11 Legendary Facts About “Enter the Dragon”

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Matthew Jackson and Mental Floss present  11 Legendary Facts About Enter the Dragon. Here are three of my favorites …

2. THE LOOK WAS INSPIRED BY A COMIC STRIP.
Enter the Dragon was made quickly, on a tight schedule, and with a budget much more constrained than what we commonly associate with action movies today. As a result, Heller and Weintraub had to start concerning themselves with getting sets built in Hong Kong even before Michael Allin’s script was completely finalized. To do that, Heller looked to his childhood and to a comic strip about adventures in China that he’d loved, Terry and the Pirates.

“It was high chroma reds, blues, golds, and it just lent itself to this project so closely,” Heller said.

So, with Terry and the Pirates in mind, Heller began working with a sketch artist to design various sets, including Han’s (Kien Shih) underground layer, the banquet hall on the island, and other key areas of Han’s domain. From there, the sketches were turned over to set builders in Hong Kong, and construction was underway

8. THE ICONIC MIRRORED ROOM WAS NOT IN THE SCRIPT.
It’s impossible now to imagine Enter the Dragon without the iconic final fight between Lee and Han, which takes place in a mirrored room that replicates Lee’s movements several times over as he delivers his famous kicks. Once upon a time, though, this was nowhere in the script, and only came about because Heller noticed the effect mirrors had at a Hong Kong hotel where he was eating one day.

“I took Bruce and showed it to him. He thought it was too fragmented, that you couldn’t get any action that would mean anything out of it,” Heller recalled. “Bob Clouse and I really fought hard for it, and we created this mirrored room.”

Clouse and Heller pushed ahead with the mirror concept, and once they showed the set to Lee and he was able to move around in the space, he became a believer. A special “closet” made of mirrors with a hole cut in one side for the camera lens was built, so that the cameraman would always blend into the rest of the scene, and filming of the famous sequence began. According to Hubbs, though, working for hours on end in that environment created a unique set of challenges.

“I remember that I would always have to touch, because if I’m looking at something, they might not be there, they might be over there,” Hubbs said. “I found that I could only be in there for a couple of hours, and I’d have to go out and sit down and look at a wall and real dimension, because it’s like there was a fourth dimension in there.”

9. LEE CHOREOGRAPHED THE FIGHT SCENES HIMSELF.
Lee was not just the star of Enter the Dragon. He also played a key role in how it was staged, as the screenplay would often describe action sequences by simply saying “This Will Be Choreographed by Mr. Bruce Lee.” As Heller recalled, Lee would often walk through the various sets, particularly Han’s underground lair, and look for details and props that he could then incorporate into each sequence, with the help of Clouse. Together, they worked closely to engineer the film’s iconic fight sequences, and by the time early footage from the film was available, Lee was so excited that he didn’t want Enter the Dragon to end. According to Weintraub, he later went back to Hong Kong to shoot the early sparring sequence at the monastery with his friend Sammo Hung.

State by State – The Most Popular Horror Films in America!

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Zack Sharf and IndieWire present The Most Popular Horror Films in America: New Study Reveals Each State’s Most Talked-About Title.   Here they are (with my comments)…

Alabama: “Halloween” (A classic!)

Alaska: “Little Shop of Horrors” (Comedy over horror)

Arizona: “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane” (Arizona does have a lot of retirees)

Arkansas: “The Thing” (Now we’re talking!)

California: “The Orphanage” (Wonder if the latest border separations influenced this…)

Colorado: “The Shining” (When a movie is made in your state…)

Connecticut: “Pan’s Labyrinth” (Ok…)

Delaware: “The Birds”  (Another classic!)

District of Columbia: “The Exorcist” (The movie that scares you most after watching it…)

Florida: “This Is the End” (Comedy over horror)

Georgia: “Get Out” (A modern day classic…)

Hawaii: “The Exorcist” (See District of Columbia)

Idaho: “The Birds” (See Delaware)

Illinois: “The House of the Devil”  (Huh?)

Indiana: “Frankenstein” (My birth state goes with a classic!)

Iowa: “Evil Dead 2” (Groovy!)

Kansas: “Shaun of the Dead”  (Comedy over horror)

Kentucky: “Evil Dead 2” (See Iowa)

Louisiana: “Get Out”  (Interesting that GA and LA are both Southern States… “They’re on to us!”)

Maine: “The Host” (Surprised it wasn’t a Stephen King adaptation)

Maryland: “Blair Witch Project” (When a film is made in your state…)

Massachusetts: “The Silence of the Lambs” (Is SotL really a horror film?)

Michigan: “Near Dark” (Well, played Michigan.)

Minnesota: “The Silence of the Lambs” (See Massachusetts)

Mississippi: “Drag Me to Hell” (Seems redundant since you’re in Mississippi.  – Just kidding!)

Missouri: “The Silence of the Lambs” (See Minnesota)

Montana: “Young Frankenstein” (Comedy over horror. How about A&C Meet Frankenstein?)

Nebraska: “King Kong” (A classic)

Nevada: “Shaun of the Dead” (See Montana)

New Hampshire: “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (The original or the remake?  The original.)

New Jersey: “The Silence of the Lambs” (Seems to be a state favorite. But is it really horror?)

New Mexico: “Bride of Frankenstein” (A well deserved classic.)

New York: “Psycho” (A modern – does the 60’s still count as modern? – classic.)

North Carolina: “Halloween” (John Carpenter’s classic – don’t accept substitutes.)

North Dakota: “Aliens” (A great movie!)

Ohio: “The Silence of the Lambs” (Ok.  I get it. I give up. SotL is Horror!)

Oklahoma: “This is the End” (Comedy over horror.)

Oregon: “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” (Sounds like the start of a joke.)

Pennsylvania: “The Silence of the Lambs” (I’ve already conceded.)

Rhode Island: “The Love Witch” (Sounds like a 60’s drive-in movie)

South Carolina: “The Loved Ones” (The second feature to “The Love Witch” at the drive-in.)

South Dakota: “Cabin in the Woods” (Now we’re talking.)

Tennessee: “The Witch” (Ok.)

Texas: “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (Another modern (?) classic.)

Utah: “Zombieland” (Comedy over horror)

Vermont: “The Exorcist” (Scariest movie ever.)

Virginia: “Drag Me to Hell” (Or Mississippi. – Again, I’m kidding!)

Washington: “Shaun of the Dead” (We like our horror played for laughs.)

West Virginia: “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (Pleasant nightmares!)

Wisconsin: “Shaun of the Dead” (See Washington.)

Wyoming: “The Babadook” (That’s the best you’ve got?)

I’m surprised ot a single state picked: Night of the Living Dead; 28 days later; or  World War Z?

Things You Probably Never Knew About “The Sopranos”

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Johnny Hughes and Goliath present Things You Probably Never Knew About The Sopranos.  Here are three of my favorites …

10. Mob Attention
The Sopranos was lauded for its authenticity but the show’s realistic depiction of mob activities attracted the attention of real-life gangsters. As writer and executive producer Terence Winter told Vanity Fair in a wide-reaching 2012 interview, one FBI agent told him that he’d heard real-life mobsters talking about the show over wire taps and that they were convinced The Sopranos writers had an informant on the inside because the show was too accurate.

“We would hear back that real wiseguys used to think that we had somebody on the inside. They couldn’t believe how accurate the show was.” Fortunately, no hits were ever carried out on Chase, Winter, or the rest of The Sopranos creative team!

8. Paulie Was Based on the Actor Who Played Him
Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri is one of the many brilliant characters on the show. But as it turns out, he is actually very similar to the actor that portrays him – Tony Sirico. Funny yet also extremely dangerous and violent, Sirico was also a criminal with 28 arrests at the time he was cast (with 27 acting jobs). Not only was it a life of crime that made these two similar, but Sirico also states that he is also a neat-freak and lived at home with his mother. This was also true of his character, and contributed to some of the comedy in the show. Due to his eccentricities and OCD but also violent streak, it made Paulie one of the most memorable characters on the show and you can hear his voice simply by looking at a picture of him. This is largely down to Sirico’s brilliant portrayal of the familiar character.

6. James Gandolfini Paid Each Actor After Contract Disputes
Tony Soprano may not have been the nicest of people, but James Gandolfini clearly was. Following the conclusion of Season Four, tensions ran high between the cast and the studio as there were disputes over payment. This resulted in delays before Season Five, after a staged sit-in shut down the set. To ease tensions and get everybody back to work, James Gandolfini (who had been paid) split his bonus with all the cast members, seeing them earn $33,333 each. Whilst Tony is undoubtedly the star a key reason why The Sopranos is deemed such an incredible show is that it has many expertly written characters who all contribute to the story – making each one hugely valuable. This generous act from Gandolfini is just one of many stories of his kindness and generosity.

The 20 Best Horror Movies of All Time

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Rebecca Pahle and Mental Floss present The 20 Best Horror Movies of All Time. Pahle’s list is a good one that made narrowing down to my top three tough, but here they are with my thoughts on each…

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968):  is one of those rare movies that influences a genre.  Can you imagine the billions (trillions?) of dollars that would have been lost if George Romero had never made NOTLD?  Romero made a horror movie with a layer of social commentary that shocked and inspired.

THE EXORCIST (1973): is perhaps the scariest movie ever made.  Its the kind of scary that stays with you and invades your mind in the dark hours of the night when you’re trying to sleep.  Here’s a true story involving The Exorcist:

Back in the pre-internet days when the only way to see a movie at home was through HBO or a similar service, I was fortunate enough to have both HBO and a video recorder.  A friend of mine didn’t have cable but did have a VCR.  He asked me to record The Exorcist for him.  I did.  He lived alone and decided to watch the movie late one night. When he turned off the VCR, the counter was at 666.  What are the odds?  Needless to say, he didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991): doesn’t usually come to mind when I think of horror movies.  It does meet the criteria but I always think of it as a cop movie.  Still, it did make Pahle’s list and it is one of the top three films selected, so of course it made it to my selections as well.

The 10 Wildest Horror Westerns

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Brad Gullickson and Film School Rejects present The 10 Wildest Horror Westerns. I have to admit, at first I thought, “Have there been 10 worthy horror westerns?” – then I saw Gullickson’s list and agreed there have.  So using just Gullickson’s list, I selected three and made sure that they met the western criteria and were scary.  So here are three of my favorites …

Westworld (1973)
Set in the future (at the time of its release), Westworld slips into the horror western genre by a technicality.  See the monster is a robot cowboy that has gone on a killing spree.  Boy, rereading that sentence, Westworld sounds stupid.  But it’s not.  It’s actually a very entertaining film — especially to the 15 year old me who loved seeing it on the big screen.  And have no worries, it holds up well.

Near Dark (1987)
A modern western with a vampire twist.  I love Near Dark.  It was great to see Aliens cast mates reunited.  How cool is it to imagine a family of vampires some who turned during the Civil War, traveling the modern day west and doing what vampires do best.  Wrap in a love story, a father’s quest to save his son and a vampire turned as a child who will forever have the child’s body but an adult’s desires and you have one heck of a horror-western!

Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Some may argue that Bone Tomahawk isn’t a horror film.  Those that do haven’t seen the movie.  What’s scarier than cannibalistic Troglodytes?  Nothing.  And if you think we’re splitting hairs to get Bone Tomahawk classified as a horror film, then watch it and see what Troglodytes split.

A couple more comments…

High Plains Drifter (1973) – Is one of my least favorite Eastwood movies.  And while it does meet the criteria to be a western/horror film, it only does so by the thinnest of margins being a western with an avenging ghost… that’s not scary.

Ravenous (1999) – Is a strange hybrid.  A western set in the 1840’s with a few cannibals.  Well, one main one anyway.  It’s a good movie… but definitely different.

The Valley of the Gwangi (1969) – 10 year old me saw this at a drive-in and loved it!  How could I not, I had to be the demographic it was aiming for — Cowboys and Dinosaurs!!  Sad to say I saw it years later and it had lost some of it’s coolness.  Ok, a lot of it’s coolness.

 

11 Chilling Facts About Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House”

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Anna Green and Mental Floss present 11 Chilling Facts About Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.  Using just Green’s list, here are three of my favorites …

2. JACKSON HAD A TERRIFYING SLEEPWALKING EXPERIENCE WHILE WRITING THE NOVEL …
Early on in the writing process, Jackson awoke one morning to find something terrifying atop her writing desk: A note, with the words “DEAD DEAD” scrawled upon it, written in her own handwriting. Jackson, who loved ghost stories but did not believe in ghosts, brushed the strange discovery off as sleepwalking. In “Experience and Fiction,” she wrote that she used the strange note to motivate her, explaining, “I decided that I had better write the book awake, which I got to work and did.”

3. … AND MADE AN UNSETTLING DISCOVERY WHILE RESEARCHING HAUNTED HOUSES.
Before she began writing The Haunting of Hill House, Jackson scoured magazines and newspapers for photos of houses that seemed haunted. During her research, she stumbled upon a photo of a house in California that had a particular air of “disease and decay.” She was so struck by it, she asked her mother, who lived in California, if she could find any additional information about the house. Her mother’s response shocked Jackson: Not only was she familiar with the house, but Jackson’s own great-grandfather had built it. After standing empty for many years, the house had been set on fire—possibly by a group of townspeople.

11. THE NOVEL HAS A LOT OF FAMOUS FANS.
Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Guillermo del Toro, and Carmen Maria Machado are all huge fans. Del Toro included Hill House in a series of six classic horror novels he curated for Penguin, Maria Machado called it “the scariest novel I’ve ever read,” and Neil Gaiman has written that, while plenty of novels have scared him, Hill House “beats them all.” Stephen King, meanwhile, has written that Hill House has one of the best openings he’s ever read, calling it “the sort of quiet epiphany every writer hopes for.”