knightni

29. Jacob's Ladder (1990) (5 of 20 lists - 60 points - highest rank #5 daggins) Jacob's Ladder is a 1990 psychological thriller film directed by Adrian Lyne, based on a screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin. It stars Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Peña, Danny Aiello, and Jason Alexander; Macaulay Culkin appears in an uncredited performance. Plot Jacob Singer (Robbins) is a U.S. soldier deployed in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War. When the story begins, helicopters are passing overhead, carrying supplies for what seems to be preparations for a big Viet Cong offensive. Without any warning, Jacob's unit comes under heavy fire. The soldiers try to take cover but begin to exhibit strange behavior for no apparent reason. Jacob attempts to escape the unexplained insanity, only to be stabbed with a bayonet by an unseen person. The film then shifts back and forth from Vietnam to Jacob's memories (and hallucinations) of his son Gabe (Culkin, uncredited) and former wife Sarah (Kalember), and to his present (set in 1975 Brooklyn) relationship with a woman named Jezebel (Peña) in New York City. During this latter period, Jacob faces several threats to his life and has severe hallucinatory experiences. It is subsequently revealed that his son Gabe was hit by a car and killed before Jacob went to Vietnam. At a key moment, Jacob's friend and chiropractor, Louis (Aiello), cites the 14th century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart: Eckhart saw Hell too; he said: 'the only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you,' he said. 'They're freeing your soul. So, if you're frightened of dying and... you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth.' As the hallucinations become increasingly bizarre, one of his old army buddies contacts Jacob to tell him about his hallucinations and is killed in a car ignition explosion. At the funeral, his surviving platoon-mates confess to Jacob they too have been seeing horrible hallucinations. Jacob is then approached by a man named Michael Newman (Craven), who claims to have been a chemist working with the Army's chemical warfare division in Saigon, where he worked on creating a drug that would increase aggression. He says that tests of the drug (code-named "The Ladder" in reference to how it takes people straight to their primal urges) were first performed on monkeys and then on a group of enemy POWs, with gruesome results. Later, small doses of "The Ladder" were secretly given to Jacob's battalion via their C-rations. Instead of targeting the enemy, however, the men in Jacob's unit attacked each other indiscriminately. This revelation insinuates that Jacob was stabbed by one of his fellow soldiers. The last scenes of the movie has Jacob returning to the apartment building he once lived in with Sarah. He enters and begins looking through an old shoe box, containing his memories and the pain he’s been clinging to, things like his dog-tags, and a picture of Gabe. Jacob then is surprised to see Gabe at the foot of the stairwell. Gabe takes Jacob by the hand and together the two of them ascend the stairwell and disappear into a bright light. At the dénouement, we learn Jacob never made it out of Vietnam; his body is shown in an army triage tent with two surgeons just after he expired, with a now peaceful look on his face. Apparently, the entire series of events turns out to have been a dying hallucination. Before the film credits, an on-screen title card states that the U.S. Army allegedly experimented with a hallucinogenic drug called BZ, a claim denied by the Pentagon. Evaluation Antecedents The title of the film refers to the biblical story of Jacob's Ladder, or the dream of a meeting place between Heaven and Earth (Genesis 28:12). The earliest literary antecedent appears in Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, Chapter XI, in which a life happens in an instant (1337). This story was rewritten by Jorge Luis Borges in the short story "The Wizard Postponed" in his book A Universal History of Infamy (1935). A similar dying hallucination occurs in Borges' short story The Secret Miracle (1944). The film is also viewed by many, including the screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin, as a modern interpretation of Bardo Thodol (the Tibetan Book of the Dead). "The Ladder" Jacob is told that the horrific events he experienced on his final day in Vietnam were the product of an experimental drug called "The Ladder", which was used on troops without their knowledge. Jacob is told this by Michael Newman (Matt Craven), who is later seen treating his wounds in a Medevac helicopter. He is told that the drug was named for its ability to cause "a fast trip straight down the ladder, right to the primal fear, right to the base anger." Although the name "The Ladder" also has a metaphorical and religious significance beyond this, it is notable that the film begins in a subway station and ends on a stairway. At the end of the film, a message is displayed mentioning the testing of a drug named BZ, NATO code for a deliriant and hallucinogen known as 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate that was rumored to have been administered to U.S. troops by the government in a secret attempt to increase their fighting power. The effects of BZ, however, are different from the effects of the drug depicted in the film. Director Adrian Lyne himself noted that "nothing ... suggests that the drug BZ—a super-hallucinogen that has a tendency to elicit maniac behavior—was used on U.S. troops." Reception Reception of the film was quite polarizing at the time of release. According to aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, 73% of reviews of the film were positive reviews. The top critics were split evenly, with 50% giving it a positive review. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote in his review, "This movie was not a pleasant experience, but it was exhilarating in the sense that I was able to observe filmmakers working at the edge of their abilities and inspirations", giving it 3.5 stars out of 4. "Shaking head" effect The film's director Adrian Lyne used a famous body horror technique in which an actor is recorded waving his head around at a low frame rate, resulting in horrific fast motion when played back. In an interview Lyne said he was inspired by the art of Francis Bacon when developing the effect. This effect is one of the signature animation techniques developed by The Brothers Quay and used extensively in their short films, including Street of Crocodiles (1986), based on the short novel of the same name by the Polish author and artist Bruno Schulz.

30. Friday the 13th (1980) (5 of 20 lists - 55 points - highest rank #8 knightni) Friday the 13th is a 1980 American slasher film directed by Sean S. Cunningham and written by Victor Miller. The film stars Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby and Kevin Bacon in one of his earliest roles. The film concerns a group of teenagers who re-open an abandoned camp site years after a young boy drowned in a nearby lake. One by one, the teens fall victim to a mysterious killer. Friday the 13th, inspired by the success of John Carpenter's Halloween, was made on an estimated budget of $550,000. Released by Paramount Pictures in the United States, and Warner Bros. internationally, the film received mixed reviews from film critics, but grossed over $39.7 million at the box office in the United States, and went on to become one of the most profitable slasher films in cinema history. It was also the first movie of its kind to secure distribution in the USA by a major studio, Paramount Pictures. The film's box office success led to a long series of sequels, a crossover with Freddy Krueger and a series reboot released on February 13, 2009. Plot The film begins in 1957 as two summer camp counselors at Camp Crystal Lake, Barry (Willie Adams) and Claudette (Debra S. Hayes), sneak away from a campfire sing-along to have sex. Before they can completely undress, an unseen assailant sneaks into the room and murders them both. The film then moves forward to Friday, June 13, 1979. A young woman named Annie (Robbi Morgan) enters a small diner and asks for directions to Camp Crystal Lake, much to the shock of the restaurant's patrons and staff. Enos (Rex Everhart), a truck driver from the diner, agrees to give her a lift halfway to the camp. A strange old man named Ralph (Walt Gorney) reacts to the news of the camp's reopening by warning Annie that they are all doomed. During the drive, Enos warns her about the camp, informing her that a young boy drowned in Crystal Lake in 1957, one year before the double murders occurred, followed by several fires and poisoned water. After Enos lets her out, Annie hitches another ride in a Jeep. The second driver, whose face is never seen, murders Annie by slashing her throat with a large hunting knife after her futile efforts to escape. At the camp, the other counselors, Ned (Mark Nelson), Jack (Kevin Bacon), Bill (Harry Crosby), Marcie (Jeannine Taylor), Brenda (Laurie Bartram), Alice (Adrienne King) and the camp's owner, Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer), are refurbishing the cabins and facilities. As a violent storm closes in on the horizon, Steve leaves the campgrounds to get more supplies. The unidentified killer begins to isolate and murder the counselors. First Ned, who is lead into a cabin and is killed by slashing his throat (off-screen), then Jack who is impaled from underneath his bed by an arrow, followed by Marcie, whose face is slashed with an axe. Meanwhile, Alice, Brenda and Bill are playing strip Monopoly in the main cabin. Brenda soon leaves and goes to her cabin to bed. While in bed reading a book, she hears a childlike voice outside crying "Help me" several times. As she goes out to investigate, the lights at the archery range suddenly turn on and Brenda is murdered off-screen. Alice informs Bill that she thinks she heard Brenda screaming and that she saw the lights turn on at the archery range. Alice and Bill leave the cabin to investigate and find a bloody axe in Brenda's bed. Attempting to phone the police, they discover the phones are dead and, when they try to leave, the car won't start. Later that evening, Steve returns from town and is also murdered, apparently familiar with his off-screen attacker. Back at camp, when the lights go out, Bill goes to check on the power generator. Alice heads out looking for Bill when he doesn't return. She finds his body pinned to a door by several arrows and the throat slashed. Now alone, Alice flees back to the main cabin and hides. After a few moments of silence, Brenda's corpse is hurled through the window. Alice hears a vehicle outside the cabin and, thinking it to be Steve, runs out to warn him. Instead, she finds a middle-aged woman who introduces herself as Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), stating that she is an "old friend of the Christys". Alice hysterically tries to tell her about the murders. Mrs. Voorhees expresses horror at the sight of Brenda's body, but she soon reveals herself to be the mother of the boy who drowned in the lake in 1957, and that today is his birthday. Talking mostly to herself, she blames her son Jason's drowning on the fact that two counselors were having sex and were unaware of Jason struggling in the lake. Mrs. Voorhees suddenly turns violent and pulls out a knife, rushing at Alice. A lengthy chase ensues, during which Alice flees her attacker and finds Steve and Annie's bodies in the process. Alice and Mrs. Voorhees have multiple confrontations, each time with Alice believing she has finally beaten Mrs. Voorhees. During their final fight, Alice manages to decapitate Mrs. Voorhees with her own machete. Afterward, Alice boards a canoe and floats to the middle of the lake. As the sun rises, the decomposing corpse of Mrs. Voorhees' son, Jason (Ari Lehman), attacks Alice, just as the police arrive. As she is dragged under water, Alice awakens from the nightmare in a hospital, where Sergeant Tierney (Ron Carroll) tells her that they pulled her out of the lake. Alice is informed that everyone is dead; when she asks about Jason, Tierney informs her they never found any boy, which leaves her with the impression that he is still there. Production Development Friday the 13th did not even have a completed script when Sean S. Cunningham took out this ad in Variety magazine Friday the 13th was produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham, who had previously worked with filmmaker Wes Craven on the film The Last House on the Left. Cunningham, inspired by John Carpenter's Halloween, and films by Mario Bava, wanted Friday the 13th to be shocking, visually stunning, and "[make] you jump out of your seat." Wanting to distance himself from The Last House on the Left, Cunningham wanted Friday the 13th to be more of a "roller-coaster ride". This film was intended to be "a real scary movie" and at the same time make the audience laugh. Friday the 13th began its life as nothing more than a title. Initially, "Long Night at Camp Blood" was the working title during the writing process, but Cunningham believed in his "Friday the 13th" moniker, and quickly rushed out to place an ad in Variety. Worried that someone else owned the rights to the title and wanting to avoid potential lawsuits, Cunningham thought it would be best to find out immediately. He commissioned a New York advertising agency to develop his concept of the Friday the 13th logo, which consisted of big block letters bursting through a pane of glass. In the end, Cunningham believed there were "no problems" with the title, but distributor George Mansour stated, "There was a movie before ours called Friday the 13th: The Orphan. Moderately successful. But someone still threatened to sue. I don't know whether Phil [scuderi] paid them off, but it was finally resolved." The film was shot in and around the townships of Blairstown and Hope, New Jersey in the fall (September) of 1979. The camp scenes were shot on a working Boy Scout camp, Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco. Writing The script was written by Victor Miller, who has gone on to write for several television soap operas, including Guiding Light, One Life to Live and All My Children. Miller delighted in inventing a serial killer who turned out to be somebody's mother, a murderer whose only motivation was her love for her child. "I took motherhood and turned it on its head and I think that was great fun. Mrs. Voorhees was the mother I'd always wanted - a mother who would have killed for her kids." Miller was unhappy about the filmmakers' decision to make Jason Voorhees the killer in the sequels. "Jason was dead from the very beginning. He was a victim, not a villain." The idea of Jason appearing at the end of the film was initially not used in the original script, and was actually suggested by makeup designer Tom Savini. Savini stated that "The whole reason for the cliffhanger at the end was I had just seen Carrie, so we thought that we need a 'chair jumper' like that and I said, 'let's bring in Jason.'" Music When Harry Manfredini began working on the musical score, the decision was made to only play the music alongside the killer so it would not "manipulate the audience" into thinking the killer was present when they were not. Manfredini pointed out the lack of music for certain scenes: "There's a scene where one of the girls […] is setting up the archery area of the film. One of the guys shoots an arrow into the target and just misses her. It's a huge scare, but if you notice, there's no music. That was a choice." Manfredini also noted that when something was going to happen, the music would cut off so that the audience would relax a bit, and the scare would be that much more effective. Since Mrs. Voorhees, the killer in the original Friday the 13th, does not show up until the final reel of the film, Manfredini had the job of creating a score that would represent the killer in her absence. Manfredini was inspired by the 1975 film Jaws, where the shark is not seen for the majority of the film but the motif created by John Williams cued the audience on when the shark was present during scenes when you could not see it. Sean S. Cunningham sought a chorus, but the budget would not allow it. While listening to a Krzysztof Penderecki piece of music, which contained a chorus with "striking pronunciations", Manfredini was inspired to recreate a similar sound. He came up with the sound "ki ki ki, ma ma ma" from the final reel when Mrs. Voorhees arrives and is reciting "Kill her, mommy!" The "ki" comes from "kill", and the "ma" from "mommy". To achieve the unique sound he wanted for the film, Manfredini spoke the two words "harshly, distinctly and rhythmically into a microphone" and ran them into an echo reverberation machine. Manfredini finished the original score after a couple of weeks, and then recorded the score in a friend's basement. Victor Miller and assistant editor Jay Keuper have commented on how memorable the music is, with Keuper describing it as "iconographic". Manfredini says, "Everybody thinks it's cha, cha, cha. I'm like, 'Cha, cha, cha? What are you talking about?" Release Box office Paramount bought Friday the 13th's distribution rights for $1.5 million, after seeing a screening of the film. They spent approximately $500,000 in advertisements for the film, and then an additional $500,000 when the film began performing well at the box office. Friday the 13th opened theatrically on May 9, 1980 across the United States in 1,100 theaters. It took in $5,816,321 in its opening weekend, before finishing domestically with $39,754,601. The film finished as the eighteenth highest grossing film of 1980. Friday the 13th was released internationally, which was unusual for an independent film with, at the time, no well-recognized or bankable actors. The film would take in approximately $20 million in international box office receipts. Not factoring in international sales, or the cross-over film with A Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger, the original Friday the 13th is the highest grossing film of the ten film series. To provide context with the box office gross of films in 2009, the cost of making and promoting Friday the 13th—which includes the $550,000 budget and the $1 million in advertisement—is approximately $4.4 million. With regard to the domestic box office gross, the film would have made $117,917,391 in adjusted 2009 dollars. In terms of recent box-office performance, Friday the 13th would be the highest grossing horror film of 2008 using the adjusted figures. On July 13, 2007, Friday the 13th was screened for the first time on Blairstown's Main Street in the very theater which appears shortly after the opening credits. Overflowing crowds forced the Blairstown Theater Festival, the sponsoring organization, to add an extra screening at 11:00 PM. The event was covered by local media and New York City's Channel 11. A 30th Anniversary Edition will be released on March 5, 2010, featuring vintage studio-issued ephemera with autographs of Kevin Bacon, Betsy Palmer, Robbi Morgan and Mark Nelson. Critical response Upon release, Friday the 13th received mixed reviews from critics. Its most vocal detractor was Gene Siskel who in his review called Cunningham "one of the most despicable creatures ever to infest the movie business". He also published Betsy Palmer's home address and encourage fellow detractors to write to her and express their contempt for the film. Siskel and Roger Ebert spent a whole episode of their TV show berating the film because they felt it would make audiences root for the killer. Leonard Maltin initially awarded the film one star, or 'BOMB', but later changed his mind and awarded the film a star and-a-half stating "...simply because it's slightly better than part 2" and called it a "...gory, cardboard thriller...one more clue to why SAT scores continue to decline." Variety claimed the film was "low-budget in the worst sense - with no apparent talent or intelligence to offset its technical inadequacies - Friday the 13th has nothing to exploit but its title." The film currently holds a 60% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes (the highest percentage for any film in the series). The ending sequence of the film was listed at #31 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments, and the film was voted #15 in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Scariest Moments. Related works Sequels Further information: Friday the 13th franchise As of 2009, Friday the 13th has spawned ten sequels, including a crossover film with A Nightmare on Elm Street villain Freddy Krueger. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) introduced Jason Voorhees, the son of Mrs. Voorhees, as the primary antagonist, which would continue for the remaining sequels (with exception of the fifth movie) and related works. Most of the sequels were filmed on larger budgets than the original. In comparison, Friday the 13th' had a budget of $550,000, while the first sequel was given a budget of $1.25 million. At the time of its release, Freddy vs. Jason had the largest budget, at $25 million. All of the sequels repeated the premise of the original, so the filmmakers made tweaks to provide freshness. Changes involved an addition to the title—as opposed to a number attached to the end—like "The Final Chapter" and "Jason Takes Manhattan", or filming the movie in 3-D, as Miner did for Friday the 13th Part III (1982). One major addition that would affect the entire film series was the addition of Jason's hockey mask in the third film; this mask would become one of the most recognizable images in popular culture. Cunningham did not direct any of the film's sequels, though he did act as producer on the later installments; he initially did not want Jason Voorhees to be resurrected for the sequel. A reboot to Friday the 13th came to theaters in February 2009, with Freddy vs. Jason writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift hired to script the new film. The film is reported to focus on Jason Voorhees, and that he will keep his trademark hockey-mask. The film is being produced by Michael Bay, Andrew Form, and Brad Fuller through Bay's production company Platinum Dunes, for New Line Cinema. In November 2007, Marcus Nispel, director of the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was hired to direct. The film had its United States release on February 13, 2009. Adaptations In 1987, seven years after the release of the motion picture, Simon Hawke adapted a novelization of Friday the 13th. One of the few additions to the book was Mrs. Voorhees begging the Christy family to take her back after the loss of her son; they agreed. Another addition in the novel is more understanding in Mrs. Voorhees' actions. Hawke felt the character had attempted to move on when Jason died, but her psychosis got the best of her. When Steve Christy reopened the camp, Mrs. Voorhees saw it as a chance that what happened to her son could happen again. Her murders were against the counselors, because she saw them all as responsible for Jason's death.

31. Cloverfield (2008) (3 of 20 lists - 54 points - highest rank #4 Cali) Cloverfield is a 2008 American monster movie/disaster movie directed by Matt Reeves, produced by J. J. Abrams and written by Drew Goddard. The film follows six young New Yorkers attending a going-away party on the night that a gigantic monster attacks the city. First publicized within a teaser trailer in screenings of Transformers, the film was released on January 17 in New Zealand and Australia, on January 18 in North America, on January 24 in South Korea, on January 25 in Taiwan, on January 31 in Germany and on February 1 in Ireland, in the United Kingdom and in Italy. In Japan, the film was released on April 5. VFX and CGI were performed by effects studios Double Negative and Tippett Studio. Plot The film is presented so as to look as if it were a video file recovered from a digital camcorder by the United States Department of Defense. The film begins with a disclaimer stating that the following footage about to be viewed is of a case designated "Cloverfield" and was found in the area that was "formerly known as Central Park". Rob wakes up on the morning of April 27 having slept with Beth, a previously platonic friend. They plan to leave for Coney Island that day. The footage cuts to May 22, when Rob's brother Jason and his girlfriend Lily prepare a farewell party for Rob who will be moving to Japan. At the party, their friend Hud uses the camera to film testimonials for Rob, accidentally taping over Rob and Beth's Coney Island trip. While recording, Hud flirts unsuccessfully with Marlena, another party guest. After Beth leaves the party following an argument with Rob, an apparent earthquake strikes, and the city suffers a brief power outage. The local news reports that an oil tanker has capsized near Liberty Island. After going upstairs to investigate the disaster, a devastating explosion that destroys much of Lower Manhattan causes the party-goers to evacuate the building and witness the head of the Statue of Liberty crashing nearby in the street, with several stunning scratch and bite marks. Hud records what appears to be a giant hand of a creature several blocks away. Many take shelter in a convenience store as the Woolworth Building collapses. Rob, Jason, Lily, Hud and Marlena attempt to escape Manhattan on the Brooklyn Bridge. A gigantic tail destroys the center span of the bridge, killing Jason and hundreds of others. The survivors are forced to flee back to Manhattan. Rob listens to Beth's message saying she is trapped in her apartment and unable to move. The news shows the United States Army's 42nd Infantry Division attacking the monster and smaller, vicious creatures that are falling off its body. Several creatures are seen attacking soldiers and civilians on the ground. As hundreds attempt to flee, Rob, Hud, Lily, and Marlena venture out to rescue Beth. They are soon caught in a crossfire between the monster and the military, and escape into a subway station. They decide to go through the subway tunnels to reach Beth's apartment, but are attacked by several of the parasites where one of them mortally wounds Marlena. The group escapes into the Bloomingdale's department store where they are met by a squad of soldiers, who have set up a field hospital and command center in the store. As Rob tries to garner assistance for Beth, Marlena's eyes start bleeding and she is taken away behind a curtain by men wearing hazmat suits where she inflates, then explodes. One of the military leaders allows the others to leave but warns them to report to a military evacuation site before 6:00 am, which is when the last helicopter will evacuate Manhattan before the Military enacts its "Hammerdown" protocol, which involves bombing the city in an effort to destroy the monster. The group finds Beth's apartment tower at the Time Warner Center has collapsed against the center's other tower. They climb the standing tower and cross onto the roof of Beth's building and work their way down to her apartment. Beth is found, but trapped, and the group is able to free her. After her rescue, the four make their way to the evacuation site where they encounter the monster once more over Grand Central Station while the military's efforts to destroy it are futile. Ignoring the firepower from the military, the creature now gives chase to the group toward the evacuation center. Lily is raced into a departing helicopter without her friends. Moments later, Rob, Beth and Hud are taken away in a second helicopter and witness a U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit bomb the monster. Just as Hud begins hailing victory over the monster, it jumps out of the wreckage and begins attacking the helicopter, causing it to crash into a grassy clearing in Central Park. A voice on the crashed helicopter's radio warns of the Hammerdown protocol will begin in 15 minutes and states that anyone able to hear the sirens is within the blast zone. Hud and Beth pull Rob, who is injured, from the helicopter wreckage, but Hud returns to recover the camera. The monster is then seen standing over him, and Hud is oblivious to Rob and Beth pleading for him to run. The monster lunges at Hud and kills him. Rob and Beth grab the still-recording camera and take shelter under Greyshot Arch in Central Park as air raid sirens begin to blare and bombers are heard in the distance, indicating that the Hammerdown protocol is about to begin. Rob and Beth take turns leaving their last testimonies of the day, which Rob mentions as Saturday, May 23, on camera. Numerous explosions occur outside as the massive bombing sortie takes place, and the creature is heard screaming in pain. As the bridge crumbles and debris covers the camera, Rob and Beth can be heard professing their love to one another as another bomb wipes out the bridge, stopping the camera's recording. The film then cuts to the footage of Rob and Beth's Coney Island date before the disaster. In the distance, unnoticed by Rob and Beth, a large object falls into the ocean. Cast * Michael Stahl-David as Robert "Rob" Hawkins * Mike Vogel as Jason Hawkins * T. J. Miller as Hudson "Hud" Platt * Odette Yustman as Elizabeth "Beth" McIntyre * Jessica Lucas as Lily Ford * Lizzy Caplan as Marlena Diamond * Ben Feldman as Travis * Ian Cyrus Jr as Spiderman To prevent the leaking of plot information, instead of auditioning the actors with scenes from the film, scripts from Abrams' previous productions were used, such as television series Alias and Lost. Some scenes were also written specifically for the audition process, not intended for use in the film. Despite not being told the premise of the film, Lizzy Caplan stated that she accepted a role in Cloverfield solely because she was a fan of the Abrams-produced television series Lost (in which her former Related co-star Kiele Sanchez was a recurring character), and her experience of discovering its true nature initially caused her to state that she would not sign on for a film in the future "without knowing full well what it is". She indicated that her character was a sarcastic outsider, and that her role, was "physically demanding". Production Development J. J. Abrams thought up a new monster after he and his son visited a toy store in Japan while promoting Mission: Impossible III. He explained, "We saw all these Godzilla toys, and I thought, we need our own American monster, and not like King Kong. I love King Kong. King Kong is adorable. And Godzilla is a charming monster. We love Godzilla. But I wanted something that was just insane, and intense." There are three still frames in "pre-recorded" sequences, one from the movie Them! one from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and one from King Kong - these three movies are also cited in the credits. In February 2007, Paramount Pictures secretly greenlit Cloverfield, to be produced by Abrams, directed by Matt Reeves and written by Drew Goddard. The project was produced by Abrams' company, Bad Robot Productions. The visual effects producer was Chantal Feghali. The severed head of the Statue of Liberty was inspired by the poster of the 1981 film Escape from New York, which had shown the head lying in the streets in New York. According to Reeves, "It's an incredibly provocative image. And that was the source that inspired producer J. J. Abrams to say, 'Now this would be an interesting idea for a movie'." Title The film was initially titled Cloverfield; however, this changed throughout production before it was finalized as the original title. Matt Reeves explained that the title was changed frequently due to the hype caused by the teaser trailer. "That excitement spread to such a degree that we suddenly couldn't use the name anymore. So we started using all these names like Slusho and Cheese. And people always found out what we were doing!" The director said that "Cloverfield" was the government's case designation for the events caused by the monster, comparing the titling to that of the Manhattan Project. "And it's not a project per se. It's the way that this case has been designated. That's why that is on the trailer, and it becomes clearer in the film. It's how they refer to this phenomenon [or] this case", said the director. The film's final title, Cloverfield, is the name of the exit Abrams takes to his Santa Monica office. In turn, the road used to lead to the Santa Monica Airport, which originally bore the name Clover Field. One final title, Greyshot, was proposed before the movie was officially titled Cloverfield. The name Greyshot is taken from the archway that the two survivors take shelter under at the end of the movie. Director Matt Reeves said that it was decided not to change the title to Greyshot because the film was already so well known as Cloverfield. The film received a subtitle in Japan, where it was released as Cloverfield/Hakaisha (クローバーフィールド/HAKAISHA, Kurōbāfīrudo/HAKAISHA?). The subtitle "Destroyer" was chosen by Abrams and was translated into Japanese as Hakaisha (破壊者, lit. "Destroyer"?) by Paramount Japan at his request. The subtitle Kishin (鬼神, lit. "Fierce God"?) was chosen for the manga spinoff, Cloverfield/Kishin, released exclusively in Japan. The other tentative film titles were: * 1-18-08 (USA) (promotional title) * Cheese (USA) (fake working title) * Clover (USA) (fake working title) * Monstrous (USA) (promotional title) * Slusho (USA) (fake working title) * Greyshot (USA) (proposed title) * hide (USA) (promotional title) Filming The casting process was carried out in secret, with no script being sent out to candidates. With production estimated to have a budget of $30 million, filming began in mid-June 2007 in New York. One cast member indicated that the film would look like it cost $150 million, despite producers not casting recognizable and expensive actors. Filmmakers used the Panasonic HVX200 for most of the interior scenes, and the Sony CineAlta F23 high-definition video camera to film nearly all of the New York exterior scenes. Filming took place on Coney Island, with scenes shot at Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park and the B&B Carousel. The scenes of tanks firing at the creature while the main characters hide in a stairwell were filmed on Hennesy Street on Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank, CA. Some interior shots were filmed on a soundstage at Downey, California, Bloomingdale's in the movie was actually filmed in an emptied Robinsons-May store that was under reconstruction in Arcadia, California, and the outside scenes of Sephora and the electronics store were filmed in Downtown Los Angeles. The film was shot and edited in a cinéma vérité style, to look like it was filmed with one hand-held camera, including jump cuts similar to ones found in home movies. T. J. Miller, who plays Hud, has said in various interviews that he filmed a third of the movie and almost half of it made it into the film. Director Matt Reeves described the presentation, "We wanted this to be as if someone found a Handicam, took out the tape and put it in the player to watch it. What you're watching is a home movie that then turns into something else." Reeves explained that the pedestrians documenting the severed head of the Statue of Liberty with the camera phones was reflective of the contemporary period. According to him: "Cloverfield very much speaks to the fear and anxieties of our time, how we live our lives. Constantly documenting things and putting them up on YouTube, sending people videos through e-mail – we felt it was very applicable to the way people feel now." Several of the filmmakers are heard but not seen in the film. The man yelling "Oh my God!" repeatedly when the head of the Statue of Liberty lands in the street is producer Bryan Burk, and director Matt Reeves voiced the whispered radio broadcast at the end of the credits. After viewing a cut of the film, Steven Spielberg suggested giving the audience a hint at the fate of the monster during the climax, which resulted in the addition of a countdown overheard on the helicopter's radio and the sounding of air raid sirens to signal the forthcoming Hammerdown bombing. Creature design Visual main effects supervisor Nick Tom and his company Tippett Studio were enlisted to develop the visual effects for Cloverfield. Because the visual effects were incorporated after filming, cast members had to react to a non-existent creature during scenes, only being familiar with early conceptual renderings of the beast. Artist Neville Page designed the monster, thoroughly creating a biological rationale for the creature, even if many of his ideas like "elongated, and articulated external esophagus" would not show up on screen. The key idea behind the monster was that he was an immature creature suffering from "separation anxiety". This recalls real-life elephants who get frightened and lash out at the circus, because the director felt "there's nothing scarier than something huge that's spooked". Marketing Before the film's release, Paramount Pictures carried out a viral marketing campaign to promote the film which included viral tie-ins similar to Lost Experience. Filmmakers decided to create a teaser trailer that would be a surprise in the light of commonplace media saturation, which they put together during the preparation stage of the production process. The teaser was then used as a basis for the film itself. Paramount Pictures encouraged the teaser to be released without a title attached, and the Motion Picture Association of America approved the move. As Transformers showed high tracking numbers before its release in July 2007, the studio attached the teaser trailer for Cloverfield that showed the release date of January 18, 2008 but not the title. A second trailer was released on November 16, 2007 which was attached to Beowulf, confirming the title. The studio had kept knowledge of the project secret from the online community, a cited rarity due to the presence of scoopers that follow upcoming films. The controlled release of information on the film has been observed as a risky strategy, which could succeed like The Blair Witch Project (1999) or disappoint like Snakes on a Plane (2006), the latter of which had generated online hype but failed to attract large audiences. Pre-release plot speculation The sudden appearance of the untitled trailer for Cloverfield fueled media speculation over the film's plot. USA Today reported the possibilities of the film being based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft, a live-action adaptation of Voltron (based on a mis-interpretation of the trailer's line "It's alive!" as "It's a lion!"), a new film about Godzilla, or a spin-off of the TV show Lost. The Star Ledger also reported the possibility of the film being based on Lovecraft lore or Godzilla. The Guardian reported the possibility of a Lost spin-off, while Time Out reported that the film was about an alien called "The Parasite". IGN also backed the possibility of that premise, with The Parasite rumored to be a working title for the film. Online, Slusho and Colossus had been discussed as other possible titles. Entertainment Weekly also disputed reports that the film would be about a parasite or a colossal Asian robot such as Voltron. Visitors of the website Ain't It Cool News have pointed out 9/11 allusions based on the destruction in New York City such as the decapitated Statue of Liberty. The film has also drawn alternate reality game enthusiasts that have followed other viral marketing campaigns like those set up for the TV series Lost, the video games Halo 2 and Halo 3. Members of the forums at argn.com and unfiction.com have investigated the background of the film, with the "1-18-08" section at Unfiction generating over 7,700 posts in August 2007. The members have studied photographs on the film's official site, potentially related MySpace profiles, and the Comic-Con teaser poster for the film. A popular piece of fan art posted that the monster was a mutated Humpback Whale. Viral tie-ins Puzzle websites containing Lovecraftian elements, such as Ethan Haas Was Right, were originally reported to be connected to the film. On July 9, 2007, producer J. J. Abrams stated that, while a number of websites were being developed to market the film, the only official site that had been found was 1-18-08.com. At the site, a collection of time-coded photos are provided to visitors to piece together a series of events and interpret their meanings. The pictures can also be flipped over – by repeatedly and rapidly moving the mouse side to side. Also, while on 1-18-08.com, if the page is left open long enough, the monster's roar can be heard. Eventually, www.cloverfieldmovie.com was created. The site provided both a trailer and a number, 33287, which, when texted from a mobile phone, provided a ringtone of the monster's roar and a wallpaper of a decimated Manhattan. This eventually turns out to be a Paramount number (people later received material on Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Kung Fu Panda, and The Love Guru). the drink Slusho! served As part of the viral marketing campaign. The drink had already appeared in producer Abrams' previous creation, the TV series Alias. Viral websites for Slusho! and a Japanese drilling company named Tagruato (タグルアト, Taguruato?) were launched to add to the mythology of Cloverfield. A building bearing the company logo for Tagruato can also be seen in the TV spot of the eleventh Star Trek film, another Abrams production. When Cloverfield was hosted at Comic-Con 2007, gray Slusho! T-shirts were distributed to attendees. Fans who had registered at the Slusho! website for Cloverfield received e-mails of fictional sonar images before the film's release that showed a deep-sea creature heading toward Manhattan. On the Tagruato website, the only page besides the homepage that has the "warped sword" symbol is the one about deep sea drilling, and "Clover" supposedly originated from the ocean surrounding Coney Island. If someone goes to the interactive map feature, the closest station is the "Chuai Station" that was set to open 4 months after the attack on New York. It also states in the "Headlines" section that there has been an altercation and it will be fixed shortly, as they have sent out special teams to deal with the problem. It also states that Tagruato employed a satellite called "Hatsui" in tracking a fallen piece of a satellite owned by the Japanese government, called "ChimpanzIII", with no luck so far, but says "According to Hatsui data, it disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean late last week". In addition to Tagruato.jp, Slusho.jp, Jamieandteddy.com and 1-18-08.com have at least one "warped sword" symbol in each. Slusho features it on its homepage, 1-18-08.com features it behind Teddy Hansen's photograph and Jamieandteddy.com features it on its homepage, making it seem as if there's a relationship between the three of them. In this site, a hint to the monster was given after moving around the photographs for some time. Producer Bryan Burk explained the viral tie-in, "It was all done in conjunction with the studio... The whole experience in making this movie is very reminiscent of how we did Lost." Director Matt Reeves described Slusho! as "part of the involved connectivity" with Abrams' Alias and that the drink represented a "meta-story" for Cloverfield. The director explained, "It's almost like tentacles that grow out of the film and lead, also, to the ideas in the film. And there's this weird way where you can go see the movie and it's one experience... But there's also this other place where you can get engaged where there's this other sort of aspect for all those people who are into that. All the stories kind of bounce off one another and inform each other. But, at the end of the day, this movie stands on its own to be a movie.... The Internet sort of stories and connections and clues are, in a way, a prism and they're another way of looking at the same thing. To us, it's just another exciting aspect of the storytelling." Reception Cloverfield opened in 3,411 theaters on January 18, 2008, and grossed a total of $16,930,000 on its opening day in the United States and Canada. It made $40,058,229 on its opening weekend, making it the most successful January release to date. Worldwide, it has grossed $170,602,318, making it the first movie in 2008 to gross over $100 million. Critics mostly praised Cloverfield; as of April 27, 2008, review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 76% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 173 reviews. According to Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 64, based on 37 reviews. And on Spill.com, it got their highest rating of 'Better Than Sex!'. Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle calls the film "the most intense and original creature feature I've seen in my adult moviegoing life [...] a pure-blood, grade A, exhilarating monster movie." He cites Matt Reeves' direction, the "whip-smart, stylistically invisible" script and the "nearly subconscious evocation of our current paranoid, terror-phobic times" as the keys to the film's success, saying that telling the story through the lens of one character's camera "works fantastically well". Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter called it "chillingly effective", praising the effects and the film's "claustrophobic intensity". He said that though the characters "aren't particularly interesting or developed", there was "something refreshing about a monster movie that isn't filled with the usual suspects". Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly said that the film was "surreptitiously subversive, [a] stylistically clever little gem", and that while the characters were "vapid, twenty-something nincompoops" and the acting "appropriately unmemorable", the decision to tell the story through amateur footage was "brilliant". Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that the film is "pretty scary at times" and cites "unmistakable evocations of 9/11". He concludes that "all in all, it is an effective film, deploying its special effects well and never breaking the illusion that it is all happening as we see it". Todd McCarthy of Variety called the film an "old-fashioned monster movie dressed up in trendy new threads", praising the special effects, "nihilistic attitude" and "post-9/11 anxiety overlay", but said, "In the end, [it's] not much different from all the marauding creature features that have come before it". Scott Foundas of LA Weekly was critical of the film's use of scenes reminiscent of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and called it "cheap and opportunistic". He suggested that the film was engaging in "stealth" attempts at social commentary and compared this unfavorably to the films of Don Siegel, George A. Romero and Steven Spielberg, saying, "Where those filmmakers all had something meaningful to say about the state of the world and [...] human nature, Abrams doesn't have much to say about anything". Manohla Dargis in the New York Times called the allusions "tacky", saying, "[The images] may make you think of the attack, and you may curse the filmmakers for their vulgarity, insensitivity or lack of imagination", but that "the film is too dumb to offend anything except your intelligence". She concludes that the film "works as a showcase for impressively realistic-looking special effects, a realism that fails to extend to the scurrying humans whose fates are meant to invoke pity and fear but instead inspire yawns and contempt." Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com calls the film "badly constructed, humorless and emotionally sadistic", and sums up by saying that the film "takes the trauma of 9/11 and turns it into just another random spectacle at which to point and shoot". Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune warned that the viewer may feel "queasy" at the references to September 11, but that "other sequences [...] carry a real jolt" and that such tactics were "crude, but undeniably gripping". He called the film "dumb", but "quick and dirty and effectively brusque", concluding that despite it being "a harsher, more demographically calculating brand of fun", he enjoyed the film. Bruce Paterson of Cinephilia described the film as "a successful experiment in style but not necessarily a successful story for those who want dramatic closure". Cloverfield appeared on some critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008. Empire magazine named it the fifth best film of 2008. The prestigious French film journal Cahiers du Cinema named the film as the third best of 2008. Bloody Disgusting ranked the film number twenty in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article calling the film "A brilliant conceit, to be sure, backed by a genius early marketing campaign that followed the less-is-more philosophy to tantalizing effect... much like Blair Witch nearly ten years earlier, Cloverfield helped prove, particularly in its first half hour, that what you don’t see can be the scariest thing of all." The movie was nominated for four awards: It was nominated for two Saturn Awards for "Best supporting actress (Lizzy Caplan)" and "Best science fiction film". It was nominated for two Golden Trailer Awards for "Best Thriller for Trailer" and "Most original trailer". The film went on to win a Saturn Award for "Best science fiction film". It was also ranked #12 on Bravo's 13 Scarier Movie Moments. Shaky camerawork The film's shaky camera style of cinematography, dubbed "La Shakily Queasy-Cam" by Roger Ebert, caused some viewers (particularly in darkened movie theaters) to experience motion sickness, including nausea and a temporary loss of balance. Audience members prone to migraines have cited the film as a trigger. Some theaters showing the film, such as AMC Theatres, provided posted and verbal warnings, informing viewers about the filming style of Cloverfield while other theatres like Pacific Theatres just verbally warned guests in detail at the box office about experiencing motion sickness upon viewing the film and what to do if they had to step out and vomit. The cinematography influences the encoding of the video and can cause compression artifacts to fast motion across the field of view. Sequel At the premiere of the film, Matt Reeves talked about possibilities of how a sequel will turn out if the film succeeds. According to Reeves, "While we were on set making the film we talked about the possibilities and directions of how a sequel can go. The fun of this movie was that it might not have been the only movie being made that night, there might be another movie! In today's day and age of people filming their lives on their camera phones and Handycams, uploading it to YouTube... That was kind of exciting thinking about that." In another interview, Reeves states: There's a moment on the Brooklyn Bridge, and there was a guy filming something on the side of the bridge, and Hud sees him filming and he turns over and he sees the ship that's been capsized and sees the headless Statue of Liberty, and then he turns back and this guy's briefly filming him. In my mind that was two movies intersecting for a brief moment, and I thought there was something interesting in the idea that this incident happened and there are so many different points of view, and there are several different movies at least happening that evening and we just saw one piece of another. Reeves also points out that the end scene on Coney Island shows something falling into the ocean in the background but didn't give out details. (Later to have been a satellite as a fake Promotional Campaign from Tagruato, to serve as another viral tie in.) This is, however, many days before the start of the film and shows the two main characters on Coney island before they meet again at the start of the party — as shown by the date stamp on the footage from the camera. This relates to how events began to happen and the satellite which falls from orbit owned by the Japanese media company mentioned. Producers Bryan Burk and J. J. Abrams also announced their thoughts to Entertainment Weekly about possible sequels. According to Bryan Burk, "The creative team has fleshed out an entire back-story which, if we're lucky, we might get to explore in future films". Abrams stated that he does not want to rush into the development of the sequel because of the first film's success and would rather create a sequel that is true to the previous film. At the end of January 2008, Matt Reeves entered early talks with Paramount Pictures to direct a sequel to Cloverfield, which would likely be filmed before Reeves's other project, The Invisible Woman. Reeves now said: The idea of doing something so differently is exhilarating. We hope that it created a movie experience that is different. The thing about doing a sequel is that I think we all really feel protective of that experience. The key here will be if we can find something that is compelling enough and that is different enough for us to do, then it will probably be worth doing. Obviously it also depends on how Cloverfield does worldwide and all of those things too, but really, for us creatively, we just want to find something that would be another challenge. In an interview with Attack of the Show, J. J. Abrams had stated that they might abandon the filming style, stating that he and the rest of the crew would like to try something new. In September 2008, when asked by CraveOnline what the current status is on Cloverfield 2, Abrams stated that at this point, they are still discussing it; however, he still feels reluctant to work on a sequel. In the same interview, Abrams said that they were working on something that "could be kind of cool." When asked if it would take place in a different location, Abrams replied by saying that "It would be a totally different kind of thing but it's too early to talk about."

Even more:

Here's a few more that missed:

Some movies that just missed the cut:

awryone Josh Donoghue "Tom Bosley, Barbara Billingsley, and Bob Guccione? God's new sitcom just got EDGY."

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Oct 21, 2010 -> 01:34 PM) By the way, did anyone catch the Evil Dead-esque scene in Spiderman 2?

There was an older guy stumbling around blind wearing a T-Rex mask this morning. He almost fell down the stairs.

Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione dies at 79.

No more discussions so far?

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Oct 20, 2010 -> 11:53 PM) Derek "Pastadiving" Jeter is just too good defensively. "Minkadiving"

32. Candyman (1992) (3 of 20 lists - 53 points - highest rank #1 Flash Tizzle) Candyman is a 1992 horror film starring Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd and Xander Berkeley. It was directed by Bernard Rose and is based on the short story "The Forbidden" by Clive Barker, though the film's scenario is switched from England to Chicago. The film was scored by Philip Glass. The film was met with critical acclaim and was a box office success. Candyman is the first film in a trilogy which includes Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh and Candyman 3: Day of the Dead. Plot Helen Lyle is a graduate student conducting research for her thesis on urban legends. While interviewing freshmen about their superstitions, she hears about a local legend known as Candyman, who is summoned by anyone who looks into a mirror and chants his name five times (similar to the Bloody Mary folkloric tale). However, summoning him often costs the individual their own life. Later that evening, Helen and her friend Bernadette jokingly call Candyman's name into the mirror in Helen's bathroom but nothing happens. While conducting her research, Helen enters the notorious gang-ridden territory known as Cabrini–Green, the site of a recent unsolved murder. There she meets Anne-Marie McCoy, a resident of the housing projects. While exploring parts of the housing development, Helen is attacked by a gang member carrying a hook who has taken the Candyman moniker as his own to enhance his own street credibility by associating himself with the legend. Helen survives the assault and is able to later identify her attacker to the police. Helen later returns to school but hears a voice calling her name as she walks through a parking garage. Another man she encounters states he is the Candyman of the urban legend and because of Helen's disbelief in him, he must now prove to her that he is real. Helen blacks out and wakes up in Anne-Marie's apartment, covered in blood. Anne-Marie, whose rottweiler has been decapitated and whose baby is also missing, attacks Helen and she is forced to defend herself from Anne-Marie using a meat cleaver. The police then enter the apartment and arrest Helen. Trevor, Helen's husband, bails her out of jail the following day and leaves her in their apartment while he runs an errand. Candyman approaches Helen again and cuts the nape of her neck, causing her to bleed. Bernadette arrives at Helen's apartment and, too weak from the loss of blood, Helen is unable to stop Candyman from murdering her. Helen is then sedated and placed in a psychiatric hospital. After a month's stay at the hospital, Helen is interviewed by a psychologist in preparation for her upcoming trial. While restrained, Helen attempts to deny culpability in the murders and convince the psychiatrist that the urban legend is indeed true. After summoning Candyman, the psychologist is murdered by Candyman from behind and Helen is able to escape to her own apartment. There she finds Trevor with another woman, one of his students. Helen then flees to Cabrini–Green to confront Candyman and to locate Anne-Marie's still-missing infant. Candyman predicts that Helen will help carry on his tradition of inciting fear into a community, and promises to release the baby if Helen agrees to sacrifice herself. Instead of holding his end of the bargain, Candyman takes both the baby and Helen into the middle of a massive junk pile which the residents have been planning to turn into a bonfire, intending to sacrifice both Helen and the baby in order to feed his own legend. However, the residents believe Candyman is hiding inside the bonfire pile and attempt to bring justice. Helen manages to rescue the baby, but dies from burns in the process. Candyman also burns in the fire, leaving only his hook-hand behind. After Helen's funeral, in which the residents of Cabrini–Green pay their respects and give thanks to Helen, Trevor stands before a mirror in the bathroom of their former apartment. He chants Helen's name in grief, unintentionally summoning her vengeful spirit. Helen kills Trevor with Candyman's hook, leaving Trevor's new lover Stacey with his bloodied corpse as Helen becomes the embodiment of the urban legend, fulfilling Candyman's prophecy. Differences between story and film The short story concentrates solely on Helen and features Candyman in the last couple of pages only. The horror film is more of a slasher-film in comparison. Candyman was summoned by rumors and urban legends in a desolate and poor community, and the purported legend about saying his name five times is not featured anywhere in the story. Reception Candyman had its world premiere at the 1992 Toronto Film Festival, playing as part of its Midnight Madness line-up. The film has a 73% "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes. The film also came in at number 75 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments. The character Candyman came in at number 8 on Bloody Disgusting's "The Top 13 Slashers in Horror Movie History"[4] and ranked the same on Ugo's "Top Eleven Slashers". The actor who played Candyman, Tony Todd, made #53 on Retrocrush's "The 100 Greatest Horror Movie Performances" for his role. The movie appears in two sections of Filmsite.org, in "Greatest Scariest Movie Moments and Scenes" and "Greatest Movie Twists, Spoilers and Surprise Endings". Cast * Virginia Madsen as Helen Lyle * Tony Todd as The Candyman * Xander Berkeley as Trevor Lyle * Vanessa A. Williams as Anne-Marie McCoy * Kasi Lemmons as Bernadette 'Bernie' Walsh * Bernard Rose as Archie Walsh * Gilbert Lewis as Detective Frank Valento * Stanley DeSantis as Dr. Burke * Eric Edwards as Harold * Rusty Schwimmer as Policewoman * Michael Culkin as Professor Philip Purcell * DeJuan Guy as Jake * Marianna Elliott as Clara * Ria Pavia as Monica * Carolyn Lowery as Stacy * Lisa Ann Poggi as Diane * Adam Philipson as Danny * Barbara Alston as Henrietta Mosely * Sarina C. Grant as Kitty Culver

33. Army of Darkness (1993) (4 of 20 lists - 51 points - highest rank #3 knightni) Army of Darkness (also known as Evil Dead III, Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness, Bruce Campbell vs. Army of Darkness, or The Medieval Dead) is a 1993 American comedy horror film and the third installment in the Evil Dead series. Bruce Campbell stars as protagonist Ash Williams who finds himself in the Middle Ages where he must battle the undead in his quest to return home. The film was directed by Sam Raimi, and written by Raimi and his brother Ivan, and produced by Rob Tapert. Army of Darkness is not as violent or gory as the prior Evil Dead films, relying more on slapstick. The film had a higher budget than its predecessors, estimated to be around $11 million. At the box office Army of Darkness barely made back its budget, with a gross of $11.5 million domestically. Since its video release it has acquired a cult following, along with the other two films in the trilogy. Plot After a brief flashback to Evil Dead II, which explains the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis and how Ash got to where he is, Ash lands in Medieval England, where he is almost immediately captured by Lord Arthur's men, who suspect him to be an agent for Duke Henry, with whom Arthur is at war. He is enslaved along with the captured Henry, his gun and chainsaw confiscated, and is taken to a castle. Ash is thrown in a pit where he fights off a Deadite and regains his weapons from Arthur's Wise Man. After demanding Henry and his men be set free (since Henry stood up for him, and swore he did not know who Ash was), Ash is celebrated as a hero, and also grows attracted to the sister of one of Arthur's fallen knights, Sheila. According to the Wise Man, the only way Ash can return to his time is to retrieve the Necronomicon. After bidding goodbye to Sheila, Ash starts his search for the Necronomicon. Entering a haunted forest, an unseen force pursues Ash through the woods. Fleeing, Ash ducks into a windmill where he crashes into a mirror. The small reflections of Ash climb out from the shattered mirror and torment him. One of the reflections dives down Ash's throat and uses his body to become a life-sized copy of Ash, after which Ash kills him and buries him. When he arrives at the Necronomicon's location, he finds three books instead of one. Ash eventually finds the real one and attempts to say the magic phrase that will allow him to remove the book safely — "Klaatu barada nikto". (The line was taken from the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still). However, forgetting the last word, he tries to trick the book by mumbling the missing word. He then grabs the book from the cradle, and rushes back to the castle, while the dead rise from graves all around. During Ash's panicked ride back, Ash's evil copy rises from his grave and unites the Deadites into the Army of Darkness. Despite causing the predicament faced by the Medieval soldiers, Ash initially demands to be returned to his own time. However, Sheila is captured by a Flying Deadite, and then transformed into a Deadite. Ash becomes determined to lead the humans against the skeletal Deadite army. Reluctantly, the people agree to join Ash. Using scientific knowledge from textbooks in the trunk of his 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88, and enlisting the help of Duke Henry, Ash successfully leads the Medieval soldiers to defeat his Deadite clone, Evil Ash, and his Deadite Army, and save Sheila. After this, he is brought back to his own time using a potion made from the Necronomicon. The final scene (See Different versions) begins with Ash back at the S-Mart store, telling a male co-worker (Ted Raimi) all about his adventure back in time, and how he could have been king. After this, a Deadite starts wreaking havoc on the store (it is implied that he again raised the dead by saying the wrong words needed to travel through time), and Ash slays the creature. The film ends with Ash in voice over saying, "Sure, I could have stayed in the past. Could have even been king. But in my own way, I am king." He then says out loud, while kissing the attractive female co-worker whose life he has just saved, "Hail to the King, baby!" Cast * Bruce Campbell as Ashley "Ash" Williams * Embeth Davidtz as Sheila * Marcus Gilbert as Lord Arthur * Ian Abercrombie as Wiseman * Richard Grove as Duke Henry the Red * Timothy Patrick Quill as Blacksmith * Michael Earl Reid as Gold Tooth * Bridget Fonda as Linda * Patricia Tallman as Possessed Witch * Ted Raimi as Cowardly Warrior / Second Supportive Villager / S-Mart Clerk (as Theodore Raimi) Production Plans to make a third Evil Dead film had been circulating for a number of years, even prior to the production of Darkman. Evil Dead II made enough money internationally that Dino De Laurentiis was willing to finance a sequel. Director and script writer Sam Raimi drew from a variety of sources, including literature with A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and films like The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, and The Three Stooges. Evil Dead II, according to Bruce Campbell, "was originally designed to go back into the past to 1300, but we couldn't muster it at the time, so we decided to make an interim version, not knowing if the 1300 story would ever get made". Promotional drawings were created and published in Variety during the casting process before the budget was deemed too little for the plot. The working title for the project was Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness. The title "Army of Darkness" came from an idea by Irvin Shapiro, during the production of Evil Dead II. This was used after Sam Raimi was unable to use his original title "The Medieval Dead." ("The Medieval Dead" would later be used as the films subtitle for its UK release as Army of Darkness: The Medieval Dead). Screenplay & pre-production Initially, Raimi invited Scott Spiegel to co-write Army of Darkness because he had done a good job on Evil Dead II, but he was busy on rewrites for the Clint Eastwood film, The Rookie. After the good experience of writing the screenplay for a film called Easy Wheels, Sam and his brother Ivan Raimi decided to co-write the film together. They worked on the script throughout the pre-production and production of Darkman. After filming Darkman, they took the script out and worked on it in more detail. Raimi says that Ivan "has a good sense of character" and that he brought more comedy into the script. Campbell remembers, "We all decided, 'Get him out of the cabin.' There were earlier drafts where part three still took place there, but we thought, 'Well, we all know that cabin, it's time to move on.' The three of us decided to keep it in 1300, because it's more interesting". Campbell and Tapert would read the script drafts, give Raimi their notes and he would decide which suggestions to keep and which ones to discard. The initial budget was $8 million but during pre-production, it became obvious that this was not going to be enough. Darkman was also a financial success and De Laurentiis had multi-picture deal with Universal and so Army of Darkness became one of the films. The studio decided to contribute half of the film's $12 million budget. However, the film's ambitious scope and its extensive effects work forced Campbell, Raimi and producer Rob Tapert to put up $1 million of their collective salaries to shoot a new ending and not film a scene where a possessed woman pushes down some giant pillars. Visual effects supervisor William Mesa showed Raimi storyboards he had from Victor Fleming's film Joan of Arc that depicted huge battle scenes and he picked out 25 shots to use in Army of Darkness. A storyboard artist worked closely with the director in order to blend the shots from the Joan of Arc storyboards with the battle scenes in his film. Principal photography Principal photography took place between soundstage and on-location work. Army of Darkness was filmed in Bronson Canyon and Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park. The interior shots were filmed on an Introvision stage in Hollywood. Raimi's use of the Introvision process was a tribute to the stop-motion animation work of Ray Harryhausen. Introvision uses front-projected images with live actors instead of the traditional rear projection that Harryhausen and others used. Introvision blended components with more realistic-looking results. To achieve this effect, Raimi used 60-foot-tall Scotchlite front-projection screens, miniatures and background plates. According to the director, the advantage of using this technique was "the incredible amount of interaction between the background, which doesn't exist, and the foreground, which is usually your character". The shooting for Army of Darkness began in mid-1991, and it lasted for about 100 days. It was a mid-summer shoot and while on location on a huge castle set that was built near Acton, California on the edge of the Mojave Desert, the cast and crew endured very hot conditions during the day and very cold temperatures at night. Most of the film took place at night and the filmmakers shot most of the film during the summer when the days were longest and the nights were the shortest. It would take an hour and a half to light an area leaving the filmmakers only six hours left to shoot a scene. Money problems forced cinematographer Bill Pope to shoot only for certain hours Monday through Friday because he could not be paid his standard fee. Mesa shot many of the action sequences on the weekend. It was a difficult shoot for Campbell who had to learn elaborate choreography for the battle scenes, which involved him remembering a number system because the actor was often fighting opponents that were not really there. Mesa remembers, "Bruce was cussing and swearing some of the time because you had to work on the number system. Sam would tell us to make it as complicated and hard for Bruce as possible. 'Make him go through torture!' So we'd come up with these shots that were really, really difficult, and sometimes they would take thirty-seven takes". Some scenes, like Evil Ash walking along the graveyard while his skeleton minions come to life, blended stop-motion animation with live skeletons that were mechanically rigged, with prosthetics and visual effects. Soundtrack Danny Elfman, who composed the score for Darkman, wrote the "March of the Dead" theme for Army of Darkness, but after the re-shoots were completed Joseph LoDuca, who composed the music for The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, returned to score the new film. LoDuca sat down with Raimi and they went over the entire film, scene by scene. The composer used his knowledge of synthesizers and was able to present many cues in a mock-up form before he took them in front of an orchestra. Post-production While Dino De Laurentiis gave Raimi and his crew freedom to shoot the movie the way it wanted, Universal Pictures took over during post-production. Universal was not happy with Raimi's cut because it did not like his original ending of the movie and felt that it was negative. A more upbeat ending was shot a month after Army of Darkness was made. It was shot in a lumber store in Malibu, California over three or four nights. Then, two months after Army of Darkness was finished, a round of re-shoots began in Santa Monica and involved Ash in the windmill and the scenes with Bridget Fonda done for very little money. Raimi recalls, "Actually, I kind of like the fact that there are two endings, that in one alternate universe Bruce is screwed, and in another universe he's some cheesy hero". In addition, Raimi needed $3 million to finish his movie, but Universal was not willing to give him the money and delayed its release because they were upset that De Laurentiis would not give them the rights to the Hannibal Lecter character so that they could film a sequel to Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs. The matter was finally resolved, but Army of Darkness' release date had been pushed back from its original summer of 1992 release to February 1993. For the movie's poster, Universal brought Campbell in to take several reference head shots and asked him to strike a sly look on his face. They showed him a rough of this Frank Frazetta-like painting. The actor had a day to approve it or, as he was told, there would be no ad campaign for the film. Raimi ran into further troubles with the Motion Picture Association of America over the film's rating. The MPAA gave it an NC-17 rating for a shot of a female Deadite being decapitated early on in the film. Universal, however, wanted a PG-13 rating, so Raimi made a few cuts and was still stuck with the MPAA's R rating. In response, Universal turned the film over to outside film editors who cut Army of Darkness to 81 minutes in length and another version running 87 minutes that was eventually released in theaters. Eventually, Army of Darkness ended up with an R rating. Reception Box office performance Army of Darkness was released by Universal Pictures on February 19, 1993 in 1,387 theaters in the United States, grossing $4.4 million (38.5% of total gross) on its first weekend. In total, the film earned $11.5 million in the US and $21.5 million worldwide. Critical reception Army of Darkness was well received by critics with a 75% "Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, which made its critical reception above average but is lower than The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, which received 100% and 98% critical approval, respectively. Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, "The movie isn't as funny or entertaining as Evil Dead II, however, maybe because the comic approach seems recycled". In her review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin praised, "Mr. Campbell's manly, mock-heroic posturing is perfectly in keeping with the director's droll outlook". Desson Howe, in this review for the Washington Post praised the film's style: "Bill Pope's cinematography is gymnastic and appropriately frenetic. The visual and make-up effects (from artist-technicians William Mesa, Tony Gardner and others) are incredibly imaginative". However, Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "C+" rating and wrote, "This spoofy cast of thousands looks a little too much like a crew of bland Hollywood extras. By the time Army of Darkness turns into a retread of Jason and the Argonauts, featuring an army of fighting skeletons, the film has fallen into a ditch between parody and spectacle". Awards Army of Darkness won the Saturn Award for Best Horror Film (1994). It was also nominated for Best Make-Up. Army of Darkness was nominated for the Grand Prize at Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival, and won the Golden Raven at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film in 1993. The film also won the Critics' Award at Fantasporto, and was nominated for the International Fantasy Film Award in the category of Best Film in 1993. It was also nominated Best Film at the Sitges - Spanish International Film Festival. Different versions There are four different versions of Army of Darkness: the 96-minute director's cut, the 81-minute U.S. theatrical version, the 88-minute international edit, and the 88-minute U.S. television version. The director's cut includes numerous new scenes and extensions compared to the US theatrical version. Among the changes are more violence in the pit, a love scene between Ash and Sheila, an extended windmill scene, different dialogue between Good and Bad Ash, an extended speech on the castle roof and a vastly different ending. The TV version (which is not available on DVD) is particularly notable for including two scenes not in any other version of the film (though they do appear in rough cut form in the "Deleted Scenes" section of the DVD.) The theatrical release picks up after Ash has returned to the present, in which he stages one final confrontation with the "she-b****" in the S-Mart Housewares Department. The alternative ending, which was favored by Raimi and Bruce Campbell, depicts Ash as he sits in his Oldsmobile (the same 1973 Oldsmobile featured in many Sam Raimi films), in a cave, the entrance caved in by some of the black powder he made earlier. As he drinks the magic potion (given to him by a person that may or may not be Merlin - the king's name being "Arthur"), he is distracted by a falling rock and takes one drop too many. Ash sleeps well beyond his time, not aging but growing a very large beard, and shouts "I'VE SLEPT TOO LONG!" after awakening in a post-apocalyptic England. When test audiences did not approve of Raimi's original ending, he cut the film down to the international cut that now exists on DVD. When it was again rejected by Universal, Raimi was forced to edit it again to the U.S. theatrical version. The original cut had an opening that was more in tune with the Evil Dead series (included as a deleted scene on Anchor Bay's director's cut DVD). The MGM Hong Kong Region 3 DVD edits together the U.S. altered theatrical, European and director's cuts into a final, 96-minute cut of the film. The film is digitally re-mastered, compiled from original source prints (not from VHS sources as the Anchor Bay Entertainment releases are). A new Blu-ray release of Army of Darkness from Optimum Releasing in the UK was rumored to be of the director's cut, however it was released on September 19, 2008 and included the Director's Cut as an extra, in standard definition. The movie was released as Bruce Campbell vs Army of Darkness for the UK Blu-ray release.

35. (tie) Scream (1996) (4 of 20 lists - 50 points - highest rank #8 pittshoganerkoff) Scream is a 1996 American horror film directed by Wes Craven from a screenplay by Kevin Williamson. It was released by Dimension Films. Filmed mostly in Santa Rosa, California, the film tells the story of the fictional town Woodsboro, California being terrorized by a masked killer who enjoys tormenting his victims with phone calls and movie references. The killer's main target is Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), a teenage girl whose mother Maureen fell victim to a brutal murder one year earlier. The film takes on a "whodunit" mystery, with many of her friends and townspeople being fellow targets and suspects. Released in the United States on December 20, 1996 Scream was a box office success, grossing $173,046,663 internationally and received very positive reviews from critics as the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes awarded the film an 81% 'fresh' rating, based on 53 reviews. Scream single-handedly revitalized the slasher film genre in the late 1990s, similar to the impact Halloween (1978) had on late 1970s film, by using a standard concept with a tongue-in-cheek approach that combined straightforward scares with dialogue that satirized slasher film conventions. Following the film's success, two sequels were released in 1997 and 2000 respectively, and a third sequel scheduled for release April 15, 2011. Plot High school student Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) is waiting for her boyfriend Steve (Kevin Patrick Walls) when a mysterious person (Roger L. Jackson) contacts her on the phone. Harmless at first, the caller starts to threaten Casey, telling her that he is somewhere outside the house watching her. When Casey warns him that Steve will arrive soon, the caller reveals that he has Steve tied up outside the patio. Now hysterical, Casey is forced to answer questions focused on horror movie clichés. She answers the second question wrong, resulting in Steve's death. When Casey refuses to answer the last question, the killer breaks into her house, revealed to be a man dressed in a ghostly costume named Ghostface. Ghostface chases her outside and stabs her in the chest, and when Casey sees her parents coming home, she is unable to call for help and is stabbed two more times. Her parents then find her body hanging from a tree outside, bloodied and gutted. The timing of the tragedy is hard on their classmate Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), who is attempting to cope with the upcoming one-year anniversary of her mother's rape and murder. The following night she is contacted by the Ghostface killer, who taunts Sidney over the phone and then attacks her in her home. Reacting to circumstantial evidence, Sidney accuses her boyfriend Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) of being the attacker. Because her father is away on business, she spends the following night with her best friend Tatum (Rose McGowan) and her brother Dwight "Dewey" Riley (David Arquette), a deputy on the police force. While there, she receives another taunting phone call from Ghostface, who tells Sidney that she "fingered the wrong man...again," implying that the man convicted of killing Sidney's mother, Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), was actually innocent. This phone call seems to clear Billy, who is still in jail. Suspicion falls on Sidney's father (Lawrence Hecht), who turns out to be missing. Sidney is forced to deal with the scandalization of her attack by tabloid television newswoman Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), who previously authored a book accusing Sidney's mother of having an affair with Cotton Weary and essentially calling Sidney an outright liar, leading to bitter mistrust between Gale and Sidney. With the killer still loose, and a number of students wearing Ghostface masks as pranks, school is canceled as a precautionary measure, and the principal (Henry Winkler) is stabbed to death. Unaware of the principal's fate, Tatum's boyfriend Stuart "Stu" Macher (Matthew Lillard) throws a party; among the guests are Billy and Sidney, who reconcile through sexual intercourse, and film buff Randy (Jamie Kennedy), who explains to the other party-goers the genre conventions a movie character is required to follow in order to survive a horror film. Tatum goes into the garage to get some more beer for the party, but instead fights with Ghostface. In the end her head gets trapped in the garage door, Ghostface activates it, causing her head to get crushed between the door and the ceiling. Meanwhile Gale, sensing the potential for a scoop, crashes the party and hides a video camera inside the house. As Dewey and Gale investigate the mysterious appearance of Mr. Prescott's car, the party-goers receive word of the principal's death and most of them head to the school. With few party goers left, Ghostface starts to stalk those who remain behind. Gale's cameraman Kenny (W. Earl Brown) is murdered next when Ghostface slices his throat. Ghostface then attacks and wounds Billy, Dewey, and Sidney. Meanwhile Gale, after discovering Kenny's bloody corpse, drives but loses control and crashes the car down a hill. Sidney encounters Randy and Stu, who both accuse each other of being the killer; not knowing which one to trust, Sidney locks them both out of the house. Billy falls down the stairs, seriously injured, and lets Randy into the house. Randy claims that Stu has gone mad, but Billy replies that "We all go a little mad sometimes" (quoting a line by Norman Bates from Psycho) and shoots Randy. Billy and Stu reveal that they are both the killer, and have been using a voice-changing device to make them seem like just one person over the phone. They also reveal that they murdered Sidney's mother the previous year, as she had an affair with Billy's father and caused Billy's mother to leave; Stu claims "peer pressure" as his motive. They framed Cotton Weary for the crimes; similarly, they plan to frame Sidney's father for their current murder spree by planting evidence on his body. They stab each other to create the illusion that they have been attacked by Sidney's father, but Billy cuts too deeply, and Stu starts to die from blood loss. Gale attempts to rescue Sidney and her father, but she is easily subdued when she fails to disengage the safety on her gun. However, Gale's interference does serve as a distraction which allows Sidney to escape. She returns to taunt and attack Billy and Stu; in the struggle that follows, she is subdued by Stu and Billy, but she kills Stu by electrocuting his head with a television. Randy regains consciousness after surviving his gunshot wound, but is then punched in the face by Billy, stunning him. Just when Billy is about to kill Sidney, Gale saves Sidney's life by shooting him and hitting his shoulder. Sidney, Randy, and Gale take one last look at Billy's body. Presumably dead, Billy springs to life one more time (a horror convention which Randy had predicted), but Sidney quickly shoots him again through the head, killing him. In the epilogue, Dewey is carried away on a stretcher, wounded but alive, and Gale makes an impromptu news report on the events of the previous night as the authorities arrive. Cast * David Arquette as Deputy Dwight "Dewey" Riley * Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott * Courteney Cox as Gale Weathers * Matthew Lillard as Stuart "Stu" Macher * Rose McGowan as Tatum Riley * Skeet Ulrich as Billy Loomis * Jamie Kennedy as Randy * W. Earl Brown as Kenny * Joseph Whipp as Sheriff Burke * Liev Schreiber as Cotton Weary * Drew Barrymore as Casey Becker * Roger L. Jackson as Ghostface (voice) * Kevin Patrick Walls as Steven "Steve" Orth * Lawrence Hecht as Neil Prescott * C.W. Morgan as Mr. Loomis * Lynn McRee as Maureen Prescott * Henry Winkler as Principal Himbry (uncredited) * Linda Blair as the 'Obnoxious Reporter' * Wes Craven as 'Freddie Kruger' Janitor (uncredited cameo) References to horror film genre The film features numerous in-jokes and references to other horror projects. The victims in Scream are self-aware and each make numerous references to teen slasher and horror films. Two of the most common references are to A Nightmare on Elm Street and its director Wes Craven. Fred, a janitor in the film played by Craven, wears an outfit resembling Freddy Krueger's. Later in the film, Tatum tells Sidney that she is "starting to sound like a Wes Carpenter flick", a fictional name created from compounding Craven's name and John Carpenter, director of Halloween. In addition to its director, Halloween is referenced many times throughout the film. When Casey's parents come home and discover she's gone, her father tells her mother to drive down to the McKenzie's and call the police, which is similar to when Laurie tells Lindsey and Tommy to go across the street to the McKenzie's and call the police. Also, Billy's surname, Loomis, is the same as that of Donald Pleasence's character in Halloween (1978), which in turn was the name of Marion Crane's lover in Psycho. In a similar fashion to Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), Scream's highly-billed star Drew Barrymore dies early in the film. Linda Blair, who portrayed the character Regan in The Exorcist, is also the attractive reporter who approaches Sidney when she first returns to school after being attacked by the killer. Joseph Whipp, who portrays Sheriff Burke in Scream, also portrayed a deputy sheriff in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Release Critical reception The reaction to Scream was generally positive among film reviewers, who appreciated the shift from the teen slasher films of the 1980s and their "endless series of laborious, half-baked sequels." Williamson's script was praised as containing a "fiendishly clever, complicated plot" which "deftly mixes irony, self-reference and wry social commentary with chills and blood spills." Roger Ebert appreciated "the in-jokes and the self-aware characters", but was confused over whether the level of violence was "defused by the ironic way the film uses it and comments on it." The New York Times says "not much of 'Scream' is that gruesome", but observes that Craven "wants things both ways, capitalizing on lurid material while undermining it with mocking humor. Not even horror fans who can answer all this film's knowing trivia questions may be fully comfortable with such an exploitative mix." Scream ranked #32 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies and #13 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly dubbed the film a "New Classic" by ranking it #60 in their list of the 100 Best Films of the Last 13 Years. The film received an 81% fresh rating on RottenTomatoes.com. The film ranks #482 on Empire's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time. Box office The film opened in 1,413 theaters, taking $6,354,586 in its opening weekend. The film made almost $87 million in its initial release, and was then re-released to theatres on April 11, 1997 and went on to make another $16 million, making total a domestic gross of $103,046,663, with, as of 2007, a worldwide lifetime gross of $173,046,663. Awards The film won several awards, including Best Movie at the MTV Movie Awards 1997, and Saturn Awards for Best Actress (Neve Campbell), Best Writer and Best Horror Film. Craven was awarded the Grand Prize at the Gérardmer Film Festival.

35. (tie) Shaun of the Dead (2004) (3 of 20 lists - 50 points - highest rank #3 whitesoxfan99) Shaun of the Dead is a 2004 British romantic comedy horror film directed by Edgar Wright, starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and written by Pegg and Wright. Pegg plays Shaun, a man attempting to get some kind of focus in his life as he deals with his girlfriend, his mother and stepfather. At the same time, he has to cope with an apocalyptic uprising of zombies. The film is the first of what Pegg and Wright call their Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy with Hot Fuzz as the second and The World's End as the third. The film was a critical and commercial success in the United Kingdom, and the United States. It received universal acclaim with a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 76 out of 100 at Metacritic. Shaun of the Dead was a BAFTA nominee. Plot Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a 29-year-old salesman whose life has no direction. His younger colleagues at work show him no respect and he has a rocky relationship with his stepfather, Phillip (Bill Nighy). He also has a tense relationship with his housemate, Pete (Peter Serafinowicz), because of Ed (Nick Frost), Shaun's crude best friend who lives on their couch and deals marijuana. His girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield), is unsatisfied with their social life, because it consists primarily of spending every evening at the Winchester, Shaun's favourite pub, as well as the fact that they never do anything alone together - Shaun always brings Ed and she has to bring her flatmates, David (Dylan Moran) and Dianne (Lucy Davis). After a miserable day at work, Liz breaks up with Shaun when he fails to book a table at a restaurant for their anniversary. Shaun drowns his sorrows with Ed at the Winchester and they return home late, only to have Pete confront them. Pete, suffering a headache after being mugged and bitten by "some crackheads", berates Shaun and tells him to sort his life out. Shaun resolves to do so the next morning. This revelation comes at the same time as an apocalyptic uprising of zombies, although Shaun is too hungover to notice at first. He and Ed finally realise what is happening after watching reports on TV and several zombies appear in the house, and they decide they need to ensure they are somewhere safe. Shaun and Ed arm themselves with weapons from the shed and realise that the safest place they know is the Winchester. They plan to collect Shaun's mother, Barbara (Penelope Wilton), and Phillip, and Liz and her flatmates and head to the Winchester. They discover that Pete is still in the house and is now a zombie, but manage to escape in Pete's car. After collecting Barbara and Phillip, who is bitten in the process, they switch cars and drive in Phillip's Jaguar and head to Liz, Dianne and David's flat, and collect them. Before they make it to the Winchester, Phillip dies of his bite, after he manages to make peace with Shaun. Forced to abandon the car, they set off on foot, bumping into Yvonne, a close friend of Shaun's, and her own band of survivors. Discovering that the path is infested with zombies, they devise a plan to sneak by, pretending to be zombies, with the help of Dianne, who is an aspiring actress. Ed and Shaun get into an argument and the zombies, after watching the commotion, realise they are not dead and approach. David smashes the window with a dustbin and, while Shaun distracts the zombies, everyone takes refuge inside the pub. Shaun joins them after giving the zombies the slip. After several hours, the zombies return. Ed inadvertently gives away their position when he wins on the fruit machine and the zombies converge on the pub. At that moment, the pub's landlords, also zombies, arrive and attack them. Ed manages to get the Winchester rifle above the bar working and they use it to fend off the zombies breaking in. However, Barbara reveals a bite wound she picked up along the way and subsequently dies. Realising she is about to become a zombie, David points the rifle at her, only to meet resistance from Shaun and Ed, and in the ensuing confrontation, Dianne reveals that she is aware that David loves Liz and not her. After Barbara returns as a zombie, Shaun shoots her, and punches David. David grabs the rifle and attempts to shoot Shaun, but discovers that the rifle is out of ammo. Before anyone can react to his attempt to kill Shaun, David angrily storms to the door. Dianne talks him away from it, and David begins to apologize to Shaun. At that moment, the zombies break through a window and drag him out, disemboweling and dismembering him. Frantic, Dianne unbolts the door to rescue David, exposing Shaun, Liz and Ed to the zombies. Ed prepares a Molotov cocktail to fend them off, but Pete arrives and bites him. He manages to get over the bar and Shaun uses the cocktail to ignite the bar. They escape into the cellar. Finding themselves cornered, they contemplate suicide, but discover a service hatch. Shaun and Liz escape through the hatch, and Ed, now mortally wounded from the ensuing zombie attack, stays behind with a cigarette and the rifle. Back on the street, Shaun and Liz prepare to fight the zombies once more, but at that moment, the British Army arrives and they are rescued. Yvonne, who has also survived, shows up and tells Shaun and Liz to follow her. They approach the safety of the trucks, reconciled. Six months after the outbreak, all of the uninfected have returned to daily life, and the remaining zombies, retaining their instincts, are used as cheap labour and entertainment. Liz and Shaun have moved in together in Shaun's house, and Shaun is keeping Ed tethered in the shed and playing TimeSplitters 2. Cast * Simon Pegg as Shaun * Nick Frost as Ed * Kate Ashfield as Liz * Lucy Davis as Dianne * Dylan Moran as David * Peter Serafinowicz as Pete * Jessica Stevenson as Yvonne * Bill Nighy as Phillip, Shaun's step-dad * Penelope Wilton as Barbara, Shaun's mom * Rafe Spall as Noel * Jeremy Thompson as Himself * Martin Freeman as Declan * Reece Shearsmith as Mark * Tamsin Greig as Maggie * Julia Deakin as Yvonne's mum * Matt Lucas as Cousin Tom * Mark Donovan as Hulking Zombie * Trisha Goddard as Herself * Patricia Franklin as Spinster * Chris Martin as Himself * Jon Buckland as Himself * Keith Chegwin as Himself * Krishnan Guru-Murthy as Himself * Carol Barnes as Herself * Rob Butler as Himself * Vernon Kay as Himself * Edgar Wright (cameo) as newsreader / prat-falling zombie / Italian restaurant voice Production The film is notable for Wright's kinetic directing style, and its references to other movies, television shows, and video games. In this way, it is similar to the British sitcom Spaced, which both Pegg and Wright worked on in similar roles. The film was inspired by the Spaced episode "Art", written by Pegg (along with his writing partner and co-star Jessica Stevenson) and directed by Wright, in which the character of Tim (Pegg), under the influence of amphetamine and the PlayStation video game Resident Evil 2, hallucinates that he's fighting off a zombie invasion. Having discovered a mutual appreciation for Romero's Dead trilogy, they decided to write their own zombie movie. Spaced was to be a big influence on the making of Shaun, as it was directed by Wright in a similar style, and featured many of the same cast and crew in minor and major roles (as well as Pegg, Wright and Stevenson, Nick Frost — who played Mike in Spaced — has a starring role in Shaun as Ed, and Peter Serafinowicz and Julia Deakin, who played Duane Benzie and Marsha in Spaced, respectively — appeared in Shaun as Pete and Yvonne's mum, respectively). The film's cast features a number of British comedians, comic actors and sitcom stars, most prominently from Spaced, Black Books and The Office. Shaun also co-stars Dylan Moran, who played Bernard Black in Black Books, and Lucy Davis, who played Dawn Tinsley in The Office. In addition to this, cameo appearances are made by Martin Freeman (Tim Canterbury in The Office), Tamsin Greig (Fran in Black Books, Caroline in Green Wing), Julia Deakin (Marsha in Spaced), Reece Shearsmith (a member of The League of Gentlemen) and Matt Lucas (writer/co-star of Little Britain). In addition, the voices of Mark Gatiss (The League of Gentlemen) and Julia Davis (Nighty Night) can be heard as radio news presenters, as can David Walliams (Little Britain) who provides the voice of an unseen TV reporter. Trisha Goddard also makes a cameo appearance, hosting a fictionalised episode of her real-life talk show Trisha. Many other comics and comic actors appear in cameos as zombies, including Rob Brydon, Paul Putner, Pamela Kempthorne (Morticia de'Ath in The Vampires of Bloody Island), Joe Cornish, Antonia Campbell-Hughes (from the Jack Dee sit com Lead Balloon), Mark Donovan (Black Books) and Michael Smiley (Tyres in Spaced). Coldplay members Chris Martin (who contributed to the soundtrack by guest singing the cover of Buzzcocks' "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" by Ash) and Jonny Buckland also cameo as zombies in the movie. Locations The production was filmed entirely in London, on location and at Ealing Studios, and involved production companies Working Title Films and StudioCanal. Many exterior shots were filmed in and around the North London areas of Crouch End, Muswell Hill and Finsbury Park. Zombie extras were mainly local residents or fans of Spaced who responded to a casting call organised through a fan website. The scenes filmed in and around "The Winchester Pub" were shot at The Duke Of Albany in Monson Road New Cross, a three-storey Victorian pub popular with supporters of Millwall F.C. which was converted into luxury flats in 2007. Reception Box office In the UK, Shaun took £1.6 million at 307 cinemas on its opening weekend and netted £6.4 million by mid-May. In its opening weekend in the US, Shaun earned $3.3 million, taking eighth place at the box office despite a limited release to only 607 theatres. The film has earned $30,039,392 worldwide in box office receipts since its release. Critical response Critical reaction was highly positive, with the film receiving a score of 91% at the comparative review website Rotten Tomatoes (with a Cream Of The Crop score of 94%) and a score of 76 out of 100 at Metacritic[8] which indicated universal acclaim. Nev Pierce, reviewing the film for the BBC, called it a "side-splitting, head-smashing, gloriously gory horror comedy" that will "amuse casual viewers and delight genre fans." Peter Bradshaw gave it four stars out of five, saying it "boasts a script crammed with real gags" and is "pacily directed [and] nicely acted." Awards and recognition In 2004, Total Film magazine named Shaun of the Dead the 49th greatest British film of all time. In 2005, it was rated as the third greatest comedy film of all time in a Channel 4 poll. Horror novelist Stephen King described the movie as "...a '10' on the fun meter and destined to be a cult classic." In 2007, Stylus Magazine named it the 9th greatest zombie movie ever made. In 2007, Time named it one of the 25 best horror films, calling the film "spooky, silly and smart-smart-smart" and complimenting its director: "Wright, who'd be a director to watch in any genre, plays world-class games with the camera and the viewer's expectations of what's supposed to happen in a scare film.". Bloody Disgusting ranked the film second in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article saying "Shaun of the Dead isn’t just the best horror-comedy of the decade – it’s quite possibly the best horror-comedy ever made." George A. Romero was so impressed with Pegg and Wright's work that he asked them to appear in cameo roles in the 2005 film Land of the Dead. Pegg and Wright insisted on being zombies rather than the slightly more noticeable roles that were originally offered. Quentin Tarantino dubbed the film as one of his top twenty films made since 1992.

36. Dracula (1931) (5 of 20 lists - 46 points - highest rank #4 BigEdWalsh) Dracula is a 1931 horror film directed by Tod Browning and starring Béla Lugosi as the title character. The film was produced by Universal and is based on the stage play of the same name by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which in turn is based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Plot Renfield (Dwight Frye), a British solicitor, travels through the Carpathian Mountains via stagecoach. The people in the stagecoach are fearful that the coach won’t reach the local inn before sundown. Arriving there safely before sundown, Renfield refuses to stay at the inn and asks the driver to take him to the Borgo Pass. The innkeeper and his wife seem to be afraid of Renfield’s destination, Castle Dracula, and warn him about vampires. The innkeeper's wife gives Renfield a crucifix for protection before he leaves for Borgo Pass, whence he is driven to the castle by Dracula's coach, which was awaiting him at Borgo Pass, with Dracula himself disguised as the driver. During the bumpy ride, Renfield leans out and starts to ask the driver to slow down, but is startled to see that the driver has disappeared, and a bat is leading the horses. Renfield enters the castle welcomed by charming but odd nobleman Count Dracula (Béla Lugosi), who unbeknownst to Renfield, is a vampire. Renfield expresses concern about the strange disappearance of the coach driver and his luggage, but Dracula assures him that he has arranged to have his luggage delivered. They discuss Dracula's intention to lease Carfax Abbey in England, where he intends to travel the next day. Dracula then leaves and Renfield goes to his bedroom. Dracula hypnotizes Renfield into opening a window and then causes him to faint. A bat is seen at the window, which then morphs into Dracula. Dracula's three wives suddenly appear and start to move toward Renfield to attack him, but Dracula waves them away, and he attacks Renfield himself. Aboard the schooner Vesta, bound for England, Renfield has now became a raving lunatic slave to Dracula, who is hidden in a coffin and gets out for feeding on the ship's crew. When the ship arrives in England, Renfield is discovered the only living person in it; the captain is lashed on the wheel and none of the ship’s crew is discovered. Renfield is sent to Dr. Seward’s sanatorium. Some nights later at a theatre, Dracula meets Dr. Seward (Herbert Bunston), who is with a group in a box seat area. Dr. Seward introduces his daughter Mina (Helen Chandler), her fiancé John Harker (David Manners), and the family friend Lucy Weston (Frances Dade). Lucy is fascinated by Count Dracula, and that night, after Lucy has a talk with Mina and falls asleep in bed, Dracula enters her room as a bat and feasts on her blood. She dies in an autopsy theatre the next day after a string of transfusions, and two tiny marks on her throat are discovered. Several days later, it is seen that Renfield is obsessed with eating flies and spiders, devouring their lives also. Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) analyzes Renfield's blood, discovering Renfield’s obsession. He starts talking about vampires, and that afternoon chats with Renfield, who begs Dr. Seward to send him away, because his nightly cries may disturb Mina’s dreams. When Dracula awakes and calls Renfield with wolf howling, Renfield is disturbed by Van Helsing showing him a branch of wolfbane. It stops wolves, as Van Helsing says, and also is used for vampire protection. Dracula visits Mina, asleep in her bedroom, and bites her, leaving neck marks similar to those on Lucy. The next morning, Mina tells of a dream in which she was visited by Dracula. Then, Dracula enters for a night's visit at the Sewards. Van Helsing and Harker notice that Dracula does not have a reflection in a mirror. When Van Helsing shows this "most amazing phenomenon" to Dracula, he reacts violently, smashes the mirror and leaves. Van Helsing deduces that Dracula is the vampire. Meanwhile, Mina leaves her room and runs to Dracula in the garden, where he wraps his cape around her and attacks her; the next morning, she is found and awakened from unconsciousness. Newspapers report that a "mysterious, beautiful woman in white" has been luring children from the park with chocolate, and then biting them. Mina recognizes the beautiful lady as Lucy, who has risen as a vampire. Harker wants to take Mina to London for safety, but he is finally convinced to leave Mina with them. Van Helsing orders Nurse Briggs (Joan Standing) to take care of Mina when she is sleeping, and not to remove the wreath of wolfbane from around her neck. Renfield again escapes from his cell and listens to the three men discussing vampires. Before Martin (Charles K. Gerrard), his attendant, arrives to take Renfield back to his cell, Renfield relates to Van Helsing, Harker and Seward how Dracula convinced Renfield to allow him to enter the sanitorium by promising him thousands of rats with blood and life in them. Dracula enters the Seward parlour and talks with Van Helsing. Dracula states that because he has fused his blood with Mina's, she now belongs to him. Van Helsing swears revenge by sterilizing Carfax Abbey and finding the coffin where he sleeps; he will then thrust a stake through his heart. Dracula tries to hypnotize Van Helsing, almost succeeding, but Van Helsing shows a crucifix to the vampire and turns away. Harker visits Mina on a terrace, and Mina speaks of how much she loves "nights and fogs". Harker notices Mina’s changes and says he likes them, not realizing that she is slowly transforming into a vampire. A bat (Dracula) flies above them and squeaks to Mina, to which she responds: "Yes? ... Yes? ... I will". Mina then tries to attack Harker. Fortunately, Van Helsing and Dr. Seward arrive just in time to save him. Mina confesses what Dracula has done to her, and tries to tell Harker that their love is finished. Later that night, Dracula hypnotizes Nurse Briggs into removing the wolfbane wreath from Mina's neck and opening the French windows so he can enter her room. Van Helsing and Harker see Renfield, having just escaped from his cell, heading for Carfax Abbey. They see Dracula with Mina in the abbey. When Harker shouts to Mina, Dracula sees them, thinking Renfield had trailed them. He strangles Renfield and tosses him down a staircase, and is hunted by Van Helsing and Harker. Dracula is forced to sleep in his coffin, as sunrise has come, and is trapped. Van Helsing prepares a wooden stake while Harker searches for Mina. He finds her in a strange stasis. Dracula moans in pain when Van Helsing impales him, and Mina returns to normal. Harker leaves with her while Van Helsing stays. Church bells are heard, implying that they will be married. Cast * Béla Lugosi as Count Dracula * Helen Chandler as Mina * David Manners as John Harker * Dwight Frye as Renfield * Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing * Herbert Bunston as Dr Seward * Frances Dade as Lucy * Joan Standing as Nurse Briggs (in an error on the opening credits, she is misidentified as "Maid") * Charles K. Gerrard as Martin Background/Production Bram Stoker's novel had already been filmed without permission as Nosferatu in 1922 by German expressionist film maker F. W. Murnau. Bram Stoker's widow sued for plagiarism and copyright infringement, and the courts decided in her favor, essentially ordering that all prints of Nosferatu be destroyed. Enthusiastic young Hollywood producer Carl Laemmle, Jr. also saw the box office potential in Stoker's gothic chiller, and he legally acquired the novel's film rights. Initially, he wanted Dracula to be a spectacle on a scale with the lavish silent films The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925). Like those films, Laemmle insisted it must star Lon Chaney, despite Chaney being under contract at MGM. Tod Browning was then approached to direct this new Universal epic. Browning had already directed Chaney as a fake vampire in the (lost) 1927 silent London after Midnight. However, a number of factors would limit Laemmle's plans: Firstly, Chaney himself, who had been diagnosed with throat cancer in 1928, had succumbed to his terminal illness. Furthermore, studio financial difficulties, coupled with the onset of the Great Depression, caused a drastic reduction in budget, forcing Laemmle to look at a cheaper alternative, which meant several grand scenes that closely followed the Stoker storyline had to be abandoned. Already a huge hit on Broadway, the tried and tested Deane/Balderston Dracula play would become the blueprint as the production gained momentum. The screenwriters carefully studied the silent, unauthorized version, Nosferatu for inspiration. One bit of business lifted directly from a nearly identical scene in Nosferatu that does not appear in Stoker's novel was the early scene at the Count's castle when Renfield accidentally pricks his finger on a paper clip and it starts to bleed, and Dracula creeps toward him with glee, only to be repelled when the crucifix falls in front of the bleeding finger. Decision on casting the title role proved problematic. Initially, Laemmle was not at all interested in Lugosi, in spite of good reviews for his stage portrayal. Laemmle instead considered other actors, including Paul Muni, Chester Morris, Ian Keith, John Wray, Joseph Schildkraut, Arthur Edmund Carewe and William Courtney. Lugosi had played the role on Broadway, and to his good fortune, happened to be in Los Angeles with a touring company of the play when the film was being cast. Against the tide of studio opinion, Lugosi lobbied hard and ultimately won the executives over, thanks in part to him accepting a paltry $500 per week salary for seven weeks of work, amounting to $3,500. The eerie speech pattern of Lugosi's Dracula was said to have resulted from the fact that Lugosi did not speak English, and therefore had to learn and speak his lines phonetically. This is a bit of an urban legend. While it was true Lugosi did not speak English at the time of his first English-language play in 1919 and had learned his lines to that play in this manner, by the time of Dracula Lugosi spoke English as well as he ever would. Lugosi's speech pattern would be imitated countless times by other Dracula portrayers, most often in an exaggerated or comical way. According to numerous accounts, the production is alleged to have been a mostly disorganized affair, with the usually meticulous Tod Browning leaving cinematographer Karl Freund to take over during much of the shoot. Moreover, the despondent Browning would simply tear out of the script pages that he felt were redundant; such was his seeming contempt for the screenplay. It is possible, however, given that Browning had originally intended Dracula as collaboration between him and Lon Chaney, his apparent lack of interest on the set was due to losing his friend and original leading man, rather than any actual aversion to the subject matter. The scenes of crew members on the ship struggling in the violent storm were lifted from a Universal silent film, The Storm Breaker (1925). Photographed at silent film projection speed, this accounts for the jerky, speeded-up appearance of the footage when projected at 24 frames per second sound film speed and cobbled together with new footage of Dracula and Renfield. Jack Foley was the foley artist who produced the sound effects. Cinematic process The film/negative format used in the creation of this film was 35 mm. The aspect ratio is the 1930 standard of 0.800 in. by 0.600 in. Original prints were tinted Verdante, a color film stock of the Sonochrome by Kodak. The film's histrionic dramatics from the stage play are also reflected in its special effects, which are limited to fog, lighting, and large flexible bats. Dracula's transition from bat to person is always done off-camera. The film also employs extended periods of silence and character close-ups for dramatic effect, and employs several intertitles and a closeup of a newspaper article to advance the story, holdovers from silent films. One point made by online film critic James Berardinelli[5] is that the actors' performance style seems to belong to the silent era. Director Tod Browning had a solid reputation as a silent film director, having made them since 1915, but he never felt completely at ease with sound films. He only directed a few more, the last in 1939. Reception When the film finally premiered at the Roxy Theatre in New York on Feb. 12, 1931, newspapers reported that members of the audiences fainted in shock at the horror on screen. This publicity, shrewdly orchestrated by the film studio, helped ensure people came to see the film, if for no other reason than curiosity. Dracula was a big gamble for a major Hollywood studio to undertake. In spite of the literary credentials of the source material, it was uncertain if an American audience was prepared for a serious full length supernatural chiller. Though America had been exposed to other chillers before, such as The Cat and the Canary (1927), this was a horror story with no comic relief or trick ending that downplayed the supernatural. Nervous executives breathed a collective sigh of relief when Dracula proved to be a huge box office sensation. Within 48 hours of its opening at New York's Roxy Theatre, it had sold 50,000 tickets. Later in 1931, Universal would release Frankenstein to even greater acclaim. Universal in particular would become the forefront of early horror cinema, with a canon of films including, The Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and The Wolf Man (1941). Censorship after the 1934 production code When the film was reissued after the Production Code was strictly enforced in 1934, at least two scenes are known to have been censored. The most famous was an epilogue which played only during the film's initial run. In a sequence similar to the prologue from Frankenstein, and again featuring Universal stalwart Edward Van Sloan, he reappeared to reassure the audience that what they’d seen wouldn’t give them nightmares. Van Sloan would then calmly inform those with a nervous disposition that... "There really are such things as Vampires!" In a 1936 reissue, this epilogue was removed out of fear of offending religious groups by encouraging a belief in the supernatural. Also, Dracula's off-camera "death groans" at the end of the film were silenced; this piece of soundtrack was later restored by MCA-Universal for its laser disc and subsequent DVD releases. However, Van Sloan's epilogue is still missing and presumed lost. Legacy Today, Dracula is widely regarded as a classic of the era and of its genre. In 2000, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". To many film lovers and critics alike, Lugosi's portrayal is widely regarded as the definitive Dracula. Lugosi had a powerful presence and authority on-screen. The slow, deliberate pacing of his performance ("I … bid you … welcome!" and "I never drink … wine!") gave his Dracula the air of a walking, talking corpse, which terrified 1931 movie audiences. He was just as compelling with no dialogue, and the many close-ups of Lugosi's face in icy silence jumped off the screen. With this mesmerizing performance, Dracula became Bela Lugosi's signature role, his Dracula a cultural icon, and he himself a legend in the classic Universal Horror film series. However, Dracula would ultimately become a role which would prove to be both a blessing and a curse. Despite his earlier stage successes in a variety of roles, from the moment Lugosi donned the cape on screen, it would forever see him typecast as the Count. Tod Browning would go on to direct Bela Lugosi once more in another vampire thriller, Mark of the Vampire, a 1935 remake of his lost silent film London after Midnight (1927). Iconography This film, and the 1920s stage play by Deane & Balderston, contributed much of Dracula's popular iconography, much of which vastly differs from Stoker's novel. In the novel and in the German silent film Nosferatu (1922), Dracula's appearance is repulsive; Lugosi portrays the Count as a handsome, charming nobleman. The Deane-Balderston play and this film also introduced the now iconic images of Dracula entering his victims' bedrooms through French doors/windows, wrapping his satin-lined cape around victims, and more emphasis on Dracula transforming into a bat. In the Stoker novel, he variously transformed into a bat or a wolf. The now classic Dracula line, "I never drink ... wine", is original to this film. It did not appear in Stoker's novel or the original production of the play. When the play was revived on Broadway in 1977 starring Frank Langella, the line was added, presumably because audiences had come to expect it. Sequels Five years after the release of the film (1936), Universal released Dracula's Daughter, a direct sequel that starts immediately after the end of the first film. A second sequel, Son of Dracula, starring Lon Chaney, Jr. followed in 1943. Despite his apparent death in the 1931 film, the Count returned to life in three more Universal films of the mid-1940s: 1944's House of Frankenstein, 1945's House of Dracula and 1948's comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Ironically, Universal would only cast Lugosi as Dracula in one more film, the aforesaid Abbott and Costello vehicle, inscrutably giving the role to John Carradine in any movies featuring Dracula made between 1931 and 1948, although Carradine admittedly more closely resembled Stoker's physical description from the book. Many of the familiar images of Dracula are from stills of the older Lugosi made during the filming of the 1948 comedy, so there remain two confusingly distinct incarnations of Lugosi as Dracula, seventeen years apart in age. As Lugosi played a vampire in three other movies during his career, this contributed to the public misconception that he portrayed Dracula on film many times. Soundtrack Due to the limitations of adding a musical score to a film's soundtrack during 1930 and 1931, no score had ever been composed specifically for the film. The music heard during the opening credits was later reused for the 1932 film, The Mummy. 1998 musical score by Philip Glass In 1998 composer Philip Glass was commissioned to compose a musical score for the classic film. The score was performed by the Kronos Quartet under direction of Michael Reisman, Glass's usual conductor. Of the project, Glass said: The film is considered a classic. I felt the score needed to evoke the feeling of the world of the 19th century — for that reason I decided a string quartet would be the most evocative and effective. I wanted to stay away from the obvious effects associated with horror films. With [the Kronos Quartet] we were able to add depth to the emotional layers of the film. The film, with this new score, was released by Universal Studios in 1999 in the VHS format. Universal's DVD releases allow the viewer to choose between the unscored soundtrack or the Glass score. The soundtrack, Dracula, was released by Nonesuch Records in 1999. Glass and the Kronos Quartet performed live during showings of the film in 1999 and 2000. Spanish-language and alternate silent version In the early days of sound films, it was common for Hollywood studios to produce Spanish-language versions of their films using the same sets, costumes and so on. While many of these versions no longer exist, the Spanish-language version of Dracula is an exception. This was included as a bonus feature on the Classic Monster Collection DVD in 1999, the Legacy Collection DVD in 2004 and the 75th Anniversary Edition DVD set in 2006. A third silent version of the film was also released. In 1931, some theatres had not yet been wired for sound, and during this transition period, many studios released alternate silent versions with intertitles.

I'm going to do 4 or 5 a night for 10 days. Hopefully, ending on Halloween.

37. Creepshow (1982) (3 of 20 lists - 46 points - highest rank #4 GoSox05) Creepshow is a 1982 American horror-comedy anthology film directed by George A. Romero (of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead fame), and written by Stephen King (Carrie, The Shining, Misery, The Stand ,The Shawshank Redemption). The film's ensemble cast includes Ted Danson, Leslie Nielsen, Hal Holbrook, E.G. Marshall and Ed Harris. It was considered a sleeper hit at the box office when released in November 1982, earning over $19.7 million domestically, and remains a popular film to this day among horror genre fans. The film was shot on location in Pittsburgh and the suburb areas. It consists of five short stories referred to as "Jolting Tales of Horror": "Father's Day", "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill", "Something to Tide You Over", "The Crate" and "They're Creeping Up on You!". Two of these stories, "The Crate" and "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" (originally titled "Weeds"), were adapted from previously published Stephen King's short horror tales. The segments are tied together with brief animated sequences. The film is bookended by scenes, featuring a young boy named Billy (played by Stephen King's own son, Joe King), who is punished by his father for reading horror comics. The film is an homage to the E.C. horror comic books of the 1950s such as Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear. In later years, the international rights of the film would be acquired by Republic Pictures, which today is a subsidiary of the Paramount Motion Pictures Group, itself owned by Viacom. The film's UK rights are owned by Universal Studios. Plot Prologue A young boy named Billy (Joe King) gets yelled at and slapped by his father, Stan (Tom Atkins), for reading a horror comic titled Creepshow. His father tosses the comic in the garbage to teach Billy a lesson, but not before threatening to spank him should Billy ever get caught reading Creepshow comic books again. Later after he tosses the comic book away, Stan reminds his wife (Iva Jean Saraceni) that he had to be hard on Billy because he cannot believe all the "crap" that's in the book. He closes out the discussion with the reason why God made fathers: to protect their ways of life and their children. As Billy sits upstairs hating his father, he hears a sound at the window, which turns out to be a ghostly apparition, beckoning him to come closer. "Father's Day" (First story, written by King specifically for the film) Seven years ago, an elderly patriarch named Nathan Grantham (Jon Lormer) was killed on Father's Day by his daughter Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors), gone mad from the murder of her husband which Nathan orchestrated. Bedelia bashed her father in the head with a marble ashtray as he screamed for his cake. Third Sunday of June, seven years later, his ungrateful, money-grubbing relatives, including Aunt Bedelia (now taken to drinking), get together for their annual dinner on Father's Day. Nathan Grantham comes back as a revenant to get the cake he never got, and kills off his relatives one by one. The end scene shows an undead Nathan (John Amplas) carrying Aunt Sylvia's frosting-covered head on a platter, rattling "It is Father's Day, and I got my cake." "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" (Second story, originally titled "Weeds", adapted from a previously published short story written by King) A dimwitted backwoods hick (Stephen King) thinks a newly discovered meteorite will provide enough money from the local college to pay off his $200 bank loan. Instead, he finds himself being overcome by a rapidly spreading plant-like organism that comes off the meteorite and begins growing on him after he touches a glowing green substance within (resulting in the sketch's famous quote: "Meteor s***!"). "Something to Tide You Over" (Third story, written by King expressly for the film) Richard Vickers (Leslie Nielsen), a coldblooded, wealthy husband, stages a terrible fate for his unfaithful wife, Becky (Gaylen Ross) and her lover, Harry Wentworth (Ted Danson) by burying them up to their necks on the beach, below the high tide line. He sets up closed-circut TV cameras so the lovers can watch each other die. Richard is in for a surprise of his own when the people he murdered return as waterlogged, seaweed-covered zombies intent on getting revenge of their own. "The Crate" (Fourth story, adapted from a previously published short story) A mysterious, extremely lethal creature is unwittingly released from its crate in this suspenseful and gory monster story. Hal Holbrook stars as mild-mannered college professor Henry Northrup, who sees the creature as a way to rid himself of his drunk, uncouth, and emotionally abusive wife, Wilma (Adrienne Barbeau). (The monster in the crate was nicknamed "Fluffy" by the film's director, George A. Romero) "They're Creeping Up On You!" (Fifth and final story, written by King expressly for the film) Upson Pratt (E.G. Marshall) is a cruel, ruthless businessman whose mysophobia has him living in a hermetically sealed apartment, but finds himself helpless when his apartment becomes overrun by endless hordes of cockroaches. Epilogue The following morning, two garbage collectors (Tom Savini and Marty Schiff) find the Creepshow comic in the trash. They look at the ads in the book for X-ray specs, a Charles Atlas bodybuilding course. They also see an advertisment for a voodoo doll, but lament that the order form has already been redeemed. Inside the house, Stan complains of neck pain, which escalates as Billy repeatedly jabs the voodoo doll while Stan screams in agony. Notes The film boasts one or two ongoing gimmicks for attentive viewers. A popular example would be that the murder weapon from the first story, an ornate marble ashtray, appears in each of the subsequent stories. Cast Prologue * Joe King as Billy * Tom Atkins (uncredited) as Stan * Iva Jean Saraceni as Billy's mother Father's Day * Jon Lormer as Nathan Grantham * Viveca Lindfors as Bedelia * Elizabeth Regan as Cass Blaine * Warner Shook as Richard Grantham * Ed Harris as Hank Blaine * Carrie Nye as Sylvia Grantham * Peter Messer as Yarbro * John Amplas as Undead Nathan * Nann Mogg as Mrs. Danvers The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill * Stephen King as Jordy Verrill * Bingo O'Malley as Jordy's father * John Colicos (uncredited) as Doctor Something to Tide You Over * Leslie Nielsen as Richard Vickers * Gaylen Ross as Becky Vickers * Ted Danson as Henry Wentworth The Crate * Hal Holbrook as Henry Northup * Adrienne Barbeau as Wilma Northup * Fritz Weaver as Dexter Stanley * Don Keefer as Mike the Janitor * Robert Harper as Charlie Gereson * Chuck Aber as Richard Raymond * Christine Forest as Tabitha Raymond * Cletus Anderson as Host * Katie Karlovitz as Maid * Charles Van Eman as Bartender * David Garrison (uncredited) as College party host * Daryl Ferrucci (uncredited) as Fluffy They're Creeping Up on You * E. G. Marshall as Upson Pratt * David Early as White * Ann Muffly (uncredited) as Voice of Lenora Castonmeyer Epilogue * Joe King as Billy * Tom Atkins (uncredited) as Stan * Iva Jean Saraceni as Billy's mother * Marty Schiff as Garbageman #1 * Tom Savini as Garbageman #2 Reaction Creepshow was given a wide release on November 12, 1982. It started strongly with an $8 million box-office gross for its first five days. In its opening weekend, Creepshow grossed $5,870,889, ranking #1 in the box office, capsizing First Blood from the top spot. Reviews Creepshow received positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "Romero and King have approached this movie with humor and affection, as well as with an appreciation of the macabre". In his review for the New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "The best things about Creepshow are its carefully simulated comic-book tackiness and the gusto with which some good actors assume silly positions. Horror film purists may object to the levity even though failed, as a lot of it is". Gary Arnold, in his review for the Washington Post, wrote, "What one confronts in Creepshow is five consistently stale, derivative horror vignettes of various lengths and defects". In his review for the Globe and Mail, Jay Scott wrote, "The Romero-King collaboration has softened both the horror and the cynicism, but not by enough to betray the sources - Creepshow is almost as funny and as horrible as the filmmakers would clearly love it to be". David Ansen, in his review for Newsweek, wrote, "For anyone over 12 there's not much pleasure to be had watching two masters of horror deliberately working beneath themselves. Creepshow is a faux naif horror film: too arch to be truly scary, too elemental to succeed as satire". In his review for Time, Richard Corliss wrote, "But the treatment manages to be both perfunctory and languid; the jolts can be predicted by any ten-year-old with a stop watch. Only the story in which Evil Plutocrat E.G. Marshall is eaten alive by cockroaches mixes giggles and grue in the right measure". The film has become a cult horror classic. Sequels and adaptations The film was adapted into an actual comic book of the same name soon after the film's release, illustrated by Bernie Wrightson, an artist fittingly influenced by the 1950s E.C. Comics. A sequel, Creepshow 2 was released in 1987, and was once again based on Stephen King short stories with a screenplay from Creepshow director George A. Romero. The film contained only three tales of horror, as opposed to the original's five stories. The general concept and plot of the film was adapted for the song "Everything Went Black" by The Black Dahlia Murder. However, the segments "They're Creeping Up on You," and "Father's Day" were omitted from the video. On November 10, 2009, it was announced that Taurus Entertainment had a 3-D remake planned. Unofficial sequels A further unofficial sequel, Creepshow III, featuring no involvement from Stephen King, George A. Romero, or anyone else involved in the production of the first two films, was released direct-to-video in 2007 (though it was finished in 2006) to mostly negative reviews. This film, in a fashion similar to the original Creepshow, features five short darkly comedic horror stories. The company behind the film was Taurus Entertainment, also responsible for the in-name-only Romero sequel, Day of the Dead 2: Contagium, a follow-up to 1985's Day of the Dead. Several screenshots from the film, demonstrating the way comic book imagery and effects were used extensively by director George Romero to recreate the feel of classic 1950's E.C. horror comics such as "Tales from the Crypt". Creepshow make-up artist and Creepshow 2 actor, Tom Savini, has said that Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990) is the real Creepshow 3. Television series The moderate success of Creepshow sparked interest in a television series in the same mold. After a few changes, Laurel Productions renamed the television version Tales from the Darkside, which lasted four years (1983–87). The series spawned a film adaptation very similar to Creepshow, entitled Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), directed by Creepshow composer John Harrison. The TV series was followed by a virtually identical series named Monsters, which lasted another three years (1988–91). Creepshow 4 & Creepshow: RAW Warner Bros. is one of the companies currently involved in developing a "revival" or remake of the film, to be titled Creepshow 4. Taurus Entertainment (rights holders of the original Creepshow) have licensed the rights to Jace Hall, of HDFILMS, a Burbank, California company, to produce Creepshow: RAW, a web series based upon the original film. The pilot episode for Creepshow: RAW wrapped on July 30, 2008, and is currently in post-production. The pilot was directed by Wilmer Valderrama and features Michael Madsen. Still shots from the filming can be found at genre news site, Bloody-Disgusting.com.

39. (tie) Return of the Living Dead (1985) (3 of 20 lists - 44 points - highest rank #4 Flash Tizzle) The Return of the Living Dead is a 1985 American zombie comedy film that was followed by several sequels. The film was written and directed by Dan O'Bannon and starred Clu Gulager, James Karen, Don Calfa, Thom Mathews, Beverly Randolph, Miguel A. Núñez Jr and Linnea Quigley. The film tells the story of how three men accompanied by a group of teenage punks deal with the accidental release of a horde of brain hungry zombies onto an unsuspecting town. The film is also known for its soundtrack, which features several noted deathrock and punk rock bands of the era. The film was a critical success and performed moderately well at the box office. It also spawned four sequels. Plot At the Uneeda medical supply warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky, a bumbling foreman named Frank tries to impress the company's newest employee, Freddy, by showing him a large drum containing the mummified remains of a U.S. army experiment gone horribly wrong. However, Frank accidentally unleashes a toxic gas (as well as the corpse) inside the barrel, setting off a chain reaction that subsequently leads to reanimated dead bodies rising from the ground in the cemetery next to the warehouse. As Frank and Freddy grow increasingly ill due to their direct exposure to the gas, Freddy's friends, their boss Burt and a mortician named Ernie spend the night fighting for their lives against a swarm of fast, unstoppable and surprisingly clever brain-eating zombies. Cast * Clu Gulager as Burt Wilson * James Karen as Frank * Don Calfa as Ernst "Ernie" Kaltenbrunner * Thom Mathews as Freddy * Miguel A. Núñez Jr. as Spider * Beverly Randolph as Tina * Jewel Shepard as Casey * John Philbin as Chuck * Brian Peck as Scuz * Linnea Quigley as Trash * Mark Venturini as Suicide * Jonathan Terry as Colonel Horace Glover Production The film has its roots in a novel by John Russo also called Return of the Living Dead. When Russo and George A. Romero parted ways after their 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, Russo retained the rights to any titles featuring Living Dead while Romero was free to create his own series of sequels, beginning with Dawn of the Dead. Russo and producer Tom Fox planned to bring Return of the Living Dead to the screen in 3D and directed by Tobe Hooper. Dan O'Bannon was brought in to give the script a polish and after Hooper backed out to make Lifeforce (also from a script by Dan O'Bannon), O'Bannon was offered the director's seat. He accepted on the condition he could rewrite the film radically so as to differentiate it from Romero's films. Russo retains a story writer credit on the film for developing the project, but the final film bears little to no resemblance to his original novel. He later wrote a novelization of the film which was fairly faithful to the shooting script, though without the character names as in the final film and the addition of a KGB sublot as an explanation for the plot. (Russo would, eventually, make his own 'canon' series with a 1999 revised edition of Night of the Living Dead, subtitled the 30th Anniversary Edition, and its sequel, Children of the Living Dead.) O'Bannon's script also differed from the Romero series in that it is markedly more comedy based than Romero's films, employing "splatstick" style morbid humor and eccentric dialogue. The films also boasted significant nudity, in marked contrast to Romero's work. Russo and O'Bannon were only directly involved with the first film in the series. The rest of the films, to varying degrees, stick to their outline and "rules" established in the first film. Although the movie is set in Louisville, Kentucky, it was filmed in California. The Louisville police uniforms and patrol cars were all period correct which means the studio had to obtain permission from the Louisville city government to use the Louisville police department emblem. Neither the Louisville police nor the city of Louisville received any acknowledgement in the end credits. The Tarman is performed by puppeteer Allan Trautman, who is best known for his work with Jim Henson and The Muppets. The "Half-Corpse" character was an animatronic puppet created by Tony Gardner, and puppeteered by Gardner, actor Brian Peck ("Scuz"), and Production Designer William Stout. This character launched Tony Gardner's career as an independent makeup effects artist.

39. (tie) Nosferatu (1922) (2 of 20 lists - 44 points - highest rank #3 FlaSoxxJim) Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (translated as Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror; also known as Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror or simply Nosferatu) is a German Expressionist horror film, directed by F. W. Murnau, starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok. The film, shot in 1921 and released in 1922, was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with names and other details changed because the studio could not obtain the rights to the novel (for instance, "vampire" became "Nosferatu" and "Count Dracula" became "Count Orlok"). Nosferatu was ranked twenty-first in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010. Plot Thomas Hutter (Jonathan Harker in Stoker's novel) lives in the fictitious German city of Wisborg. His employer, Knock (loosely based on Renfield), sends Hutter to Transylvania to visit a new client named Orlok. Hutter entrusts his loving wife Ellen to his good friend Harding and Harding's sister Ruth, before embarking on his long journey. Nearing his destination in the Carpathian mountains, Hutter stops at an inn for dinner. The locals become frightened by the mere mention of Orlok's name and discourage him from traveling to his castle at night, warning of a werewolf on the prowl. In his room, Hutter finds a book, The Book of the Vampires, through which he leafs before falling asleep. The next morning, Hutter dresses and packs, light-heartedly including the book in his bags. After a coach ride to a high mountain pass, the coachmen decline to take him any further as nightfall is approaching. A sinister black swathed coach of an archaic design suddenly appears and the coachman (obviously Orlock in disguise) gestures for him to climb aboard. Past midnight, Hutter is welcomed at the castle by Count Orlok himself, who excuses the poor welcome as the servants have all gone to bed. While Hutter has a late dinner, Orlok reads a letter. When Hutter cuts his thumb, Orlok tries to suck the blood out of the wound, but his repulsed guest pulls his hand away. Hutter then falls asleep exhausted in the parlor. He wakes up to an empty castle and notices fresh punctures on his neck, which he attributes to mosquitoes. That night, Orlok signs the documents to purchase the house across from Hutter's own home. Orlok sees Hutter's miniature portrait of his wife and admires her beautiful neck. Reexamining The Book of the Vampires, Hutter starts to suspect that Orlok is Nosferatu, the "Bird of Death". He cowers in his room as midnight approaches, but there is no way to bar the door. The door opens by itself and Orlok enters, his true nature finally revealed. At the same time, Ellen sleepwalks and screams for Hutter. She is somehow heard by Orlok, who leaves Hutter untouched. The next day, Hutter explores the castle. In its crypt, he finds the coffin in which Orlok is resting dormant. Horrified, he dashes back to his room. From the window, he sees Orlok piling up coffins on a coach and climbing into the last one before the coach departs. Hutter escapes the castle through the window by tying together strips of the bed linen, but has to jump when his improvised rope runs out, and is knocked unconscious by the fall. He is taken to a hospital. When he is sufficiently recovered, Hutter hurries home. An iconic scene Meanwhile, the coffins are shipped down river on a raft. They are transferred to a schooner, but not before one is opened by the crew. Inside, they find soil and rats. Under the long-distance influence of Orlok, Knock starts behaving oddly and is confined to a psychiatric ward. Later, Knock steals a newspaper, which tells of an outbreak of an unknown plague spreading down the coast of the Black Sea. Many people are dying, with odd marks on their necks. Knock rejoices. The sailors on the ship get sick one by one; soon all but the captain and first mate are dead. Suspecting the truth, the first mate goes below to destroy the coffins. However, Orlok awakens and the horrified sailor jumps into the sea. Unaware of his danger, the captain becomes Orlok's latest victim. When the ship arrives in Wisborg, Orlok leaves unobserved, carrying one of his coffins. (A passage in The Book of the Vampires reveals that the source of a vampire's power is the soil in which he was buried.) He moves into the house he purchased. The next morning, when the ship is inspected, the captain is found dead. After examining the logbook, the doctors assume they are dealing with the plague. The town is stricken with panic. Hutter returns home. Ellen reads The Book of Vampires, despite his injunction not to, and learns how to kill a vampire: a woman pure in heart must willingly give her blood to him, so that he loses track of time until the cock's first crowing. There are many deaths in the town. The residents chase Knock, who has escaped after murdering the warden, mistaking him for a vampire. Orlok stares from his window at the sleeping Ellen. She opens her window to invite him in, but faints. When Hutter revives her, she sends him to fetch Professor Bulwer. After he leaves, Orlok comes in. He becomes so engrossed drinking her blood, he forgets about the coming day. A rooster crows and Orlok vanishes in a bit of smoke as he tries to flee (marking the first death by sunlight in the history of vampire fiction). Ellen lives just long enough to be embraced by her grief-stricken husband. The last image of the movie is of Orlok's ruined castle in the Carpathian Mountains. Cast * Max Schreck as Count Orlok * Gustav von Wangenheim as Thomas Hutter * Greta Schröder as Ellen Hutter * Alexander Granach as Knock * Georg H. Schnell as Harding * Ruth Landshoff as Annie * John Gottowt as Professor Bulwer * Gustav Botz as Professor Sievers * Max Nemetz as The Captain of The Empusa * Wolfgang Heinz as First Mate of The Empusa * Heinrich Witte as guard in asylum * Guido Herzfeld as innkeeper * Karl Etlinger as student with Bulwer * Hardy von Francois as hospital doctor * Fanny Schreck as hospital nurse Origin and publication history Screenplay and pre-production Hutter's departure from Wisborg was filmed in Heiligen-Geist-Kirche's yard in Wismar; this photograph is from 1970. Nosferatu was the first and only production of Prana Film, founded in 1921 by Enrico Dieckmann and Albin Grau. Grau had the idea to shoot a vampire film; the inspiration arose from Grau's war experience: in the winter of 1916, a Serbian farmer told him that his father was a vampire and one of the Undead. Diekmann and Grau gave Henrik Galeen the task to write a screenplay inspired from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, despite Prana Film not having obtained the film rights. Galeen was an experienced specialist in Dark romanticism; he had already worked on Der Student von Prag (The Student of Prague) in 1913, and the screenplay for Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (The Golem: How He Came into the World) (1920). Galeen set the story in a fictional north German harbour town named Wisborg and changed the character names. He added the idea of the vampire bringing the plague to Wisborg via rats on the ship. He left out the Van Helsing vampire hunter character. Galeen's Expressionist style screenplay was poetically rhythmic, without being so dismembered as other books influenced by literary Expressionism, such as those by Carl Mayer. Lotte Eisner described Galeen's screenplay as "voll Poesie, voll Rhythmus" ("full of poetry, full of rhythm"). Production Filming began in July 1921, with exterior shots in Wismar. A take from Marienkirche's tower over Wismar marketplace with the Wasserkunst Wismar served as the establishing shot for the Wisborg scene. Other locations were the Wassertor, the Heiligen-Geist-Kirche yard and the harbour. In Lübeck, the abandoned Salzspeicher served as Nosferatu's new Wisborg house. Further exterior shots followed in Lauenburg, Rostock and on Sylt. The film team traveled to the Carpathian Mountains, where Orava Castle served as backdrop for Orlok's half-ruined castle. Nearby locations also served: Hutter's stay at Dolný Kubín; the river journey with the coffins filmed on the Váh River; and the panoramas of the High Tatras mountain range. The team filmed interior shots at the JOFA studio in Berlin's Johannisthal locality and further exteriors in the Tegel forest. Parts of the film set in Transylvania were also shot in Slovakia. For cost reasons, cameraman Fritz Arno Wagner only had one camera available, and therefore there was only one original negative. The director followed Galeen's screenplay carefully, following handwritten instructions on camera positioning, lighting, and related matters. Nevertheless Murnau completely rewrote 12 pages of the script, as Galeen's text was missing from the director's working script. This concerned the last scene of the film, in which Ellen sacrifices herself and the vampire dies in the first rays of the Sun. Murnau prepared carefully; there were sketches that were to correspond exactly to each filmed scene, and he used a metronome to control the pace of the acting. Premiere and theatre distribution Shortly before the premiere, an advertisement campaign was placed in issue 21 of the magazine Bühne und Film, with a summary, scene and work photographs, production reports and essays including a treatment on vampirism by Albin Grau. Nosferatu's preview premiered on 4 March 1922 in the Marmorsaal of the Berlin Zoological Garden. This was planned as a large society evening entitled Das Fest des Nosferatu (Festival of Nosferatu), and guests were asked to arrive dressed in Biedermeier costume. The cinema premiere itself took place on 15 March 1922 at Berlin's Primus-Palast. Contemporary critique The Premiere reviewers generally praised the film with some occasionally complaining that the technically perfect and brightly-lit images detracted from the unworldly horror theme. Der Film, a Berlin film magazine, praised the technical quality and the believability of Schreck's portrayal of the vampire, but also felt that his form would have had a greater effect had it been shown more in silhouette. Deviations from the novel The story of Nosferatu is similar to that of Dracula and retains the core characters—Jonathan and Mina Harker, the Count, etc.—but omits many of the secondary players, such as Arthur and Quincey, and changes all of the characters' names (although in some recent releases of this film, which is now in the public domain in the United States but not in most European states, the written dialog screens have been changed to use the Dracula versions of the names). The setting has been transferred from Britain in the 1890s to Germany in 1838. In contrast to Dracula, Orlok does not create other vampires, but kills his victims, causing the townfolk to blame the plague, which ravages the city. Also, Orlok must sleep by day, as sunlight would kill him. The ending is also substantially different from that of Dracula. The count is ultimately destroyed at sunrise when the "Mina" character sacrifices herself to him. The town called "Wisborg" in the film is in fact a mix of Wismar and Lübeck.[16] Influences This was the first and last Prana Film; the company declared bankruptcy after Bram Stoker's estate, acting for his widow, Florence Stoker, sued for copyright infringement and won. The court ordered all existing prints of Nosferatu destroyed, but copies of the film had already been distributed around the world. These prints were duplicated over the year. With the influence of producer and production designer Albin Grau, the film established one of two main depictions of film vampires. The "Nosferatu-type" is a living corpse with rodent features (especially elongated fingernails and incisors), associated with rats and plague, and neither charming nor erotic but rather totally repugnant. The victims usually die and are not turned into vampires themselves. The more common archetype is the "Dracula-type" (established by Bela Lugosi's version of Dracula and perpetuated by Christopher Lee), a charming aristocrat adept at seduction and whose bite turns his victims into new vampires. A more universal effect of the film is less obvious: the ending of Nosferatu single-handedly created the concept that vampires can be physically harmed by sunlight. While this was a common element of many other mythical creatures, pre-Nosferatu vampires disliked but could endure daylight (for instance, a part in the original Dracula novel shows its count in a London street by day). Since Nosferatu's release, the vampire legends have quickly incorporated the idea of fearing, or being destroyed by, the sun. Murnau's Nosferatu is in the public domain in the United States but not in Germany, and copies of the movie are widely available on video (usually as poorly transferred, faded, scratched video copies that are often scorned by enthusiasts). However, pristine restored editions of the film have also been made available, and are also readily accessible to the public. The movie has received not only a strong cult following, but also has received overwhelmingly positive reviews, including being cited as the best of all the adaptations of Dracula. On Rottentomatoes.com it received a "Certified Fresh" label and holds a 98 percent "fresh" rating based on 46 reviews. Derivative works Aaron Copland's 1922 ballet Grohg (unpublished and unpremiered until 1992) used Nosferatu as the physical model for the lead character and roughly follows the storyline. Hugh Cornwell of the Stranglers and Robert Williams recorded an album Nosferatu as a 'soundtrack' to the film, dedicted to the memory of Max Schreck, it was released in 1979. The front cover was a still from the film. Werner Herzog's 1979 homage to Nosferatu, Nosferatu the Vampyre starred Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula, not Orlok. A sequel to Herzog's film called Vampire in Venice starred Kinski, this time as Nosferatu, and Christopher Plummer as Paris Catalano. The 1979 television movie Salem's Lot modeled the appearance of Mr. Barlow on that of Count Orlok. In 1998, Wayne Keeley wrote and directed Nosferatu: The First Vampire, in which the original film was remastered to a soundtrack by Type O Negative and hosted by David Carradine. A 2000 Hollywood movie called Shadow of the Vampire told a secret history of the making of Nosferatu, imagining that actor Max Schreck (played by Willem Dafoe) was actually a genuine vampire, and that director F. W. Murnau (John Malkovich) was complicit in hiring the creature for the purpose of realism.

40. Frankenstein (1931) (3 of 20 lists - 43 points - highest rank #3 Tex) Frankenstein is a 1931 horror film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and adapted from the play by Peggy Webling which in turn is based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff, and features Dwight Frye and Edward van Sloan. The Webling play was adapted by John L. Balderston and the screenplay written by Francis Edward Faragoh and Garrett Fort with uncredited contributions from Robert Florey and John Russell. The make-up artist was Jack Pierce. Plot Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive), an ardent young scientist, and his devoted assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye), a hunchback, piece together a human body, the parts of which have been secretly collected from various sources. Frankenstein's consuming desire is to create human life through various electrical devices which he has perfected. Elizabeth (Mae Clarke), his fiancée, is worried to distraction over his peculiar actions. She cannot understand why he secludes himself in an abandoned watch tower, which he has equipped as a laboratory, and refuses to see anyone. She and her friend, Victor Moritz (John Boles), go to Dr. Waldman (Edward Van Sloan), his old medical professor, and ask Dr. Waldman's help in reclaiming the young scientist from his absorbing experiments. Elizabeth, intent on rescuing Frankenstein, arrives just as Henry is making his final tests. They all watch Frankenstein and the hunchback as they raise the dead creature on an operating table, high into the room, toward an opening at the top of the laboratory. Then a terrific crash of thunder, the crackling of Frankenstein's electric machines, and the hand of Frankenstein's monster (Boris Karloff) begins to move. Through Fritz's error, a criminal brain was secured for Frankenstein's experiments which results in the monster knowing only hate, horror and murder. The manufactured monster despite its grotesque form, initially appears not to be a malevolent beast, but a simple, innocent creation. Frankenstein welcomes it into his laboratory, and asks his creation to sit, which it does. Fritz, however, enters with a flaming torch which frightens the monster. Its fright is mistaken by Frankenstein and Dr. Waldman as an attempt to attack them, and so it is taken to the dungeon where it is chained. Thinking that it is not fit for society, and will wreak havoc at any chance, they leave the monster locked up where Fritz antagonizes it with a torch. As Henry and Dr. Waldman consider the fate of the monster they hear a shriek from the dungeon. Frankenstein and Dr. Waldman rush in to find the monster has strangled Fritz. The monster makes a lunge at the two but they escape the dungeon, locking the monster inside. Realizing that the creature must be destroyed Henry prepares an injection of a powerful drug and the two conspire to release the monster and inject it as it attacks. When the door is unlocked the creature emerges and lunges at Frankenstein as Dr. Waldman injects the drug into the creature's back. The monster knocks Dr. Waldman to the floor and has nearly killed Henry when the drug takes effect and he falls to the floor unconscious. Henry leaves to prepare for his wedding while Dr. Waldman conducts an examination of the unconscious creature. As he is preparing to begin dissecting it the creature awakens and strangles him. It escapes from the tower and wanders through the landscape. It then has a short encounter with a farmer's young daughter, Maria, who asks him to play a game with her in which they playfully toss flowers into a lake and watch them float. The monster enjoys the game, but when they run out of flowers, tragedy occurs. Because of his defective brain, the monster thinks the little girl will float, so he picks her up and throws her into the lake, and the girl drowns. Realizing he has made a terrible mistake, the monster walks away feeling troubled and remorseful. This drowning scene is one of the most controversial in the film, with a long history of censorship. With preparations for the wedding completed, Frankenstein is once again himself and serenely happy with Elizabeth. They are to marry as soon as Dr. Waldman arrives. Victor rushes in, saying that the Doctor has been found strangled in his operating room. Frankenstein suspects the monster. A chilling scream convinces him that the monster is in the house. When the searchers arrive, they find Elizabeth unconscious on the bed. The monster has escaped. He is only intent upon destroying Frankenstein. Leading an enraged band of peasants, Frankenstein searches the surrounding country for the monster. He becomes separated from the band and is discovered by the monster who, after the two stare each other down for a curious moment, attacks him. After a struggle, in which Frankenstein's torch fails to save him, the monster knocks Frankenstein unconscious and carries him off to the old mill. The peasants hear his cries and follow. Finally reaching the mill, they find the monster has climbed to the very top, dragging Frankenstein with him. In a burst of rage, he hurls the young scientist to the ground. His fall is broken by the vanes of the windmill, saving him from instant death. Some of the villagers hurry him to his home while the others remain to burn the mill and destroy the entrapped monster. Later, back at Castle Frankenstein, Frankenstein's father, Baron Frankenstein (Frederick Kerr) celebrates the wedding of his recovered son with a toast to a future grandchild. Difference from film and book There are more differences between the movie and book than there are similarities. This is because the movie is largely based on the 1920s play by Peggy Webling rather than the original Shelley text. A notable difference between the book and film is the articulation of the monster's speech. In Shelley's book, the creature taught himself to read with books of classic literature such as Milton's Paradise Lost. The creature learns to speak clearly, in what appears in the novel as Early Modern English, because of the texts he has found to learn from while in hiding. In the 1931 film, the creature is completely mute except for grunts and growls. (In the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein, the original creature learns some basic speech but is very limited in his dialog, speaking with rough grammar and still preferring at times to express himself gutturally. By the third film, Son of Frankenstein, the creature is apparently inarticulate again. In the fourth film, The Ghost of Frankenstein, the Monster gets Ygor's brain and speaks with Ygor's voice (Béla Lugosi). The fifth film, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, was shot this way, but the Monster was dubbed over with grunts when test audiences laughed at the Monster (now Lugosi in both voice and form) speaking. In Mary Shelley's original novel, the creature's savage behavior is his conscious decision against his maltreatment and neglect because of his inhuman appearance, whereas in the 1931 film adaptation states that his condition is largely due to the mistake made by Frankenstein's assistant Fritz, who provides a "Criminal Brain" to be used for the creature. One of the film's most famous scenes, in which the Monster tosses a little girl into a river, is the obverse of a scene in the novel in which he rescues a girl from drowning, only to be shot in the arm by her father. The deformed (hunchbacked) assistants of the first two films are not characters derived from the novel. In the original text, Frankenstein creates his monster in solitude without servants. In the novel, how Frankenstein builds the creature is only obscurely described, references being made to a long slow process born from a combination of new scientific principles and ancient alchemical lore. Whereas the movies precisely depict the methodology by which their version of the monster is created, showing Frankenstein robbing graves of the recently dead and using the organs and body parts to reconstruct a new human body. This process culminates with the harnessing of a lightning bolt to awaken the creature, a scene famously depicted with great spectacle in the 1931 film. Despite their at best limited presence in the original novel (emphasized by Frankenstein's three brushoffs of the question), the idea of the patchwork body of dead flesh and massive discharges of electricity being key to the genesis of the monster have become commonly associated with the Frankenstein story. Another part of the book that is entirely unmentioned in the movie is the Monster's request that Frankenstein make a female companion for him. The Monster threatens Frankenstein, and Frankenstein submits and begins to create another creature. Halfway through the procedure, Frankenstein is overcome with guilt and destroys his work, saying that he would not form another being as hideous and demonic as the first one. This enrages the Monster and causes him to vow that he will be with Frankenstein on his wedding night. Much of this material is dealt with in Bride of Frankenstein. In the novel, Frankenstein's name is Victor, not Henry (Henry Clerval was the name of Victor's best friend) and he is not a doctor, but rather a college dropout who studied chemistry. Elizabeth is murdered by the Monster on her wedding night. The Monster also murders Henry Clerval and Victor's young brother William, and the family maid, Justine Moritz, hangs for the crime. Victor's father dies heartbroken after Elizabeth's murder and Victor begins his pursuit of the monster, which eventually leads to his death from an illness aboard a boat en route to the North Pole. The Monster, finding Victor dead, vows to travel to the Pole and commit suicide, although it is not revealed if he does so. Cast * Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein * Mae Clarke as Elizabeth * John Boles as Victor Moritz * Boris Karloff as The Monster * Edward Van Sloan as Dr Waldman * Frederick Kerr as Baron Frankenstein * Dwight Frye as Fritz * Lionel Belmore as Herr Vogel, the Burgomaster * Marilyn Harris as Little Maria Production The film begins with Edward Van Sloan stepping from behind a curtain and delivering a "friendly warning" before the opening credits: We are about to unfold the story of Frankenstein, a man of science who sought to create a man after his own image without reckoning upon God. It is one of the strangest tales ever told. It deals with the two great mysteries of creation – life and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even – horrify you. So if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now's your chance to – uh, well, we warned you. In the opening credits, Karloff is unbilled, with only a question mark being used in place of his name. This is a nod to a tradition of theatrical adaptations billing the monster without a name. Universal had not revealed in advance who was playing the monster, and had not released any pictures of the monster in order to conceal his appearance. Karloff's name is revealed in the closing credits, which otherwise duplicate the credits from the opening under the principle that "A Good Cast Is Worth Repeating". There was controversy around this point originally, as some part of the management of Universal built up the suspense of who was playing the creature to gather interest in the film as Bela Lugosi was still largely thought to be performing the role of the creature up until the time of the film's release. Some papers were erroneously still listing Lugosi as the performer. Some were coming to see if Lugosi had changed his mind and recanted to star in the film despite some published statements to the contrary, most notably the still famous "electric beam eyes" poster which still credited Lugosi as the monster and showed the creature without the now famous flat head, neck-bolt makeup (created by Universal Studios make-up artist Jack Pierce. Pierce also created Lon Chaney's Wolf Man make-up and Karloff's Mummy make-up as well). Others state it was because the film would cause the ruin of the performer in the role and wanted to minimize said actor's liability, for the original film went against the censor boards of the day. Bela Lugosi was originally set to star as the monster. After several disastrous make-up tests, the Dracula star left the project. Although this is often regarded as one of the worst decisions of Lugosi's career, in actuality the part that Lugosi was offered was not the same character that Karloff eventually played. The character in the Florey script was simply a killing machine without a touch of human interest or pathos, reportedly causing Lugosi to complain "I was a star in my country and I will not be a scarecrow over here!" However, the decision may not have been Lugosi's in any case, since recent evidence suggests that he was kicked off the project, along with director Robert Florey. Ironically, Lugosi would later go on to play the monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man a decade later, when his career was in decline and only after Lon Chaney, Jr. complained bitterly about the possibility of him doing double work through trick photography to appear as both the Wolfman and the Monster in the film for about the same pay rate. Chaney had already appeared as the Monster in the previous Frankenstein film Ghost of Frankenstein, directly succeeding Boris Karloff in the role. As was the custom at the time, only the main cast and crew were listed in the credits. Additionally, however, a number of other actors who worked on the project were or became familiar to fans of the Universal horror films. These included Frederick Kerr as the old Baron Frankenstein, Henry's father; Lionel Belmore as Herr Vogel, the Burgomeister; Marilyn Harris as Little Maria, the girl the monster accidentally kills; and Michael Mark as Ludwig, Maria's father. Jack Pierce was the makeup artist who designed the now-iconic "flat head" look for Karloff's monster, although Whale's contribution in the form of sketches remains a controversy, and who was actually responsible for the idea of the look will probably always be a mystery. Kenneth Strickfaden designed the electrical effects used in the "creation scene." So successful were they that such effects came to be considered an essential part of every subsequent Universal film involving the Frankenstein Monster. Accordingly, the equipment used to produce them has come to be referred to in fan circles as "Strickfadens." It appears that Strickfaden managed to secure the use of at least one Tesla Coil built by the then-aged Nikola Tesla himself. According to this same source, Strickfaden also doubled for Karloff in the electrical "birth" scene as Karloff was deathly afraid of being electrocuted from the live voltage on the stage. There is no musical soundtrack in the film, except for the opening and closing credits. The film opened in New York City at the Mayfair Theatre on December 4, 1931 and grossed $53,000 in one week. Censorship history The scene in which the monster throws the little girl into the lake and accidentally drowns her has long been controversial. Upon its original 1931 release, the second part of this scene was cut by state censorship boards in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York. Those states also objected to a line they considered blasphemous, one that occurred during Frankenstein's exuberance when he first learns that his creature is alive. The original line was: "It's alive! It's alive! In the name of God! Now I know what it's like to be God!" Local censor boards cut or obliterated "Now I know ..." Originally, Kansas refused to pass the film without dozens of cuts. Universal Pictures sent censor representative Joseph Breen there to urge them to reconsider. Eventually, a compromise was reached, and Frankenstein was shown in that state. As with many Pre-Code films that were reissued after strict enforcement of the Production Code in 1934, Universal made cuts from the master negative, and the deleted sequences were unseen for years. For a 1937 reissue of the film, these cuts included: * Frankenstein's line, "Now I know what it's like to be God!", was obliterated by a clap of thunder on the soundtrack. * Some footage of Frankenstein's assistant Fritz taking sadistic glee in scaring the monster by waving a lit torch near him while the monster is shackled in chains. * Close up of needle injection was removed. * In the scene of the monster and the little girl tossing flowers into the lake, the second part of the scene was cut, beginning at the moment he extends his hands to pick her up. These censored scenes were not shown for decades; in 1986, MCA-Universal restored the shots of Fritz tormenting the Monster, close up of needle injection and Maria being thrown in the water while the full "Now I know what it feels like to be God!" line wouldn't be fully restored until 1999. Reception Frankenstein received universal acclaim from critics and is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1931, as well as one of the greatest movies of all time. It holds a 100% "Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes. In 1991, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". In 2004, The New York Times placed the film on its Best 1000 Movies Ever list. Frankenstein also received recognition from the American Film Institute. It was named the 87th greatest movie of all time on 100 Years... 100 Movies. The line "It's alive! It's alive!" was ranked as the 49th greatest movie quote in American cinema. The film was on the ballot for several of AFI's 100 series lists, including AFI's 10 Top 10 for the sci-fi category, 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition), and twice on 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains for both Dr. Henry Frankenstein and the Monster in the villains category. The film was ranked number 56 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills, a list of America's most heart-pounding movies. It was also ranked number 27 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments. Additionally, the Chicago Film Critics Association named it the 14th scariest film ever made. Sequels and parodies Frankenstein was followed by a string of sequels, beginning with Bride of Frankenstein (1935), in which Elsa Lanchester plays the Monster's bride. The next sequel, 1939's Son of Frankenstein, was made, like all those that followed, without Whale or Clive (who had died in 1937). This film also featured Karloff's last full film performance as the Monster. Son of Frankenstein featured Basil Rathbone as Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, and Lionel Atwill as Inspector Krogh. The Ghost of Frankenstein was released in 1942. The movie features Lon Chaney, Jr. as the Monster, taking over from Boris Karloff, who played the role in the first three films of the series, and Bela Lugosi in his second appearance as the demented Ygor. Many of the subsequent films which featured Frankenstein's monster demote the creature to a robotic henchman in someone else's plots, such as in its final Universal film appearance in the deliberately farcical Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). Karloff would return to the wearing of the makeup and to the role of the Monster one last time in the TV show Route 66 in the early 1960s. The popular 1960s TV show, The Munsters, depicts the family's father Herman as Frankenstein's monster, who married Count Dracula's daughter. The make-up for Herman is based on the make-up of Boris Karloff. Mel Brooks's comedy Young Frankenstein parodied elements of the first three Universal Frankenstein movies. Brooks also recreated the movie into a musical of the same name. Universal film company's 2004 film Van Helsing also featured the Frankenstein creature. A short film, Frankenthumb, is a comedy spoof created using only thumbs. Frankenstein's assistant Although Frankenstein's hunchbacked assistant is often referred to as "Igor" in descriptions of the films, this is incorrect. In both Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, Frankenstein has an assistant who is played both times by Dwight Frye who is crippled. In the original 1931 film the character is named "Fritz" who is hunchbacked and walks with the aid of a small cane. In Bride of Frankenstein, Frye plays "Karl" a murderer who stands upright but has a lumbering metal brace on both legs that can be heard clicking loudly with every step. Both characters would be killed by Karloff's monster in their respective films. It was not until Son of Frankenstein that a character called "Ygor" first appears (here played by Bela Lugosi and revived by Lugosi in the Ghost of Frankenstein after his apparent murder in Son of Frankenstein). This character — a deranged blacksmith whose neck and back are broken and twisted due to a botched hanging — befriends the monster and later helps Dr. Wolf Frankenstein, leading to the "hunchbacked assistant" called "Igor" commonly associated with Frankenstein in pop culture. In popular culture * During the early stages of preproduction on the biopic Walk the Line, director James Mangold interviewed the biopic's subject Johnny Cash. Cash told Mangold that his favorite film was Frankenstein. Cash explained that the idea of a gentle figure being mistaken for a monster spoke to him at a personal level. * The world's most valuable movie poster is the full color 1931 Frankenstein 6-sheet which is currently owned by Stephen Fishler, a NY poster collector. It is the only copy known to exist. * In the 1996 TV film Doctor Who, during the mortuary/regeneration scene, a mortuary assistant is shown watching the film. More specifically, the monster's reactions to its first moments of life, is paralleled in the Doctor's regeneration after he is pronounced dead. * The movie is prominently featured, and acts as a major plot element, in the Spanish film The Spirit of the Beehive * In the movie Weird Science the movie is shown along with a similar resurrection sequence. * In the 2008 film Hancock, Will Smith's character John Hancock's (an immortal) earliest memory is of being mugged while on his way to see the movie with his beloved. * In the pilot episode of The Incredible Hulk, a scene mirrored the "little Maria scene" with the Hulk replacing the Monster. In the 1981 series episode "The First", many of the actual props from the movie utilized as Dr. Clive's laboratory equipment which was used to resurrect the "Evil Hulk," played by Dick Durrock. Furthermore, some of the characters of the episode were named after the actors of the Frankenstein film, such as "Clive," "Frye," and "Elizabeth." * At Halloween Horror Nights (Orlando) in 2009 there was a haunted attraction patterned after the Frankenstein monster. * In Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, Jason Voorhees is brought back to life after a lightning bolt strikes a metal post that was driven through his chest, in homage to the famous lightning scene.

The list starts soon!

Torres was great this year.

What about Tony Washington? http://www.nowpublic.com/sports/tony-washi...er-2589092.html Too creepy?