Ask 411 Movies for 07.06.09: Happy Sixth of July, I’m Only Two Days Late!

Posted by Leonard Hayhurst on 07.06.2009

Monster Bash, Public Enemies, Last House on the Left, Summer School, Three O’Clock High, Saving Silverman and unfinished films


I survived the Monster Bash and this might have been my favorite one yet. Things got off to a bang Thursday when Lou Ferrigno, a guest of the show, was mobbed coming off of the airplane due to his connection with Michael Jackson as his personal trainer. Armed cops had to help him get his luggage and to the car we had for him. "Good Morning America" wanted to come to the Bash and do a remote, but Ferrigno refused and didn't want to talk about Jackson at all. Ferrigno was pleasant enough, but he was all about the Benjamins if you know what I'm saying. I wanted to get his autograph, but he was charging a bit too much. We were joking if we were going to get his autograph, we would have him sign something funny. So instead of the usual top ten I've been doing lately, the top three things we thought of to have Lou Ferrigno sign.

To Leonard,
Thanks for the muffins
Lou Ferrigno

To Leonard,
Stay black
Lou Ferrigno

To Leonard,
Keep it young and tight
Lou Ferrigno

Also of great amusement to meet and Chad Webb, 411 editor and Big Screen Bulletin writer, was Bash staff member Thom whose friend Jerry is an indy wrestler that once beat Glacier by ducking the cryonic kick and getting a schoolboy. ‘The guy that beat Glacier' is now one of our favorite people on earth, even though we've never met him. Thom sent Jerry a text message and he wrote back that Glacier was one of the nicest guys he's met in the business.

My friend Dan and I were originally scheduled to pick Ferrigno up from the airport, but we got switched. We did pickup Donnie Dunagan and his wife Dana. Donnie was the voice of Bambi and was also in Tower of London and Son of Frankenstein. World War II derailed his acting career and he went on to serve in the Marine Corp and became a physics professor. Only about 15 years ago did he actually admit to his wife that he was a child actor and she convinced him to try to reconnect with that portion of his life and do some conventions and such. We also picked up Jennifer and Jacklynn Chaney, great-granddaughters of Lon Chaney Jr., who was there with their father Ron Chaney. They were really sweet girls and attractive. I'd show you a picture, but I'm in it and you don't want to see that.

I also got an autograph from Gary Conway from I Was a Teenage Frankenstein on a doll of the character, Dunagan on a Son of Frankenstein poster and an autograph of Butch Patrick on a book "Eddie Munster AKA Butch Patrick" written by Helen Darras, a close personal friend of his.

I wanted to share something of the Monster Bash with you and from YouTube I did find some footage that was shot this year of Conrad Brooks from Plan 9 From Outer Space. No, I'm not in any of it.



Also enjoy the comedy stylings of long time Bash buddy Don Reese. Reese performed outside before our drive-in theater showing of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.



Unfortunately we suffered many celebrity deaths since I had to put my last column to bed early. Since everyone is well aware at this point of the passing of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Billy Mays, I'll skip those and highlight three others that were a bit under the radar.

Karl Malden, 97, died July 1 of natural causes in California. Malden won an Oscar for A Street Car Named Desire and an Emmy for "Streets of San Francisco." He served as President of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences from 1989 to 1993.



Harve Presnell, 75, died of cancer June 30 in Santa Monica. Presnell was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1965 for most promising newcomer, but his career might be best remembered for several character parts he did in later years. Among his movies are Fargo, Face/Off, Saving Private Ryan, Patch Adams, the Legend of the Bagger Vance, The Family Man, Mr. Deeds, Old School, Flags of Our Fathers and Evan Almighty.



Gale Storm, 87, died June 27 in Danville, Calif. Storm did a handful of movies, but is best remembered for her TV roles on "My Little Margie" and "The Gale Storm Show."



Q: I've noticed recently that all of the commercials for Public Enemies they show on TV fail to mention Christian Bale as a star of the movie. Is this due to Terminator Salvation not performing very well or is there something else to it?
-Mario



A: Nobody involved with the film is going to come out and say "we don't think Christian Bale is good for marketing, so we dropped him like he was hot." Although the disappointing showing of Terminator: Salvation and the negative publicity Bale received coming out of that with the story of how he berated a crew member on set certainly did him no favors in being an actor the mainstream is chomping at the bit to see on the big screen again. Without finding any direct mentions of tension on the set or anything in Bale's contract about publicity, I would say this is most likely the reason his part in the publicity and marketing has been scaled back. You can read my review of Public Enemies at my blog www.coshoctontribune.com/reeltoring.

Q: Doubt you can answer this, but has Wes Craven ever explained why the music
in Last House on the Left is so mind numbingly retarded? I understand that it was written by the guy from the movie who also is an accomplished music writer, but the music is just so out there. It makes the whole movie seem more like a parody.
-Jake G

A: I doubt anyone has started an interview with "so Wes, the music in Last House on the Left, why so mind numbingly retarded?" I would actually like to see his response to that. Craven and David Hess, who plays Krug in the original film and wrote the music while also singing some of it, have stated in interviews that the idea was to provide a jarring juxtaposition to make the actions occurring on screen seem that much more horrific. So you have upbeat pop and soft ballads sandwiched by rape, gore and murders. This is also the reason for the Keystone Cop like antics of the policemen investigating the incidents. It doesn't look like the original soundtrack has been released on CD.



Q: can't remember the freakin name of a horror movie. mid eighties, it centered around a town being invaded by big ass weird aliens and the main character was a kid about thirteen years old. the aliens kinda body snatched people and looked freaky as hell. shit. ummm, located in a small town with caves. last image is the kid walking into his parents bedroom only to find thet were now aliens too. seem to remember it being kick ass, but can't think of the name to save my life.
-Shit

A: Mario got this in the comments last week, it is the remake of Invaders from Mars from 1986 and directed by Tobe Hooper. Jimmy Hunt, who was the little boy in the original, has a cameo and is scheduled to be a guest next year at the Monster Bash.

In both films, the parents of a young boy are taken over by aliens who land near their home. Slowly other townspeople are infected. The boy eventually gets help from a woman and they employ the marines for help. At the end it seems to have been all a dream…or was it?



Q: Hope you can help me remember two horror movies from my youth. I know very little about either but it's worth a shot.

One had this young kid in a clown costume trekking through this very creepy haunted house. I seem to remember a lot of panicky camera shots pointed up at the frightened kid's face but that's about it.

The other had a scene where this little girl kept seeing the spirit of this woman who was killed by being thrown off a cliff, and I remember the girl going to the cliff and seeing the ghost reenacting her death.

Not a lot to go on, I know, but I've been trying to remember these movies for years.
-neverAcquiesce

A: Second one first, because I knew it off the top of my head. I believe it's The Lady In White from 1988. Frankie (Lukas Haas) is locked in the schoolroom closet on Halloween 1962. There he sees the reenactment of a murder that took place ten years before. He retrieves a ring from a vent that can finger the murderer. Also involved is the strange Woman in White (Katherine Helmond) who lives high on a mountain overlooking the beach. Writer-director Frank LaLoggia based the movie on a popular legend from his native Rochester, N.Y.



For the other movie, the first thing that comes to mind is Halloween IV. Michael Myers returns to Haddonfield to attack his niece Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris). Lloyd goes out trick or treating in a clown costume very similar to the one young Michael wears in the first film. Jamie tries to avoid her uncle with the help of the police and Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance). I ran this by the imdb I Need to Know boards, but didn't get a response.

Q: I was reading the comments from last week and noticed one about black ghostbuster
outfits. after re-watching the ray parker video, I saw the still at the end. Where is it from? Who is the guy in it that looks like Jeffrey Tambor? and why weren't the black uniforms used onscreen?
-Johnny

A: The picture in question is a photo-shopped image I found on www.scooterandferret.com. The man in question is a client of the site named Henry. The black suits are prototypes that were done up for Ghostbusters II (you can see the second film logo on Hudson's shoulder). In Dan Aykroyd's first draft for the first movie he had the group in more SWAT like outfits, complete with helmets. The person who put the video on YouTube I showed last week looks like they just threw some random stills on the end of it.



Q: Your lack of any acknowledgement of Summer School in your career synopsis of Mark Harmon is a damn shame. That film is pure awesome, and the most underrated film from that period not named 3 O' Clock High (which should be spoken about in the same breaths as Weird Science, Better Off Dead, and and Ferris Bueller, but sadly, is never. CRIMINAL. Please discuss that in a future column, sir)
-Chainsaw

A: Ok, I'll admit omitting Summer School in a discussion of Mark Harmon's career is just criminal. In the 1987 film directed by Carl Reiner, Harmon stars as Freddy Shoop, a gym teacher with big summer plans who puts them on hold to teach a summer English class to misfits and boneheads, including Courtney Thorne-Smith. Freddy falls for a fellow summer school teacher (Kirstie Alley back when she was still pretty hot), but she's dating douchebag vice principal Phil (Robin Thomas). To continue our Mark Harmon-hero theme from last week, Harmon had to put out the couch fire in the party scene himself when it grew quickly out of hand and injured one of his fingers.



From the same year, Three O'Clock High has nerd Jerry Mitchell (Casey Siemaszko) signed to do a high school newspaper piece on new kid Buddy Revell (Richard Tyson). Revell is rumored to be a violent nutjob. Jerry accidentally touches Buddy and he says they will fight after school in the parking lot. Jerry then spends the rest of the day trying to figure his way out of the coming confrontation.



Q: Leonard, I lost my marbles before I was born. How about Saving Silverman?
-The Great Capt. Smooth

A: Jason Biggs plays the title character in the film from 2001. He's in a Neil Diamond tribute band with his buddies Jack Black and Steve Zahn. Silverman falls in love with Judith (Amanda Peet) who pussy whips him into giving up the band and his friends. The dudes then kidnap Judith and attempt to hook Silverman up with his ex-girlfriend (Amanda Detmer) before she becomes a nun. In funny cameos R. Lee Ermery plays a football coach and Neil Diamond is himself.



Q: I'm trying to remember the name of a horror movie from when I was a kid. A guy dressing up like old classic movie characters and killing people while quoting their lines. His mom made him watch a bunch of movies instead of caring for him when he was little. Any idea?
Thanks ahead of time.
-BFF

A: Your movie would be Fade to Black from 1980. Eric Binford (Dennis Christopher) is a movie geek who begins to stalk those who have made fun of him and kills them off while playing characters and acting out scenes from classic horror and crime movies. Linda Kerridge plays a Marilyn Monroe impersonator Binford lusts after and Mickey Rourke has an early minor role.



Q: There was recent news that Terry Gilliams Quixote movie might possibly getting a second chance at filming. Has there been any other cases like this where a film has begun production and then was shut down, only to begin filming again later? Have there been movies that have filmed a portion of scenes only to be shut down and scrapped altogether?
-Mario

A: One of the most famous films to be virtually completed and scrapped is 1972's The Day the Clown Cried starring and directed by Jerry Lewis. Lewis plays a German clown who is forced to lead Jewish children to their deaths in prison camps. The film was produced by Nathan Wachsberger and his Europa Studios. However, Wachsberger's money ran out before the film was finished and Lewis poured his own funds into the movie. However However, Wachberger's rights to the story ran out before production was even started. Due to rights issues, money issues and various legal wrangling the movie has never been released and Lewis keeps the only known video copy in a safe, which he shows to people on only vary rare occasions. Comedic actor Harry Shearer is one of the few to have seen it and describe it as a perfect object of awfulness.

Orson Welles started It's All True connecting three individual stories set in Latin America in 1942 and footage didn't see the light of day until a 1993 documentary. "My Friend Bonito" was about a little boy and a bull. "The Story of Samba" was about Rio de Janeiro's Carnaval. "Four Men on a Raft" was about four fishermen who sailed 61 days to lodge a protest of unfair discrimination against fishermen with Brazil's leaders. During the shooting of reenactments for the movie, the group's leader was knocked off the boat and lost in an ocean current. He was eaten by a shark. Due to this incident, spiraling costs and a regime change at RKO the movie was scrapped despite Welles wanting to finish it. Some of the film was dumped in the Pacific Ocean when RKO needed more space. The rest of the footage was found locked in a vault in 1985.

Bruce Lee stopped filming Game of Death so he could do Enter the Dragon. He planned to returned to Game, but died before he got the chance. Enter director Robert Clouse was hired to finish the movie with a stand-in and stock footage from earlier Lee movies. The version released was different from the movie Lee was intending to make and documentaries have shown more of the original footage and detailed what Lee was going for.

The March of Time was intended to be MGM's big musical variety film for 1930 and their first in two strip Technicolor. While the film was never completed, footage shot found its way into several other movies and the 1994 documentary That's Entertainment III.

Something Got to Give was the film Marilyn Monroe was making at the time of her death. It was a loose remake of My Favorite Wife and co-starred Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse. It has no connection to the later Diane Keaton-Jack Nicholson film of the same name. At one point Monroe was to be replaced by Lee Remick due to her feuding with director George Cukor. Then Cukor was to be fired at Monroe's assistance. The project was scrapped after her death, but it was eventually remade as Move Over, Darling with James Garner, Polly Bergen and Doris Day. Found footage was placed into a later documentary.

I've got two more questions in my e-mail that we're going to save for next week as I continue to catch up and clear my head.

Don't die.

"You know, I have met some dumb blondes in my life, but you take the taco, pal! Only a Carpathian would come back to life now and choose New York! Tasty pick, bonehead! If you had brain one in that huge melon on top of your neck, you would be living the sweet life out in Southern California's beautiful San Fernando Valley!"