raywest

20th May 2021

Grease (1978)

Question: When Sandy and Danny bump into each other after the pep rally, why did the rest of the T birds make angry looks towards Danny?

Answer: Because he dropped his tough guy attitude and sounded like a wimp. That's why they looked at him like that.

lartaker1975

Answer: Probably because Danny's attention has been diverted to Sandy rather than him hanging out with them.

raywest

7th May 2021

El Dorado (1966)

Question: Where were the interior shots of the jail filmed?

Answer: Online information says "El Dorado" was filmed at the Old Tucson Studios located west of Tucson, AZ and also near the Suguaro National Park, as well as other outdoor locations in Arizona and Utah. Old Tucson was a complete recreation of a mid-1800s Old West town, which had over a hundred authentically-recreated western buildings, including a jail. There was also a film studio housed there. Hundreds of western movies and TV shows were filmed at the location. Most likely the jail scenes were filmed at the Tucson film studio and also at the replicated jail. The site also operated as an amusement park, but it has recently closed.

raywest

Answer: Paramount studios is the only building location listed at IMDB. Everything else is outdoor locations. Towns, ranches, horse trails and mountain terrain.

Answer: Paramount Studios. Look in IMDB.

There's 16 filming locations listed, how do you know Paramount Studios is where the interior of the jail scene was filmed? Nothing on IMDB suggested it.

Bishop73

21st Apr 2021

Bullitt (1968)

Question: What character did the actor John Aprea play in the movie? The credits at the end lists him as 'The Killer', but who did he kill? He wasn't one of the two hit men at the hotel.

Answer: Notice: Aprea is credited as "Killer", not "The Killer." I think this confuses reviewers, as they assume he must be one of the hit men. However, the hit men are credited as "Phil" (Bill Hickman) and "Mike" (Paul Genge). Genge is much older than Aprea and Aprea does not look like the grey-haired hit man, as another contributor has pointed out already. There is no other killer in the plot. Perhaps Aprea's scenes were cut.

Answer: The doctor that alerts Bullitt that the grey-haired hitman is in the hospital looks like Aprea. He calls himself Dr. Kenner, and that character is uncredited. Maybe "Killer" was supposed to be "Kenner" in the credits?

Answer: Aprea portrays the Organization hood who shoots wildly at Johnny Ross as Ross' car careens out of the parking lot into and down the alley during his getaway in Chicago.

Answer: In a Bullitt movie clip on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) website, it identifies John Aprea as the killer who goes to the hospital to murder the witness. Bullitt chases him to the basement toward the end of the film.

raywest

The killer that Bullitt chases is Paul gange (listed in the credits in the role of "Mike") despite the TCM website. Aprea is listed in the movie's credits as the killer, but also lists gange as Mike. Look the name up on IMDB and you can see from his photo that he is the guy Bullitt chases. Why John Aprea - at least 20 years younger than the killer in the movie - is credited as the killer, I have no idea. And I have no idea where in the movie Aprea really appeara.

9th May 2021

Bullitt (1968)

Question: In the surgery scenes, it actually appears to this nurse that the scrub nurse may be a real one. Is she?

Answer: No, she's played (uncredited) by Barbara Bosson, an actress who had an extensive TV career.

Answer: She was the wife of Steven Bochco. He created the TV Shows, Hill Street Blues, Doogie Howser, L.A. Law, N.Y.P.D. and countless other shows. All of which influenced TV programming today, with hard hitting stories, ripped from the headlines and subject matter.

Answer: The film was extensively shot on location in San Francisco, foregoing a sound stage for interior scenes, and was noted for depicting realistic police and medical procedures. The scene in the E.R. used real doctors and nurses as extras. The actress, Barbara Bosson, was likely coached by the medical staff.

raywest

Show generally

Question: Why does Murdoch's bike not have a ring bell or horn? He is often seen cycling through the busy streets at high speed to arrive on a scene ASAP but never uses any sound warning apart from yelling occasionally - which looks pretty awkward for an official person.

Dangar

Answer: It's certainly a personal choice about using one, and probably similar to how some people refuse to wear a helmet or forego other safety equipment. Most bells and horns on bikes are not very loud and probably wouldn't be heard in busy traffic, making them mostly ineffective. Murdoch would likely still yell, even if he had a bell or horn.

raywest

Question: Just an observation. There's 5 or 6 minutes of screen time between the initial shrinking of the sub / crew and the start of the 60-minute clock. Shouldn't those minutes have been included in the countdown?

Answer: I think the countdown began after the crew were injected into the patient's body.

No, the countdown started after the second shrink.

Answer: The sub was shrunk in stages, with the lab personnel performing different tasks at each step. The clock automatically reset after each step was completed and as the next shrink phase commenced. The final sixty-minute countdown began after the last shrinking stage and when the sub is injected into the scientist's body.

raywest

Question: They are found and removed from the patient's eye so easily. Why didn't they go in through the eye from the very beginning to begin with?

Answer: The miniaturized sub was injected into the man's carotid artery (neck) because it directly led to the brain and the blood clot. It was an unobstructed pathway taking the least amount of time for the sixty-minute mission. Exiting through the eye was done as an emergency escape route after the mission was sabotaged and the sub was destroyed. It was only easy to remove the crew once they exited the eye and were floating in the tears. Getting to and out the eye was difficult.

raywest

7th May 2021

Underwater (2020)

Question: A helmet that is built to withstand thousands of PSI can really be broken by a few slams with a fire extinguisher?

Dangar

Answer: The helmet is designed to withstand immense pressure that is equally distributed over its entire surface. Direct blunt-force impacts by a hard metal object like a fire extinguisher may compromise the structural integrity.

raywest

7th May 2021

Set it Off (1996)

Question: How did Luther know where they stashed the money, and how did he blow through over $750,000 practically overnight?

Answer: I would also think Luther had found his "Retirement Fund" and was not going to give it up that easy, and had it hidden in a way that it was not going to be easily found, like he did, thanks to the not so crafty criminals who hid almost a million dollars in an air vent.

I agree with that answer. Bear in mind that if Luther could find the money easily, something he must have done as part of his job as the chief janitor of the building, he sure as hell wasn't going to make it easy for the next person to get it from him. And the amount, according to "Francheska" (Frankie), was "Over $75K and counting..." not $750K. There's a big difference.

Kahuru1

I thought it was "296,000 and counting."

Answer: Luther worked as the cleaner in the building where the girls hid the money in the air duct. He apparently just happened to come across it while cleaning. As to blowing through it, he may have been lying to them that it was all gone, but he had already bought some pretty expensive items. Something like a fancy sports car alone can cost $100,000 or more.

raywest

Raywest, I don't think he even admitted to having the money at all, except denying that he even knew anything about it before "Teshaun" (Tete) shot him from behind. That act alone rendered recovery of whatever was left almost impossible. Luther went to the grave with that secret.

Kahuru1

I thought they worked for him, so why would he be cleaning? Also, who cleans air vents in an office building?

Answer: The girls were certainly not the craftiest of criminals, certainly amateurs. You NEVER hide that kind of cash in an air vent - EVER. Unfortunately, in life, you take the exam and the lesson is learned after.

Kahuru1

Question: Why was Will starting to become a "fish person"? Davy Jones and his crew only turned into "fishes" because he neglected his duties. If Will is still undertaking his duties then he shouldn't start having growths such as the algae and the starfish (seen when Henry summons the Dutchman at the start of the film).

Answer: There was never an explanation and it was just glossed over. The first Pirates film was meant as a stand-alone movie. Due to its phenomenal success, the story line was reversed-engineered into a trilogy, with many implausible and/or inconsistent plot elements added. When the fourth and fifth films were made, there were even more inconsistencies, including that Will, who once broke the Dutchman curse, is now inexplicably cursed, along with the Flying Dutchman ship and crew. One explanation is that the curse was reactivated after Davy Jones was somehow resurrected. Then it was supposed to be that the only way to break all sea curses was by destroying Poseidon's trident. It was all badly muddled.

raywest

Question: If the Borg can survive in the vacuum of space without suits (decompression liquefying their organic skin aside), Hawk also should've been able to once assimilated. They obviously had to take his suit off to assimilate him, but why did they put it back on him before sending him back out to help his new comrades?

Answer: He had only just been assimilated and may not have yet have been modified with more specialized Borg technology that allowed the drones to survive in open space using a force field.

raywest

Answer: They assimilated him through his suit.

7th May 2021

The Sixth Sense (1999)

Question: Is the kitchen ghost woman the mother of gunshot boy?

Answer: Multiple ghosts just gravitated to where Cole was. It didn't have anything to do with the spirits having any relationship with one another. They actually seem oblivious to other ghosts.

raywest

Answer: Highly unlikely. The ghosts are there because they have unfinished business regarding their deaths. The woman you see is raging about having a lousy husband, she was probably abused and possibly killed by him. That has nothing to do with the boy that shot himself.

lionhead

She killed herself. Remember, she shows her slit writs and says 'Look what you made me do!'

Brian Katcher

6th May 2021

General questions

I remember seeing a "Star Wars" knockoff on TV years ago. I believe it was from the late 70's or early 80's. I don't remember much about it other than a scene that was copying the Death Star trench-run scene, where a couple spaceships were flying down this sort-of mechanical tunnel with really iffy special effects. I seem to remember the scene being overly red/orange tinted. I also think this may have been a foreign film (like Japanese), but I'm not 100% sure. Ring anyone's bell?

TedStixon

Answer: There is a Japanese one called Message from Space.

I looked it up on YouTube. This is the closest answer at this point because there is a somewhat similar scene, but I'm still pretty sure that's not it... it doesn't really match up perfectly with what I remember.

TedStixon

Answer: In 1978 there was a short film parody titled, "Hardware Wars," made on a very low budget and used carpenter tools as space ships.

Answer: OP here. Another detail of the scene that I remember is that the scene looked kinda like it was done with cut-outs. Like pictures of the spaceships instead of models, if that makes any sense. Like the ships all looked "flat." And most of the camera angles seemed to be either POV's of the "hero" ship, or shots from behind. If memory serves, there were also some enemy ships. The tunnel was more of a cylinder than a trench. Like it went completely around all the ships. And like I said, the entire scene had kind of a red/orange tint.

TedStixon

Answer: If it was blue light instead of red/orange, you may be thinking of Starcrash. Although I would think you would have remembered Caroline Munro wearing what the Mystery Science Theater crew described as "vampire lingerie."

I don't believe it was "Star Crash." I scanned through a couple movies looking for the scene in question before posting this and couldn't find it in that movie.

TedStixon

Answer: There is a, I believe, Turkish version out there as well.

kayelbe

Definitely not "Turkish Star Wars." I've seen a fair bit of that movie.

TedStixon

Answer: This could be "Spaceballs," the 1987 Mel Brooks film that parodies "Star Wars."

raywest

Definitely not "Spaceballs." This movie was probably made before it and wasn't a parody from what I can remember.

TedStixon

Answer: As noted elsewhere here Jeannie is speaking Farsi.

What are the several things she says in Farsi? Please translate.

Answer: Regarding the three wishes, there was never any set-in-stone rule or belief. This appears to originate from "The Ridiculous Wishes" or "The Three Ridiculous Wishes" that is a French literary fairy tale written by Charles Perrault and was published in 1697. It sort of set the standard for genie rules that later appeared in other folk tales and then in movies and TV shows. Like vampire lore, common details can be changed by any author to suit their story.

raywest

Answer: She's speaking Persian. And there was never a 3 wish rule. When Tony freed her, he became her master, and she'd do anything for him (i.e. grant his every wish).

Bishop73

4th May 2021

Alien (1979)

Question: Why did the shuttle craft only have room for two crew members when there are seven of them? The shuttle is mainly an escape vessel if the ship was in danger and their lives were at risk hence the stasis capsules, so there should have been accommodation for seven.

Answer: Considering "The Company" that owned the mining space ship was notoriously cheap (and corrupt) about providing their crew with necessities, it is hardly surprising they had inadequate safety equipment, like enough stasis capsules. Also, the company's real mission (known only to Ash) was to collect the alien creature at any cost while the crew was deemed "expendable," so no need to provide them with a viable escape method.

raywest

Question: Do we know the human casualties by the end of the war?

Answer: No such numbers are ever discussed in the novel or in the subsequent radio and movie treatments. What we may surmise, however, is that the human casualties were comparatively minor. Once the Martians were exposed to earthly microbes, they were wiped out pretty quickly.

Charles Austin Miller

Voiceover by Morgan Freeman at the end of the movie: by the toll of a billion lives.

Morgan Freeman says "By the toll of a billion deaths, man had earned his immunity, his right to survive among this planet's infinite organisms." He is saying that Mankind evolved with microorganisms for countless generations on Earth, making Mankind immune to most of those microorganisms. Perhaps a billion humans or more died of bacterial and viral plagues throughout human history; but, as a species, we gained immunity. Freeman's quote has nothing to do with the number of Martians that died because they had no immunity.

Charles Austin Miller

Answer: The ending dialog states a death of 1 billion.

The billion deaths spoken of don't refer to those that died in the alien attack but the billion deaths from the microorganisms that killed the aliens. "By a billion deaths man earned his immunity."

Bishop73

I feel that he meant that the organisms that killed the aliens killed a billion humans first before we got our immunity from them.

They are saying that.

lionhead

You are correct that he means humans, over tens of thousands of years, naturally gained immunity to many disease-causing organisms after billions of other people had died from them. The aliens had no immunity whatsoever and is why they died.

raywest

30th Apr 2021

4.3.2.1 (2010)

Question: How does Cassandra manage to find Brett's home address and track him down there? There's no suggestion he gives her any other information than his mobile number, which isn't enough to find an address.

swordfish

Chosen answer: It's possible to find someone's address using a reverse directory (using a cell or landline phone number to link to an address). I've found people's addresses by putting their name and/or phone number into a search engine.

raywest

Question: During the opening scene, where it explains the creation of the ring, Sméagol finding and Bilbo taking it, was the entire scene animated or were live actors used before switching to animation?

Answer: This is from Wikipedia: The (1978) film is notable for its extensive use of rotoscoping, a technique in which scenes are first shot in live-action (human actors), then traced onto animation cels. It uses a hybrid of traditional cel animation and rotoscoped live action footage.

raywest

Answer: Ray Park's film work has mostly been as a stunt double and not as a speaking actor. Peter Serafinowicz has extensive experience as both an actor and doing voice-over work. He was better able to vocalize the Darth Maul character. It's fairly common in films (particularly sci-fi and fantasy) for minor character's voices to be dubbed over by other actors. Many movie scenes are filmed without sound and the dialogue and sound effects are added in post-production. Many actors dub over their own voices for better sound quality.

raywest

30th Apr 2021

The X-Files Movie (1998)

Question: Why didn't Scully believe Mulder when he told her that he found the bomb and was trapped in the room?

Answer: She's used to Mulder's rather droll, off-beat sense of humor and thought he was just making a glib jest.

raywest

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