10 Blood-Curdling Facts About Dracula

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Joy Lanzendorfer and Mental_Floss present 10 Blood-Curdling Facts About Dracula.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. VAMPIRES SHARE A HISTORY WITH FRANKENSTEIN.
In 1816, on a gloomy day in Lake Geneva, Lord Byron proposed a ghost story contest that led to Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein. It was also the birth of The Vampyre by John Polidori, he first-ever vampire story written in English. Polidori was Byron’s personal physician and he may have based his aristocratic bloodsucker on his patient—which would make Lord Byron the basis for the bulk of vampire depictions that followed. (Other accounts say that Polidori stole a fragment of fiction that Byron wrote and used it in his story.) In any case, The Vampyreinfluenced Varney the Vampire, a popular penny dreadful from the 1840s, and Carmilla, a novella about a lesbian vampire from the 1870s, and, of course, Stoker.

3. STOKER STARTED WRITING DRACULA RIGHT AFTER JACK THE RIPPER.
Stoker began Dracula in 1890, two years after Jack the Ripper terrorized London. The lurid atmosphere these crimes produced made their way into Stoker’s novel, which was confirmed in the 1901 preface to the Icelandic edition of Dracula. Stoker’s reference links the two frightening figures in such a way that raises more questions than provides answers, but no doubt confirms the terrifying real-life influence on his fictional world.

9. IT WAS ALMOST CALLED THE UNDEAD.

Amandajm, Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain

The working title of the novel was The Dead Un-Dead, which was later shortened to The Undead. Then, right before it was published, Stoker changed the title once more to Dracula. What’s in a name? Well, it’s tough to say. Upon release, Dracula got good reviews, but it was slow to sell, and by the end of his life, Stoker was so poor that he had to ask for a compassionate grant from the Royal Literary Fund. The Gothic tale didn’t become the legend it is today until film adaptations began popping up during the 20th century.

The 12 Deadliest Hit Men [and Women] in Film and TV

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Hollywood.com posted their choices for The 12 Deadliest Hit Men [and Women] in Film and TV.

There are some good choices in the list…

  • Samuel L. Jackson as Jules Winnfield  in Pulp Fiction

  • Jean Reno as Leon  in The Professional

  • Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh  in No Country for Old Men

  • Uma Thurman as The Bride in Kill Bill: Volume 1 & 2

  •  Chow Yun Fat as Ah Jong in The Killer

…for example.

But how do you create a list of the best hit men and leave off…

  • Keanu Reeves as John Wick in John Wick

  • Charles Bronson as Arthur Bishop in The Mechanic

  • Clint Eastwood aka William Munny in Unforgiven

  • Sly Stallone as Jimmy Bonomo in Bullet to the Head

Cinephilia & Beyond’s Rocky: A Heartwarming Sports Drama Reflecting Its Very Process of Creation.

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If you’re a fan of the original Rocky movie you’ll want to check out Cinephilia & Beyond‘s Rocky: A Heartwarming Sports Drama Reflecting Its Very Process of Creation.

When you click over you’ll find a treasure trove of materials…

  • Vintage photos

  • Quotes from industry luminaries

  • A PDF of the Rocky script

  • A Conversation with Sylvester Stallone

  • Rocky: Behind the Scenes on 8mm

  • Video of Sly telling The Rocky Story

  • Rare Footage of Sly and Carl Weathers Choreographing the Fight

  • Garrett Brown Video on Rocky

  • Rocky Photographer Elliott Marks‘ Contact Sheets

13 Epic Facts About “Once Upon a Time in America”

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Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss present 13 Epic Facts About Once Upon a Time in America.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. SERGIO LEONE TURNED DOWN THE GODFATHER TO MAKE IT. 
By his own account, Once Upon a Time in America was Leone’s pet project, the one he devoted most of his adult life to making. He became interested in the story while he was making 1968’s Once Upon a Time in the West , and was so fixated on it that when Paramount approached him a few years later to make The Godfather, he politely declined. If he’d known it would take another 12 years to get Once Upon a Time in America produced anyway, maybe he would have accepted. But then where would Francis Ford Coppola be?

8. NOBODY HAS EVER SEEN LEONE’S COMPLETE VERSION.
After the nine-month shoot, Leone had eight to 10 hours’ worth of material. He trimmed it down to six hours, hoping to release it in two three-hour parts, but the producers were having none of that. So he reduced it to 269 minutes—four and a half hours—but it still wasn’t enough. He chopped out another 40 minutes, and this 229-minute version is what premiered at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival and subsequently played in European theaters.

American distributors butchered the film even more, cutting out another 90 minutes and rearranging the scenes into chronological order (no more flashbacks), which rendered the movie incomprehensible. The American version flopped, of course, and Leone was devastated. A Martin Scorsese-led effort to restore Leone’s original version resulted in a 251-minute cut playing at Cannes in 2012, but some 18 minutes were still missing due to legal issues over who owned the missing scenes. The 251-minute version is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. Someday, perhaps the complete version will be restored.

12. LEONE WAS A PERFECTIONIST. 
Leone and De Niro had their different approaches, but one thing they had in common was perfectionism. According to one of the screenwriters, Leone did 35 takes of a large (and expensive) crowd scene, only to insist on one more because he noticed a kid in the crowd looking directly at the camera.

Aaugh! 10 Facts About “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!”

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Jake Rosen and Mental_Floss present Aaugh! 10 Facts About It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!  Here are three of my favorites…

1. THE FUTURE OF ANIMATED PEANUTS SPECIALS DEPENDED ON IT.
Mendelson and animator Bill Melendez had very high aspirations for A Charlie Brown Christmas. When they screened it prior to its premiere, however, they felt it didn’t live up to its potential—and CBS agreed. The network said it was the last Peanuts special they would buy. But after it delivered huge ratings, CBS changed their mind and asked for more. When the two delivered another hit—the baseball-themed Charlie Brown All-Stars—they thought they had earned the network’s confidence.

Instead, CBS told them they needed a special that could run every year, like A Charlie Brown Christmas. If Mendelson couldn’t provide it, they told him they might not pick up an option for a fourth show. Despite Schulz and his collaborators being annoyed by the network’s abrasive attitude, they hammered out a story with a seasonal clothesline that could be rerun in perpetuity.

3. IT WAS THE FIRST TIME LUCY SNATCHED THE FOOTBALL FROM CHARLIE BROWN.
In animated form, anyway. When Schulz, Mendelson, and Melendez were brainstorming scene ideas for the special, talk turned to the fact that Lucy’s habit of pulling the football away from Charlie Brown had never been seen in animation. They also decided it would be a good time to introduce Snoopy’s World War I Flying Ace. The joke had appeared in the strip, but Mendelson thought it would work even better in motion. He was right: the sequence with Snoopy in a doghouse dogfight is one of the most memorable in the Peanuts animated canon.

8. THE ORIGINAL AIRINGS WERE SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT.

Peanuts Wikia

Production costs for the early Charlie Brown specials were subsidized by television sponsors Coca-Cola and Dolly Madison snack cakes: the brands appear at the beginning and end of the broadcast. The Coke “bug” appeared for several years before getting phased ou

9 Celebrities Reading Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”

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Today we have a trick and some treats thanks to Andrew LaShane and Mental_Floss who present 9 Celebrities Reading Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven.

The celebrities are Christopher Walken, James Earl Jones, Sir Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, Stan Lee, John Astin, Basil Rathbone, William Shatner and Tay Zonday.

What, what’s the trick you ask?  Well, the art above shows Sylvester Stallone as Poe, but Sly isn’t one of the celebs reading The Raven.  [No wisecracks about that’s a treat, please.]

The treat then?  Vincent Price’s reading embedded below!

16 Fun Facts About “Look Who’s Talking”

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 16 Fun Facts About Look Who’s Talking.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. THREE STUDIOS PASSED ON THE FILM.
Warner Bros., Disney, and Orion Pictures all passed on the idea before Tri-Star took a shot.

11. AUDIENCES IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES HEAR DIFFERENT BABY VOICES.
Foreign countries had their own celebrities voicing baby Mikey. It was Travolta’s idea.

15. IT INSPIRED THE TV SHOW BABY TALK AND THE E*TRADE BABY.
ABC’s Baby Talk, featuring Tony Danza as the voice of the little one, wasn’t as successful as the movie; star Scott Baio called it a “nightmare.” The E*Trade baby endorsed the financial company from 2008 to 2014.

10 Deliberate Facts About “12 Angry Men”

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Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss present 10 Deliberate Facts About 12 Angry Men.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. IT’S THE ONLY FILM HENRY FONDA EVER PRODUCED. 
The actor saw the TV production and felt strongly that it would make a great movie. Unable to find any producers willing to take a risk on it (a serious, single-room drama in a time when colorful widescreen epics were in fashion), Fonda teamed up with the writer, Reginald Rose,to produce it themselves. Fonda wound up hating the experience—not the acting side, which he loved (and he was always very proud of the film), but the business side. He hated having to worry about financial and logistical details, and couldn’t stand watching himself in the daily rushes (which producers, but not necessarily actors, are expected to do).

5. IT USES CAMERA TRICKS TO INCREASE THE TENSION.
The problem with making a film set entirely in one room is that it’s bound to get boring, visually speaking (unless it’s a very interesting room, which a jury room is not). Lumet also realized he couldn’t have his characters moving around very much, meaning most of the “action” would involve sitting around a table. So he had the camera move a lot instead. He and his cinematographer, Boris Kaufman (who won an Oscar in 1955 for On the Waterfront), also devised some photographic methods of amplifying the movie’s tone. Lumet wrote: “I shot the first third of the movie above eye level, shot the second third at eye level, and the last third from below eye level. In that way, toward the end, the ceiling began to appear. Not only were the walls closing in, the ceiling was as well. The sense of increasing claustrophobia did a lot to raise the tension of the last part of the movie.”

8. LUMET WAS ONLY THE THIRD PERSON TO GET A BEST DIRECTOR NOMINATION FOR HIS DEBUT FILM.
Orson Welles had been nominated for Citizen Kane, and Delbert Mann had actually won forMarty. About 20 directors have since been Oscar-nominated for their debuts. (Six have won.)