld and Weaver was on board (although Hill did return to produce Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem). Weaver, in turn, indicated that she would only return to the franchise if either Scott or James Cameron were directing. Cameron had been working on a story for a fifth Alien film which would explore the origins of the creatures, but ceased work on it when he learned that Fox was pursuing Alien vs. Predator, which he felt would "kill the validity of the franchise". Weaver has continued to express interest in another installment, stating in 2008 that "I would definitely do another if I had a director like Ridley Scott and we had a good idea. Ridley is enthusiastic about it." In July 2009 20th Century Fox announced that Jon Spaihts had been hired to write a prequel to Alien, with Scott attached to direct. Home video releases Alien has been released in many home video formats and packages over the years. The first of these was a seventeen-minute Super-8 version for home projectionists. It was also released on both VHS and Betamax for rental, which grossed it an additional $40,300,000 in the United States alone. Several VHS releases were subsequently sold both singly and as boxed sets. Laserdisc and Videodisc versions followed, including deleted scenes and director commentary as bonus features. A VHS box set containing Alien and the sequels Aliens and Alien 3 was released in facehugger-shaped boxes, including some of the deleted scenes from the Laserdisc editions. When Alien Resurrection premiered in theaters, another set of the first three films was released including a Making of Alien Resurrection tape. A few months later the set was re-released with the full version of Alien Resurrection taking the place of the making-of video. Alien was released on DVD in 1999, both singly and packaged with Aliens and Alien 3 as The Alien Legacy. This set was also released in a VHS version and included a commentary track by Ridley Scott. The first three films of the series have also been packaged as the Alien Triple Pack. 2003 Director's Cut The traditional definition of the term "Director's Cut" suggests the restoration of a director's original vision, free of any creative limitations. It suggests that the filmmaker has finally overcome the interference of heavy-handed studio executives, and that the film has been restored to its original, untampered form. Such is not the case with Alien: The Director's Cut. It's a completely different beast. –Ridley Scott In 2003 20th Century Fox was preparing the Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set, which would include Alien and its three sequels. In addition, the set would also include alternate versions of all four films in the form of "special editions" and "director's cuts". Fox approached Ridley Scott to digitally restore and remaster Alien, and to restore several scenes which had been cut during the editing process for inclusion in an expanded version of the film. Upon viewing the expanded version, Scott felt that it was too long and chose to recut it into a more streamlined alternate version: Upon viewing the proposed expanded version of the film, I felt that the cut was simply too long and the pacing completely thrown off. After all, I cut those scenes out for a reason back in 1979. However, in the interest of giving the fans a new experience with Alien, I figured there had to be an appropriate middle ground. I chose to go in and recut that proposed long version into a more streamlined and polished alternate version of the film. For marketing purposes, this version is being called "The Director's Cut." The "Director's Cut" restored roughly four minutes of deleted footage while cutting about five minutes of other material, leaving it about a minute shorter than the theatrical cut. Many of the changes were minor, such as altered sound effects, while the restored footage included the scene in which Ripley discovers the cocooned Dallas and Brett during her escape of the Nostromo. Fox decided to release the Director's Cut in theaters, and it premiered on October 31, 2003. The Alien Quadrilogy box set was released December 2, 2003, with both versions of the film included along with a new commentary track featuring many of the film's actors, writers, and production staff, as well as other special features and a documentary entitled The Beast Within: The Making of Alien. Each film was also released separately as a DVD with both versions of the film included. Scott noted that he was very pleased with the original theatrical cut of Alien, saying that "For all intents and purposes, I felt that the original cut of Alien was perfect. I still feel that way", and that the original 1979 theatrical version "remains my version of choice". He has since stated that he considers both versions "director's cuts", as he feels that the 1979 version was the best he could possibly have made it at the time. The Alien Quadrilogy set earned Alien a number of new awards and nominations. It won DVDX Exclusive Awards for Best Audio Commentary and Best Overall DVD, Classic Movie, and was also nominated for Best Behind-the-Scenes Program and Best Menu Design. It also won a Sierra Award for Best DVD, and was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best DVD Collection and Golden Satellite Awards for Best DVD Extras and Best Overall DVD. Impact and analysis Imitations The 1979 Alien is a much more cerebral movie than its sequels, with the characters (and the audience) genuinely engaged in curiosity about this weirdest of lifeforms...Unfortunately, the films it influenced studied its thrills but not its thinking. –Film critic Roger Ebert on Alien's cinematic impact. Alien had both an immediate and long-term impact on the science fiction and horror genres. Shortly after its debut, Dan O'Bannon was sued by another writer named Jack Hammer for allegedly plagiarising a script entitled Black Space. However, O'Bannon was able to prove that he had written his Alien script first. In the wake of Alien's success a number of other filmmakers imitated or adapted some of its elements, sometimes by copying its title. One of the first was The Alien Dead (1979), which was titled at the last minute to cash in on Alien's popularity. Contamination (1980) was initially going to be titled Alien 2 until 20th Century Fox's lawyers contacted writer/director Luigi Cozzi and made him change it, and it built on press coverage of Alien's chestburster scene by having many similar creatures, which originated from large, slimy eggs, bursting from characters' chests. An unauthorized Italian sequel to Alien, titled Alien 2, was released in 1980 and included alien creatures which incubate inside human hosts. Other science fiction films of the time that exploited elements of Alien included Inseminoid (1981) and Xtro (1982). Antecedents In the decades since its original release critics have analyzed and acknowledged Alien's roots in earlier works of fiction. It has been noted as sharing thematic similarities with earlier science fiction films such as The Thing from Another World (1951) and It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), as well as a kinship with other 1970s horror films such as Jaws (1975) and Halloween (1978). Literary connections have also been suggested, including thematic comparisons to And Then There Were None (1939). Many critics have also suggested that the film derives in part from A. E. van Vogt's The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950), particularly the stories The Black Destroyer, in which a cat-like alien infiltrates the ship and hunts the crew, and Discord in Scarlet, in which an alien implants parasitic eggs inside crew members which then hatch and eat their way out.[86] O'Bannon, however, denies that this was a source of his inspiration for Alien's story. Van Vogt actually initiated a lawsuit against 20th Century Fox over the similarities, but Fox settled out of court. Writer David McIntee has also noted similarities to the Doctor Who episode "The Ark in Space" (1975), in which an insectoid queen alien lays larvae inside humans which later eat their way out, a life cycle inspired by that of the ichneumons wasp. He has also noted similarities between the first half of the film, particularly in early versions of the script, to H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, "not in storyline, but in dread-building mystery", and calls the finished film "the best Lovecraftian movie ever made, without being a Lovecraft adaptation", due to its similarities in tone and atmosphere to Lovecraft's works. Lasting critical praise Alien has continued to receive critical praise over the years, particularly for its realism and unique environment. It has a 97% approval rating at the online review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 71 reviews, while Metacritic gives the Director's Cut an 83% approval rating based on 22 reviews. Critical interest in the film was re-ignited in part by the theatrical release of the "Director's Cut" in 2003. In his "Great Movies" column that year, critic Roger Ebert ranked it among "the most influential of modern action pictures", praising its pacing, atmosphere, and settings: One of the great strengths of Alien is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew's discovery by building up to it with small steps: The interception of a signal (is it a warning or an SOS?). The descent to the extraterrestrial surface. The b****ing by Brett and Parker, who are concerned only about collecting their shares. The masterstroke of the surface murk through which the crew members move, their helmet lights hardly penetrating the soup. The shadowy outline of the alien ship. The sight of the alien pilot, frozen in his command chair. The enormity of the discovery inside the ship ("It's full of ... leathery eggs ..."). McIntee praises Alien as "possibly the definitive combination of horror thriller with [science fiction] trappings." He notes, however, that it is a horror film first and a science fiction film second, since science fiction normally explores issues of how humanity will develop under other circumstances. Alien, on the other hand, focuses on the plight of people being attacked by a monster: "It's set on a spaceship in the future, but it's about people trying not to get eaten by a drooling monstrous animal. Worse, it's about them trying not to get raped by said drooling monstrous animal." Along with Halloween and Friday the 13th (1980), he describes it as a prototype for the slasher film genre: "The reason it's such a good movie, and wowed both the critics, who normally frown on the genre, and the casual cinema-goer, is that it is a distillation of everything that scares us in the movies." He also describes how the film appeals to a variety of audiences: "Fans of Hitchcockian thrillers like it because it's moody and dark. Gorehounds like it for the chest-burster. [science fiction] fans love the hard [science fiction] trappings and hardware. Men love the battle-for-survival element, and women love not being cast as the helpless victim." Almost every horror film since Alien has ripped it off in some way, but most of the imitations have focused on details — a slimy killing-machine monster that is both vaginal and penile; the dripping, cavernous interiors of the Nostromo; those immensely influential H.R. Giger "biomechanical" designs — and missed what you might call the overall Zeitgeist of the film. –Salon.com critic Andrew O'Hehir Salon.com critic Andrew O'Hehir notes that Alien "has a profoundly existentialist undertow that makes it feel like a film noir" and praises it over its "increasingly baroque" sequels as "a film about human loneliness amid the emptiness and amorality of creation. It's a cynical '70s-leftist vision of the future in which none of the problems plaguing 20th century Earth—class divisions, capitalist exploitation, the subjugation of humanity to technology—have been improved in the slightest by mankind's forays into outer space." In 2002, Alien was deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the National Film Preservation Board of the United States, and was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for historical preservation alongside other films of 1979 including All That Jazz, Apocalypse Now, The Black Stallion, and Manhattan. In 2008 the American Film Institute ranked Alien as the seventh-best film in the science fiction genre as part of AFI's 10 Top 10, a CBS television special ranking the ten greatest movies in ten classic American film genres. The ranks were based on a poll of over 1,500 film artists, critics, and historians, with Alien ranking just above Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and just below Ridley Scott's other science fiction film Blade Runner (1982). Sexual imagery Critics have also analyzed Alien's sexual overtones. Adrian Mackinder compares the facehugger's attack on Kane to a male rape and the chestburster scene to a form of violent birth, noting that the Alien's phallic head and method of killing the crew members add to the sexual imagery. Dan O'Bannon has argued that the scene is a metaphor for the male fear of penetration, and that the "oral invasion" of Kane by the facehugger functions as "payback" for the many horror films in which sexually vulnerable women are attacked by male monsters. McIntee claims that "Alien is a rape movie as much as Straw Dogs (1971) or I Spit on Your Grave (1978), or The Accused (1988). On one level it's about an intriguing alien threat. On one level it's about parasitism and disease. And on the level that was most important to the writers and director, it's about sex, and reproduction by non-consensual means. And it's about this happening to a man." He notes how the film plays on men's fear and misunderstanding of pregnancy and childbirth, while also giving women a glimpse into these fears. Film analyst Lina Badley has written that the Alien's design, with strong Freudian sexual undertones, multiple phallic symbols, and overall feminine figure, provides an androgynous image conforming to archetypal mappings and imageries in horror films that often redraw gender lines.

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 02:03 AM) Ouch, luckily I didn't have anywhere specific to go today or tomorrow, but it did happen right after I volunteered to take my car down to South Padre Island for Spring Break. You were prepared to drive a car made in 1996 over 1600 miles in 2 days?

Are you staying for the game?

I'm amazed at Nick Johnson's ability to...get on the DL so often. Pass.

9. 28 Days Later (2002) (8 of 20 lists - 132 points - highest rank #3 Milkman delivers) 28 Days Later is a 2002 British horror film directed by Danny Boyle. The screenplay was written by Alex Garland, and the film stars Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Megan Burns, and Christopher Eccleston. The plot depicts the breakdown of society following the accidental release of a highly contagious "rage" virus and focuses upon the struggle of four survivors to cope with the ruination of the life they once knew. A critical and commercial success, the film is widely recognised for images of a deserted London, and was shot almost entirely on digital video. The film spawned a 2007 sequel, 28 Weeks Later, a graphic novel entitled 28 Days Later: The Aftermath, which expands on the timeline of the outbreak, and a 2009 comic book series 28 Days Later. Plot British animal rights activists break into a laboratory and are caught by a scientist while trying to free some chimpanzees being used for medical research. Despite the scientist's warnings that the chimps are infected with a disease (which he calls "Rage"), the activists let loose a chimp, which immediately attacks and infects the group. 28 days later, a bicycle courier named Jim awakens from a coma in a deserted hospital. As he leaves, he discovers London abandoned and rife with signs of catastrophe. Jim is soon discovered and chased through the streets by infected people before being rescued by two survivors, Selena and Mark, who rush him to their hideout. There they reveal that while Jim was comatose from his accident, a virus spread uncontrollably among the populace, turning most people into rabid, psychotic "Infected," resulting in societal collapse that possibly spread worldwide. Selena and Mark accompany Jim to his parents' house the next morning, where he discovers that they committed suicide. That night, two of the Infected attack the survivors, and when the fight ends Selena is forced to kill Mark after he reveals he had been cut and possibly exposed; she explains that the infection is spread through the blood and overwhelms its victims in seconds. After leaving, they discover two more survivors, Frank and his teenage daughter, Hannah, holed up in a block of flats, and are invited to spend the rest of the night. Frank informs them the next day that supplies, particularly water, are dwindling, and plays them a pre-recorded radio broadcast transmitted by soldiers at a blockade near Manchester, who claim to have "the answer to infection." The survivors board Frank's cab in search of the signal source and during the trip bond with one another. When the four reach the deserted blockade, Frank is infected when a drop of blood from a dead body falls into his eye. Before succumbing he is killed by the arriving soldiers, who then take the remaining group to a fortified mansion under the command of Major Henry West. Jim quickly discovers that West's "answer to infection" involves waiting for the Infected to starve to death, and forcing female survivors into sexual slavery to rebuild the population. Jim attempts to escape with Selena and Hannah, but is captured by the soldiers, along with Sergeant Farrell, who disagrees with the Major's plan. During their imprisonment, Farrell theorizes to Jim that there is no worldwide epidemic, but rather that the island of Great Britain has been quarantined. The next day, as two soldiers lead Jim and Farrell to execution, Selena and Hannah are being prepared for rape. Jim manages to escape while his escorts quarrel after killing Farrell, and notices the contrail of a jet aircraft flying high overhead, proving Farrell's theory. After luring West and one of his men to the blockade, Jim runs back to the soldiers' headquarters where he unleashes Mailer, an infected soldier that West kept chained outside for observation. Mailer attacks the soldiers in the mansion, while Jim sets out to rescue the girls, who had been split up in the chaos. Selena, held hostage by a surviving soldier, is then rescued by Jim, who arrives and savagely kills her captor. The two share a kiss, reunite with Hannah, and run to Frank's cab, only to encounter a vengeful West, who shoots Jim in the stomach. Hannah commandeers the cab and backs it up to the front door, where Mailer drags West out through the rear window and kills him. She then drives away with Jim and Selena. Selena and Hannah rush Jim into a deserted hospital, where Selena performs life-saving emergency procedures. 28 days later, Jim is shown waking up in recovery again, this time at a remote cottage. Downstairs, he finds Selena sewing large swaths of fabric when Hannah appears. The three rush outside and unfurl a huge cloth banner, adding the final letter to the word "HELLO" laid out on the meadow. As a military jet flies over the landscape, the Infected are shown lying by the road, dying of starvation. After the jet zooms past the three waving survivors and their distress sign, Selena jokingly wonders if the plane saw them this time. Alternate endings The DVD extras include three alternate endings, all of which end with Jim dying. Two were filmed, while the third, a more radical departure, was only presented in storyboards. On 25 July 2003, cinemas started showing the alternate ending at the end of the film. Jim dies at the hospital In this ending, after Jim is shot, Selena and Hannah still rush him to the deserted hospital, but the scene is extended. Selena, with Hannah's assistance, attempts to perform life-saving procedures but cannot revive Jim. Selena is heartbroken, and Hannah, distraught, looks to her for guidance. Selena tells Hannah that they will go on; they pick up their guns and walk away from Jim's lifeless body. Selena and Hannah, fully armed, walk through the operating room doors, which gradually stop swinging. On the DVD commentary, Boyle and Garland explain that this was the original ending of the film's first cut, which was tested with preview audiences. It was rejected for seeming too bleak; the final exit from the hospital was intended to imply Selena and Hannah's survival, whereas test audiences felt that the women were marching off to certain death. Boyle and Garland express a preference for this alternate ending, calling it the "true ending". They comment that this ending brought Jim full circle, as he starts and finishes the story in bed in a deserted hospital. This ending was added in the theatrical release of the film beginning on 25 July 2003, placed after the credits and prefaced with the words "what if..." Rescue coda without Jim This ending, for which only a rough edit was completed, is an alternate version of the potential rescue sequence shown at the very end of the released film. Here, the scenes are identical, except that this ending was intended to be placed after the first alternative ending where Jim dies, so he is absent. When Selena is sewing one of the banner letters in the cottage, she is seen facetiously talking to a chicken instead of Jim. Only Selena and Hannah are seen waving to the jet flying overhead in the final shots. "Radical Alternative Ending" The "Radical Alternative Ending" was not filmed and is presented on the DVD as a series of illustrated storyboards with voiceovers by Boyle and Garland. This ending would have taken the story in a radically different direction from the film's midpoint. When Frank is infected at the military blockade near Manchester, the soldiers do not enter the story. Instead, Jim, Selena and Hannah are somehow able to restrain the infected Frank, hoping they will find a cure for the virus nearby as suggested in the radio broadcast. They soon discover that the blockade had protected a large medical research complex, the same one featured in the first scene of the film where the virus was developed. Inside, the party is relieved to find a scientist self-barricaded inside a room with food and water. He will not open the door because he fears they will take his food, although he does admit that the "answer to infection is here." Unfortunately, he refuses to talk further because he does not want to make an emotional attachment to people who will soon be dead. After hours of failed attempts to break through the door or coax the man out, Jim eventually brings Hannah to the door and explains Frank's situation. The scientist reluctantly tells them that Frank can only be cured with a complete blood transfusion, and supplies them with the necessary equipment. After learning that he is the only match with Frank's blood type, Jim sacrifices himself so that Frank can survive with his daughter. Just as his journey began, Jim is left alone in the abandoned medical facility, and Selena, Hannah and Frank move into the room with the scientist as a horde of the infected breach the complex. The computer monitors show death and destruction come to life around a thrashing, infected Jim, who is strapped to the same table as the chimp had been in the opening scene. Garland and Boyle explain that they conceived this ending to see what the film would be like if they did not expand the focus beyond the core four survivors. They decided against it because the idea of a total blood replacement as a cure was not credible. As Boyle said in the DVD commentary, it "didn't make much sense" since the film had already established that one drop of blood can infect a person. "What would we do? Drain him of blood and scrub his veins with bleach?" "Hospital Dream" The "Hospital Dream" ending is an extended version of the theatrical alternate ending where Jim dies at the hospital. It is revealed by the director during the optional commentary that this was the full version of the original ending. Jim dreams while unconscious and remembers the final moments on his bicycle before the crash. The footage cuts back and forth between the scene with Selena and Hannah trying to save his life and the dream sequence. As he gets hit by a car in his flashback, he simultaneously dies on the operating table. This ending was not seen until the film's release on Blu-ray. Cast * Cillian Murphy as Jim * Naomie Harris as Selena * Megan Burns as Hannah * Christopher Eccleston as Major Henry West * Brendan Gleeson as Frank * Noah Huntley as Mark * Stuart McQuarrie as Sergeant Farrell * Ricci Harnett as Corporal Mitchell * Luke Mably as Private Clifton * Leo Bill as Private Jones * Junior Laniyan as Private Bell * Ray Panthaki as Private Bedford * Sanjay Rambaruth as Private Davis On the DVD, Boyle explains that, with the aim of preserving the suspension of disbelief, relatively unknown actors were cast in the film. Cillian Murphy had starred primarily in small independent films, while Naomie Harris had acted on British television as a child. However, Christopher Eccleston and Brendan Gleeson were well-known character actors. Production 28 Days Later features scenes set in normally bustling parts of London such as Westminster Bridge, Piccadilly Circus, Horse Guards Parade, and Oxford Street. In order to depict these locations as desolate, the film crew closed off sections of street for minutes at a time, usually in early morning to minimize disruption. Portions of the film were shot on a Canon XL1 digital video camera. DV cameras are much smaller and more maneuverable than traditional film cameras, which would have been impractical on such brief shoots. The scenes of the M1 motorway completely devoid of traffic were also filmed within very limited time periods. A mobile police roadblock slowed traffic sufficiently to leave a long section of carriageway empty while the scene was filmed. The section depicted in the film was actually located at Milton Keynes, nowhere near Manchester. For the London scene where Jim walks by the overturned double-decker bus, the film crew placed the bus on its side and removed it when the shot was finished, all within 20 minutes. Much of the filming took place prior to the September 11 attacks, and in the audio commentary Boyle notes the parallel between the "missing persons" flyers seen at the beginning of the film and similar flyers posted in New York City in the wake of 9/11. Boyle adds that his crew probably would not have been granted permission to close off Whitehall for filming after the terrorist attacks in New York. The mansion used in the film was Trafalgar Park near Salisbury. Many rooms in the house, including the Cipriani-painted music room and the main hall, were filmed with minimal set decoration. The scenes occurring upstairs were actually filmed downstairs, as the mansion's owner resided upstairs. One month before the film was released in cinemas, various newspapers included a short panel comic book style promotion for the film, in which various scenes showed a chaotic London during those 27 days with people trying to escape the city en masse. The end scenes of the film where Jim, Selena and Hannah are living in a rural cottage were filmed around Ennerdale in Cumbria. This reflects the motorway road signage in the film which indicates the trio heading north towards the Lake District National Park. Style and inspiration On the DVD commentary, Boyle and Garland frequently call it a post apocalypse and horror film, commenting on scenes that were specific references to George A. Romero's Dead trilogy. However, during the initial marketing of the film Boyle did try to distance the film from such labels. Boyle identified John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids as Garland's original inspiration for the story. Reception 28 Days Later was a considerable success at the box office and became highly profitable on a budget of about £5 million. In the UK, it took in £6.1 million, while in the US it became a surprise hit, taking over $45 million despite a limited release at fewer than 1,500 screens across the country. The film garnered around $82.7 million worldwide. Critical views of the film were very positive. Based on 199 reviews collected by the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 89% of critics gave 28 Days Later a positive review. On Metacritic, it received a 73 (out of 100) based on 39 reviews. The Los Angeles Times described it as a "stylistic tour de force," and efilmcritic.com called it "raw, blistering and joyously uncompromising." Bravo awarded it the 100th spot on their "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments." In 2007, Stylus Magazine named it the second best zombie movie of all time. The film also ranked at number 456 in Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time. Bloody Disgusting ranked the film seventh in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article saying "Zombie movie? Political allegory? Humanist drama? 28 Days Later is all of those things and more – a genuine work of art by a director at the top of his game. What's so amazing about the film is the way it so expertly balances scenes of white-knuckled, hell-for-leather horror with moments of intimate beauty." Awards * Best Horror Film (U.S. Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films — Saturn Award) * Best British Film (Empire Award) * Danny Boyle (Grand Prize of European Fantasy Film in Silver) * Best Director — Danny Boyle (International Fantasy Film Award) * Best International Film — Danny Boyle (Narcisse Award) * Best Breakthrough Performance — Naomie Harris (Black Reel) * Best Cinematographer — Anthony Dod Mantle (European Film Award) Soundtrack and score The film's score was composed by John Murphy and was released in a score/song compilation in 2003. A heavily edited version of the song "East Hastings" by the post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor appears in the film, but the track is excluded from the soundtrack, because Boyle could only obtain the rights to use it in the film. 28 Days Later: The Soundtrack Album was released on 17 June 2003. It features most of John Murphy's original score and tracks from Brian Eno, Grandaddy, and Blue States. A modified version of the soundtrack 'In The House - In A Heartbeat' was used as the character Big Daddy's theme in the 2010 film Kick-Ass. A short version of the soundtrack 'In a Heartbeat' was used in the final scene of the first episode of the anime series Highschool of the Dead. Sequels A sequel, 28 Weeks Later, was released on 11 May 2007. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland took producing roles alongside Andrew Macdonald. The plot revolves around the arrival of American troops about seven months after the incidents in the original film, attempting to revitalise a nearly desolate Britain. The cast for this sequel includes Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Imogen Poots, Harold Perrineau, Catherine McCormack, and Idris Elba. In March 2007, Danny Boyle was interviewed by an Irish radio station, where he claimed to be interested in making a third film in the series, 28 Months Later. Comic books Fox Atomic Comics, in association with HarperCollins, has published a graphic novel bridging the time gap between 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, entitled 28 Days Later: The Aftermath, written by Steve Niles. 28 Days Later, a comic sequel also linking Days and Weeks and produced by Fox Atomic (until its demise) and Boom! Studios, begun production in 2009. The series focuses on Selena and answers questions about her in the film and her sequel whereabouts.