Category: Movies

13 Running Facts About “The Fugitive”

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Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss present 13 Running Facts About The Fugitive.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. IT WAS ALMOST ALEC BALDWIN INSTEAD OF HARRISON FORD.
Kopelson, a fan of the TV series, had been trying off and on to get the film made since the 1970s. It was finally about to happen in the early ’90s, with Alec Baldwin in the lead role and Walter Hill (48 Hrs.) as director, but Warner Bros. didn’t think Baldwin had enough star power. “With an expensive movie, the consideration is, what star can ‘open’ it,” Kopelson said, “and the studio wasn’t certain at that time that Alec could do it.” (By the way, this was the secondtime Baldwin had lost a role to Harrison Ford, who also replaced him as Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October sequel Patriot Games.)

9. HARRISON FORD WASN’T FAKING HIS BEFUDDLEMENT IN THE INTERROGATION SCENE.
To lend more realism to the scene where Dr. Kimble is first questioned by police, Davis had Ford and the other actors do it with only half a script—the cops’ half. Ford, not knowing in advance what the questions would be, had to ad lib responses in character. Naturally, this came across as being defensive and flustered, which was exactly what the situation called for. Acting!

13. THE DAM SCENE COST $2 MILLION, INCLUDING ABOUT $60,000 FOR DUMMIES.
The maze of tunnels leading to the dam were fake, and built in a Chicago warehouse. The last section of the tunnel—the part that opens over the dam, where Kimble and Gerard have their dramatic confrontation—was actually transported from Chicago to the Cheoah Dam in North Carolina, where it was rigged to look like it belonged there. For the big jump, there were no stuntmen involved. Ford himself (secured by a wire) did the shot where Kimble looks over the edge and considers jumping, and dummies were used for the plunge itself. Six Harrison Ford lookalike dummies were commissioned, each costing somewhere between $7000 and $12,000. They did not survive intact, much to the dismay of their manufacturer, who’d been hoping to re-rent them.

The Terrifying Subliminal Image Hidden in “The Exorcist”

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If you’ve ever seen The Exorcist, then you’ve seen the face above even if you don’t remember it.

Director William Friedkin flashed the image on the screen for 1/8 of a second.  Your subconscious would recognize the frightening image even if you didn’t fully process it.

If you click over to The Terrifying Subliminal Image Hidden in The Exorcist by Jake Rossen at Mental_Floss you’ll get the full lowdown on the image and where you can find it.

12 Howling Facts About “The Wolfman”

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Marck Mancini and Mental_Floss present 12 Howling Facts About The Wolfman.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. BELA LUGOSI WANTED TO PLAY THE MAIN CHARACTER.
Lugosi lost the role to Lon Chaney Jr, whose performance in The Wolf Man propelled him into stardom. Nevertheless, the former Count Dracula didn’t get left out. Universal cast Lugosi as a mustachioed Gypsy fortuneteller named “Bela.” This character is later revealed to be a werewolf who gets the plot rolling by biting our friend, Mr. Talbot.

4. THAT SUPPOSEDLY ANCIENT POEM WAS MADE UP BY SIODMAK.
“Even a man who is pure at heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” Over the course of the film, this spooky verse is recited on several occasions—usually by a character who claims that it’s some sort of ancient rhyme. But the poem was really authored by Siodmak himself. In 1989, he told journalist Tom Weaver “nowadays, film historians think it’s from German folklore. It isn’t. I made it up.” Authentic or not, the poem was repeated verbatim in 2004’s Van Helsing.

12. THE WOLF MAN WAS CHANEY’S ALL-TIME FAVORITE ROLE.
The film’s success secured Chaney’s place alongside Lugosi, Karloff, and Rains on the Mount Rushmore of horror icons. Over the next few years, he’d more or less become Universal’s go-to guy whenever a new monster role became available. Between 1941 and 1949, the rising star played a mummy, the vampiric son of Dracula, and Frankenstein’s monster. Still, the role of the Wolf Man always held a special place in his heart. Later in life, Chaney wrote “Of all the character’s I’ve been, I liked Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf Man, the best.” Like Siodmak, Chaney regarded him as a tragic figure. “He never wanted to hurt anyone,” noted the actor. “During his period of sanity, in between full moons, he begged to be confined, chained, even killed to avoid the horrible consequences of his curse. He was a classic product of misunderstanding.”

25 Things We Learned from Kathryn Bigelow’s “Near Dark” Commentary

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 25 Things We Learned from Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark Commentary.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. The realization that they were going to film a real mosquito interacting with an actor meant they had to grow it from scratch “so that there were no contaminants that he would be exposed to.” It became a six-month process.

8. Each member of the vampire family has “their own quandary, their own private hell that they’re living with.” The exception is Severen (Bill Paxton) who’s “the prototypical vampire, he’s the one without remorse, without guilt, without regret. He’s the perfect vampire.”

15. Paxton ad-libbed both the theft of the sunglasses and the line “I hate it when they ain’t been shaved!”