Answered general questions about movies, TV and more

This page is for general questions - if you've got a question about a specific title, please check the title-specific questions page first. Members get e-mailed when any of their questions are answered.

Okay it is a 70's-80's movie where this one area has been contaminated with something and the animals that are there get really mutated. The only things I remember was a mutated bear was attacking some peoples tents, and that a woman became contaminated because she ate a fish.

toby1kenobi

Chosen answer: Prophecy (1979) directed by John Frankenheimer - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079758.

Sierra1

I don't know if it is a movie or a show but there is this gargoyle thing and for some reason he is apologizing to this guy and then munches on him. It was live action. Sorry for not having a lot of details.

toby1kenobi

Chosen answer: Might be "Tales From the Darkside", 1990. It's actually tree short stories in one movie, the last one being "Lover's Vow", which did have a gargoyle. This description sounds like the last scene of that tale, and I've never seen another movie with a gargoyle that talked.

alrats

Around 1995 I saw a movie on TV that I simply cannot find anything on. I do not know the title, the actors, character names, or anything else but a few specific scenes and a general view of the plot. The movie is about a boy, who I want to say is named Toby, and I believe he is somehow mentally disabled. His elder parents, or guardians, care for him. The character has this ability to bring objects to reality from pictures using his mind. He consistently puts his hands in front of him and says, "bring," and the object appears. His guardians are on constant watch of what he sees and is able to "bring." In one particular scene, he somehow gets a hold of a book/picture of a human heart, which he brings to life, and is sitting on the floor playing with it, tossing it back and forth in his hands. When his mother/woman discovers him, in shock or by some connection to the heart in his hands, the mother dies. At the end of the movie, the father 'forces' Toby to bring fire through a picture and sets the house ablaze with them inside. Unfortunately this is all I can remember and I am unsure of how accurate I am, but if this rings a bell, please help.

LMarxx21

Chosen answer: This is an episode from the second season of the new Twilight Zone, called "The Toys of Caliban."

This is a movie on HBO, Cinemax or Showtime in, I believe, the 90s. It's about a guy, I think his name was Harry, and he gets hypnotized or possessed by the soul of Caligula or something. Anyway, all he has to do is look at women and they get off. It's not a porn and there is little nudity, surprisingly. Three scenes I remember are: Harry's walking in the desert in a Roman soldier costume and a beautiful woman pulls up in a convertible to pick him up, he gives the stare and she "finishes". Harry gets home, gives his wife the look from behind, she gets off on the floor, then seeing Harry hadn't touched her, she says, "Did I just get off!?" And finally, Harry's in a strip club, looks at one of the strippers he knows, she gets off and gets mad running off the stage. I remember just about everything but the name. Please, anyone, help.

edgewater3

Chosen answer: Sex and the Single Alien. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108091/.

I'm looking for the title of a film about a group of scientists who use a burrowing machine to travel deep into the earth. They discover a cavernous world of wonders but discover that nothing can reproduce there. The rabbits they've brought along mate but all their issue is still born. The film was shot in the Carlsbad Caverns and aired repeatedly on television in the fifties.

Answer: Maybe "Unknown world" from 1951: http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0044167/.

I am looking for a film that tells the story of a man who sees dead people. He has a coloured boy following him with soil coming out of his mouth and who has hands clasped out in front of him like he's holding something. He keeps being drawn to some woodland and sees the coloured boy there. He doesn't know why. The thing the boy has in his hands is a bird's nest and eventually the man realises that he's being shown how this boy died. He was part of a group of boys that got taken to this woodland area as part of a trip from a boys home or something similar, and they were all being abused. The name of the boys' home was Bird's Nest or Blackbirds. The boy had been killed and buried in the woods. I thought this film was Stir of Echoes with Kevin Bacon but it isn't. It's very similar though.

Answer: Sounds like Living with the Dead, with Ted Danson as the lead (Talking to Heaven if you saw it outside the U.S.).

Is there an alien that looks like a praying mantis in any of the Alien movies? I used to have a toy of it.

toby1kenobi

Chosen answer: I don't think so, but I do remember the toy line. They made several "species" of alien that weren't featured in the films.

Phixius

Answer: In Alien 3, there is an alien that runs on two legs, keeping its arms like a praying mantis. Ripley, says it's different from the other aliens she encountered.

I can't remember the title of a movie. It was made sometime around the 70's-80's. It was about a group of humans that aged rapidly. They would only live for a month or something. They had to wait for the chosen one who would go on a journey to another land to find the cure but he had to get there before he died of old age himself. If anyone can give me a hand with this I would really appreciate it.

Answer: I searched for this too a while ago. I believe the movie you're looking for is "Quest" (1984).

I watched a movie in the early 80's that seemed to be set in Hawaii about a group of assassins hired to kill a group of bad guys. I think the name of the movie was 7 or seven but my searches result in nothing. I cannot remember the names of any actor but there were some very good scenes in it. An armored limo burned at a gas station, a long distance assassination involving breakfast and a missile while whistling "pop goes the weasel" and a martial arts fight up a high rise culminating in a fight with the boss only to have the assassin pull out a gun and say "hiyah my ass" and blow the guy away. The killings had to be done at the same time on the same day to keep suspicion down of the victims. Anyone with information here would be appreciated. It was a b movie and not well acted, but very entertaining nonetheless.

Answer: Yes it was called Seven and starred William Smith. It was actually made in 1979.

Trying to think of a movie (possibly mid-80s) that was about a winter. And this pregnant lady wanted a particular kind of food and it only grew in someone else's garden. He was trapped. Sorry, that's all I have.

shortdanzr

Chosen answer: Sounds like an episode of the Showtime series "Faerie Tale Theatre" titled "Rapunzel". It aired in February of 1983. Starred Sherry Duval and Jeff Bridges.

Phixius

I was wondering if anyone knows the name of a movie about two people who fall in love in heaven before being born. Then the woman is chosen to be born and the man asks to be born too, to try to find her on earth. They keep almost meeting throughout the movie before finally finding each other.

Lori Kaminsky

Chosen answer: You're thinking of the 1987 film, "Made in Heaven," starring Kelly McGillis and Timothy Hutton.

raywest

I would be incredibly grateful to anyone who finds what I'm looking for. There was this movie trailer or TV show premiere, probably a few years back but released after 2000. I vaguely remember it starting up with a person saying something about a woman was found dead with her face sliced with a knife from ear to ear. Then they flash for a short time the woman, lying on the pavement, who was killed and it looks like there is a neat accurately curved slash from one ear to the other, in between her lips. Does anyone know the name of this movie/ TV show?

Answer: The Black Dahlia (2006)http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387877/combined.

Grumpy Scot

I remember a movie from the 80's where a redheaded girl had pigtails that spun around and her father was a pilot. What was the name of that movie?

Answer: I believe you are thinking of the 1988 film, "The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking." It is based on the classic children's book, "Pippi Longstocking," by Swedish author, Astrid Lindgren.

raywest

I'm trying to find the name of a movie I saw a long time ago but can't remember the name of. It's a black and white film, and I think Mickey Rooney was in it but I'm not sure. It's about a guy who grows up to be a gangster and all these kids in an orphanage home who idolize him. The priest (or the person who runs it) visits him in jail and asks him to put up a big stink and go out a coward on his way to get executed. At first he refuses but as the time comes he does chicken out and make a scene about not wanting to die. The kids read about it the papers and agree he was no good. Any ideas on what movie this is? It's driving me crazy trying to figure it out.

Answer: It's Angels With Dirty Faces, a 1938 classic starring James Cagney, Pat O'Brien and Humphrey Bogart. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029870/.

Jean G

Looking for film where a young man (boy) is normal, but the government wants to give him a lobotomy to make him in line with society. One scene, goes to a house to read books, meets a girl, goes to play chess and gets arrested. All sports are for the handicapped, etc. In the end government asks him to help run things. Anyone know the title or the main actor?

neoneel

Chosen answer: "Harrison Bergeron," based on the story by Kurt Vonnegut, starring Sean Astin and Christopher Plummer. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113264/).

Captain Defenestrator

I'm looking for the name of a movie that, forgive me it's all I can remember, a horse being divided by several sheets of glass which spread apart and the horse is still alive. Does anyone have any ideas?

toby1kenobi

Chosen answer: The Cell, starring Jennifer Lopez and Vincent d'Onofrio. See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209958/.

Sereenie

I want to know a movie that has two people in it, a man and a woman who falls for him. The woman settles moves in with him, only to find out he is a conman. This movie was made in '09 or '10, but I'm not sure. Any help?

Answer: There are several movies that this could be. Try Killers & repost if not that. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1103153/.

shortdanzr

Whenever there's a scene in a movie where a character is looking in a mirror, how do they make sure that the camera isn't seen in the mirror?

Brad

Chosen answer: Nowadays, CGI can achieve this, but also placing the camera at certain angles so it is unseen or building a special piece of scenery to hide all but the camera's lens (which is, of course, disguised).

raywest

There won't be a specific answer to this question, but I would like to hear thoughts/comments. Why is it that the Twilight series has inspired so many vampire-themed movies, shows, and books (True Blood, Moonlight, The Vampire Diaries, etc.)? The Harry Potter series is also hugely popular, but hasn't led to as many "copycats".

Answer: Most likely because, in most of the cases that you cite as copycat books, they were originally published prior to Twilight. The first Twilight book came out in 2005, but The Vampire Diaries first appeared on the shelves in 1991, while The Southern Vampire Mysteries (televised as the rather more succinct "True Blood") has been around since 2001. As such, when Twilight began to hit the heights of its popularity, both book series were already in existence to be swiftly adapted as TV shows, whilst being relatively immune from accusations of simply being copycats by virtue of pre-dating Twilight by some years. Likewise, while premiering after the first book was written, the TV series Moonlight predates the Twilight film series by a year or so and thus it's difficult to level too many accusations there either - supernatural TV shows existed long before Twilight, and Moonlight is better seen as a successor to those than as a cynical attempt to jump onto the Twilight bandwagon. With Harry Potter, the situation is somewhat different, in that relatively few similar literary series existed prior to the Potter series becoming highly popular. As such, any similar show that was produced would likely have to be based on material published after Potter, and thus would be widely seen as simply being a rip-off. As such, TV and film executives are probably more wary of getting involved in such ventures.

Tailkinker

I have a very vague memory of what I think is an episode from a British TV show. One of the main characters is transporting a criminal of some sort, via car, to somewhere else. The criminal (I think) is a nice man, I think he's a con-man, and he's friendly to the main character. After a while the criminal guy finds out the main character is having some kind of relationship or other social problem, and helps them out. I'm pretty sure this happens on a motorway service station. The episode ends with the criminal guy escaping but leaving behind a note saying he's sorry that he had to. I also remember something about the criminal guy conning someone out of the proper amount of change after buying something from a shop. I'm positive this is a British TV show, and I'm almost positive it was a comedy. All I know is that it's not "The Detectives".

Gary O'Reilly

Chosen answer: This sounds like an episode of "The Bill" from 1999 called "On the Road". DC Duncan Lennox and DC Liz Rawton travel to Salisbury to transport a conman back to London. From what I remember all the events you mention took place in the episode: Lennox having a problem, a scam involving an amount of change and at the end he leaves a note apologising for absconding.

Sierra1

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.