I have been trying for years to find the title or anything about a terrifying gorilla movie I saw in the early 50's. It was in color and the first scene was a detective in a destroyed apartment, kneels down by a fireplace and a dead young woman falls headfirst (has been pulled up). As the movie progresses, each young woman killed was given a bracelet with a little bell on it. As with King Kong, the gorilla won't kill the last girl and is killed by police. Can you help?
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.
In movies where a giant being is attacking smaller beings, why is it that the giants always seem to be moving so slowly? Happens in video games often as well.
Chosen answer: Firstly, giants are heavy, really heavy. If you double the height of an individual, simple maths indicates that their volume, and thus their mass, multiplies by a factor of eight. So anything huge is going to have a hell of a lot of mass to move around. Secondly, in order for a giant to appear to move at what we would consider normal human speeds, they would actually have to move their body at a much higher velocity than normal. Say, for example, that a human, walking fast, takes two paces every second. A giant ten times the size, in order to appear to be moving at human-normal speeds, would also have to be taking the same two paces per second. Given the ten-times-longer stride length, this would translate to the giant's limbs moving at ten times the velocity of the humans, with a correspondingly much higher acceleration and deceleration. Given the increase in mass (a giant ten times the height of a human would possess a thousand times the mass) and the need for much higher acceleration, basic physics (Force = Mass x Acceleration) dictates that the amount of force required to move at what would appear to be a normal speed is staggeringly higher than that required for a normal-sized human; ten times the acceleration and a thousand times the mass requires ten thousand times the force. While our theoretical ten-times-larger giant would have a thousand times the muscle volume, in order to apply the necessary force, those muscles would still have to operate at ten times the capacity of normal muscles to give the appearance of normal movement. Obviously in the case of fictional giants, that sort of muscular efficiency isn't out of the question (they are fictional, after all), but most creators recognise on some level that there's a certain implausibility there, and thus the image of the slow-moving giant has become an indication of something really big. And while their movements may appear slow, their increased size means that their actual movement speed is still likely to be considerably higher than human norms, so the slowness is somewhat misleading anyway.
I am trying to find the name of a movie and all I have is a scene from it. I don't know the actors' names or even the time frame but the scene that I saw was a man in a white military looking uniform with blood on it stumbles out of the woods and there is a young mother on the side of a country road that is nursing her baby. The man then removes her baby and sucks her breasts until he is full and leaves her. The timeframe of the movie looked as if it were maybe WWII Russia or a foreign land. Can anyone help me?
Answer: Essential Killing is the name of the movie you are looking for. Luckily I had rated it in the IMDb and was able to go find it. It is currently available to stream via Netflix as of August 16th 2013.
I remember watching a movie in the late 80's-early 90's that had a scene I can vaguely recall about a drawing of a house and a boy who gets trapped in it. Then the drawing gets thrown away and a garbage truck is about to compact it...and that's all I know. Do you know what movie this is? Thanks.
Answer: The movie is called Paper House.
I am looking for a film from possibly the late 80s, that somehow involves rich kids and horses and high school kids trying to sneak into college dorms. The film wraps up with a young couple who have been trying to be intimate with each other getting a fancy hotel room and trying to make the moment perfect, but consequently the girl gets food poisoning or the flu which botches their big plans. Right before the credits roll she finds him sulking on the shoreline outside the hotel and they sleep together there. Does this ring any bells?
A few years back me and my dad were in a motel flipping through the channels. We came across a movie staring Bruce Willis. For whatever reason, we didn't watch much of it and went to something else, but it has always stuck out in my mind and I'd like to find it. The scene shown had Bruce Willis and Jack Black in it. To sight his gun, Bruce had Jack hold out a cigarette pack so he could shoot it. He shot off Jack Black's arm, and then killed him. What movie is this?
Chosen answer: The Jackal (1997).
In all the Superman movies, animated movies, and shows, how is it that his suit never seems to rip or tear or take much damage at all, if any, despite all the beatings he takes?
Chosen answer: The official answer is that Superman's invulnerability extends a few millimeters out from his skin. Which explains both why he chooses to wear tights in the first place and why they don't get obliterated, but does not explain why his cape comes away mostly unscathed as well. Although given his suit is often portrayed as being alien in origin too, that would explain its durability.
What's the name of the John Wayne movie where an actor has his eyes burned out by Indians?
Answer: Hondo.
What is the name of the movie about a teenage girl who runs away, meets two men at a truckstop and then drives away with them in the truck? She starts a romance with one of the men who turns out to be a bit crazy, he later makes a plan with her to hold her hostage and ransom her parents as a way to get money, but then it turns serious and police are involved and she has to convince him to give himself up and let her go.
Answer: I believe the movie is called Stolen Innocence.
I am looking for a movie that I remember seeing as a kid in the 90s. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of details but I specifically remember the main character who was a teen with brown hair zip lining from a construction-looking structure. I also want to say that there was an ape or gorilla of some type involved.
Answer: Not completely sure, but sounded like George of the Jungle. He was swinging on the Golden Gate though. The actor is Brendan Fraiser. He was pretty popular on the 90's scene. Hope that's right for you.
Did John Wayne and Clint Eastwood ever do a movie together?
Chosen answer: No. Wayne disliked High Plains Drifter enough that he said he wouldn't want to work with Eastwood.
How does Blu-ray conversion better the quality of old movies? The "Film Foundation" or whatever they are called is going back and restoring countless old movies like The Red Shoes to DVD and Blu-Ray. And they keep saying that the Blu-Ray makes it better than ever and clearer. How is that? The original film was the original format. So how can changing the format better something that was in a lesser form originally?
Chosen answer: Any movie shot on film, as all older movies obviously were, has to be scanned into a digital format in order to be placed on a DVD or BluRay disc. Generally speaking, for DVD releases, films were scanned at the minimum resolution necessary for that format, and thus using the same scan for the high-definition BluRay release wouldn't result in any improvement to the picture quality. What companies are doing now is returning to the original film negatives, if available, or original film reels if not and rescanning them as a much higher resolution, generally after going through them painstakingly frame-by-frame to remove imperfections in the original images. Thus the versions of those movies now being released on BluRay are not only cleaned up versions of the original, resulting in a better image, but are taken from new high-definition scans, allowing the full resolution of the BluRay disc and the high-definition television it's being played on to be utilised, making for exceptional quality.
This is a movie that I got from Red Box a couple years ago or so. But for the life of me I can not remember what it was called. From what I remember, the basic jist of it was this swordsman wanted to become the greatest swordsman in the world and is Japanese. He challenges the current best and beats him in seconds right at the beginning of the movie. And it is his mission to beat that guy's full clan, which he does, killing them all except a small baby that he can't bring himself to kill. He takes it to raise, but this goes against his own clan's rules and so now he is hunted for dead. He leaves Japan and goes to America in the old west. He meats up with a dysfunctional circus group and mixes with them. This group has their own problems with local cowboys. And by the end of the movie, it becomes a three way battle between this guy with the Circus guys on his side, the cowboys, and Ninjas out to get the main guy. All fighting each other. This was the plot to the best of my memory. I can not remember the name and would love to watch it again. Does anybody know what movie this is?
Chosen answer: Sounds like "The Warrior's Way".
I remember about five or more years ago I saw this movie about a girl or a guy who goes to Ireland and while there this older guy knocks their heads together. Later on he/she gets drunk and married and tries to get out of it, but falls in love. Oh and some guy lies too long in a tanning bed and gets badly burned.
Answer: I think the movie is 'The Matchmaker' with Janeane Garofalo. There is a knocking heads scene and a guy does spend too long in a tanning bed and burns, but there's no 'getting drunk, married and regretting it' scenario.
Please help. This movie was made around 1995-2001. Can't remember a lot of details. There was an old house and boy and a girl lived there. At the end of the movie we realize that they were possessed by spirits of two lovers, who died a long time ago. I also remember that the name of the boy is important, at the end of the movie he asks the protagonist to say his name aloud, and when he does, the boy dies.
Chosen answer: This is an adaptation of "The Turn of the Screw", a horror story written by Henry James. There have been several made over the years, listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turn_of_the_Screw#In_popular_culture.
I'm trying to find the title of a movie I watched in the early 1980's about a poor military family whose daughter is killed by a train while playing on the train tracks, and money is donated to the family for the funeral. That's pretty much all I can remember, but would love to see it again.
Answer: I think it was a made-for-TV movie with Jane Fonda called the Dollmaker.
I don't know if it's a show or a movie but there's a scene where a boy and a girl are at the movies and the girl is really into the movie. She keeps reaching in the bag of popcorn which is on the boy's lap. The boy then proceeds to dump the popcorn so the girl can touch his penis. The bag has red and white vertical stripes.
Chosen answer: Not sure if it's the scene you're thinking of, but the movie "Diner" uses a box of popcorn that way.
When people point out a movie mistake, a lot of the time it is answered as a "character mistake" and not a "movie mistake?" What difference does it make? The scene was written for the movie and filmed. The mistake was not noticed during filming or when editing, the mistake was not noticed and they could have used another footage without the mistake. So how can the producer/director/editor leaving a mistake in post production considered a "character mistake" and not a movie mistake?" This question was answered earlier but the answer still makes no sense to me.
Chosen answer: It's a slight matter of judgment, but broadly speaking "character mistakes" are the sort of mistakes people make in real life - getting a historical date or other factual information wrong, or a mis-spelling on a sign, things like that. As such they could be a sign of bad filmmaking, or just a believable slip that someone could easily make in real life. So it makes sense to have a section for these sort of "behavioural mistakes" different to "factual errors" which are definitely filmmaking/research mistakes, such as wreckage burning in space, or it apparently being daylight everywhere in the world at the same time (both from Armageddon).
I am looking for the title of a movie that I think was an NBC "Movie of the Week" sometime between 1989 and 1990. I think it starred Meredith Baxter Birney who worked as a nurse. Her daughter had been raped. The mother becomes obsessed with bringing this rapist to justice. The police had no clues. The mother hangs out on the same street corner of the same bus stop where her daughter was abducted and raped for a year with her husband in a car nearby. The same guy who tried to rape her daughter tried to rape the mother. She was able to fight him off and get the police involved. Then a bunch of other women came forward saying he had done the same thing. It was based on a true story. I want this movie on a DVD. Does anyone know the name of this movie?
Answer: I believe the movie you're looking for is Darkness Before Dawn.
I'm looking for a movie or maybe a TV movie from the late 90s/early 2000s, where a man stalks a teenage girl and sometimes stalks her in her own house. It's not the movie "Hider In The House" but similar. The only scenes I can remember with detail are: the father ends up walking on a trap door and falls into the basement where he's pierced by spikes, and the stalker forces the daughter to dance with him at the end. Also I believe the teenage girl has no mother, and the only family she has are her father and brother.
Chosen answer: Christina's House.
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.
Answer: This sounds a lot like "Phantom of the Rue Morgue": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047348/.
Twotall