My Name Is Bruce is a 2007 American comedy film, directed, co-produced by and starring B movie cult actor Bruce Campbell. The film was written by Mark Verheiden. It had a theatrical release in October 2008, followed by DVD and Blu-ray releases on February 10, 2009.
Although Sam Raimi, with whom Bruce frequently collaborates, is not involved with this production, much of the film is in the vein of the Evil Dead series; however, Ted Raimi (Sam’s brother), also a frequent collaborator, appears in this film.
Campbell has shown several minutes of the movie during some of his campus lectures, as well as a few public screenings including showings at the sixth annual Ashland Independent Film Festival, CineVegas and the eleventh annual East Lansing Film Festival. A trailer was released for the film as well and is available on various websites. A screening was held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Tickets for the show sold out in less than two minutes, breaking the previous Alamo ticket sellout record, which was also set by a Bruce Campbell appearance at the theater in 1998.
According to the DVD commentary, most of the Bruce Campbell memorabilia in Jeff’s room was real, including a spare Brisco County Jr. costume that Campbell owned. A few fake items, such as a poster for “The Stoogitive,” were made to fill up space.
There are many mentions and references to Bruce Campbell’s other films. Examples are phrases ‘sugar baby’, ‘groovy’ and ‘boomstick’ along with name checking of people like Sam Raimi (director of the ‘Evil Dead’ trilogy).
One of the townspeople named Frank makes a reference to kidnapping the blacksmith from Army of Darkness. Timothy Patrick Quill, the actor who plays Frank, also played the blacksmith in Army of Darkness (1992).
The movie references Bruce Campbell’s fake-memoir novel ‘Make Love (The Bruce Campbell Way)’ published in 2005 several times. On the set of Cavealien 2, the actor Bruce sits down next to after the shoot is reading “The Complete Dummie’s Guide to Acting”, mentioned and pictured in ‘Make love’ on several occasions. In Jeff’s room, there is a poster for the fictitious Bruce Campbell movie ‘Death of the Dead’. This movie plays a prominent role in the plot of ‘Make love’. The poster as shown in the movie was originally featured as an image in the book.
The exteriors for the town of “Goldlick” were actually shot on Bruce Campbell’s property where a back lot was built with the exteriors of all of the buildings. The interior shots were all done on a sound stage.
Ellen Sandweiss, Dan Hicks and Timothy Patrick Quill all worked with Bruce Campbell in the Evil Dead Trilogy: Sandweiss played Cheryl in The Evil Dead (1981), Hicks played Jake in Evil Dead II (1987) and Quill played the Blacksmith in Army of Darkness (1992).
During the town meeting, where the Dirt Farmer and Frank are revealed to be lovers, Frank says “I wish I could quit you”, which is a reference to the line “I wish I knew how to quit you” from Brokeback Mountain (2005).
The (fake) brand of liquor that Bruce gives his dog is Shemp’s. In some Raimi/Campbell projects, body-doubles and stand-ins are called Fake Shemps, after Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges.
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth is a 1970 movie starring Victoria Vetri, set in the time of cavemen. The film was made by Britain’s Hammer Films.
Like several of Hammer’s previous films, such as One Million Years B.C. (1966), the film portrays dinosaurs and humans alongside each other. Directed and scripted by Val Guest, it was based on a treatment by J.G. Ballard, and nominated for an Oscar for its visual effects.
The special effects are considered a benchmark in stop-motion animation believability, so much so that the film is referenced in the movie Jurassic Park. Stop-motion effects were created by Jim Danforth, assisted by David W. Allen and Roger Dickens.
The landscapes (Earth during the Quaternary) were filmed in Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura (Canary Islands), in some places as Maspalomas beach, Ansite Mountain, Amurga and Caldera de Tejeda, in others. It was briefly released on DVD as an exclusive from Best Buy with a G-rating, but was later recalled because it was the uncut version and contained nudity. The original is now a collector’s item.
Victoria Vetri revealed in a 1984 interview that the U.K. version of the film contains nudity. The nude scenes include her character Sanna making love to Tara (Robin Hawdon) in a cave.
A 27-word “caveman language” was devised for this movie, supposedly drawing on Phoenician, Latin, and Sanskrit sources. Some of the key words in this language are: “neecha” is “stop” or “come back”; “zak” is “gone” or “left”; “akita” is “look” or “see”; “neecro” is “bad” or “evil”; “m’kan” is “kill” or “killed”; “mata” is “dead”; “yo kita” is “go”.
In March 1971, Warner Brothers cleverly distributed this film in the USA on a double bill with the similarly themed dinosaur film The Valley of Gwangi (1969).
Victoria Vetri … Sanna
Robin Hawdon … Tara
Patrick Allen … Kingsor
Drewe Henley … Khaku
Sean Caffrey … Kane
Magda Konopka … Ulido
Imogen Hassall … Ayak
Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a 1982 horror film and the third installment in the Halloween series. Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace and starring Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin and Dan O’Herlihy. The film is based on an original screenplay by Nigel Kneale and focuses on an evil scheme by the owner of a mask company to kill the children of America on Halloween night through a series of popular Halloween masks – a witch, a jack-o’-lantern, and a skull.
Season of the Witch is unrelated to the previous films featuring the character Michael Myers, and was intended to begin Halloween as an anthology series, releasing a new Halloween storyline every year. The only connection this movie has with the others in the series is a scene where the trailer for Halloween is on TV. Besides wholly abandoning the Michael Myers plotline, Halloween III departs from the slasher film genre which the original Halloween spawned in 1978. The focus on a psychopathic killer is replaced by a “mad scientist and witchcraft” theme. Moreover, the frequency of graphic violence and gore is less than that of Halloween II (1981), although scenes that depict the deaths of characters remain intense.
Produced on a budget of $2.5 million, Halloween III grossed $14.4 million at the box office in the United States, making it the poorest performing film in the Halloween series at the time. In addition to relatively weak box office returns, most critics gave the film negative reviews. Where Halloween had broken new ground and was imitated by many genre films following in its wake, this third installment seemed hackneyed to many: one critic twenty years later suggests that if Halloween III was not part of the Halloween series, then it would simply be “a fairly nondescript eighties horror flick, no worse and no better than many others.”
The original writer of the story was Nigel Kneale but he sued the producers to take his name off the movie after seeing how violent it was.
A milk factory was used for the setting of the Silver Shamrock factory.
After Michael Myers died at the end of Halloween II (1981), the plan by John Carpenter was to make a new “Halloween” movie each year, each telling a different Halloween-related story. After this movie underperformed at the box office, the film-makers decided to bring Michael back to life for future sequels.
The tagline “The night nobody comes home” is a play on the original Halloween movie’s tagline, “The night HE came home.”
Michael Myers does appear briefly in this film, on a television advertising the original Halloween (1978). It comes near the beginning when Dan Challis is drinking in a bar.
When Challis fills in the register at the motel office, he scans the list of names for evidence of Ellie’s father’s stay. All of the other names on the list are the names of the crew.
The small town of Santa Mira was also the setting for Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
The voice of the operator that Challis keeps getting when he tries to call out of Santa Mira is Jamie Lee Curtis.
The book that Marge Guttman is reading before her death in the motel room is “The Eagle’s Gift” by Carlos Castaneda.
The music playing on the radio when Marge Guttman notices the tag on the floor was also played in John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980).
Supposedly, part of the genesis of this film came from a comment made by film critic Rex Reed. Reed panned Halloween II (1981), saying it was so bad that, “If they make a Halloween III, I’ll turn in my press card.”
The voice of the announcer in the Silver Shamrock commercials and radio spots is that of the film’s writer/director Tommy Lee Wallace.
“Season of the Witch” was the original working title of Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973). “Season Of The Witch” is also the name of a song by Donovan and an alternative name for the George A. Romero film Hungry Wives (1972). Also the name of an upcoming Nicolas Cage movie: Season of the Witch (2010).
A novelization of the film was published in 1982 by science-fiction writer Dennis Etchison under the pseudonym Jack Martin. Despite the film’s commercial failure, the book became a best-seller and was even reissued two years after the film’s release, in 1984.
Using the original molds, the skull, witch, and jack-o’-lantern masks seen in the film were mass-produced by Don Post Studios and sold in retail stores to promote the film’s release.
‘John Carpenter’ revealed in an interview with Gilles Boulenger (for the book John Carpenter: The Prince of Darkness) that the original director for Halloween III: Season of the Witch was ‘Joe Dante’.
Dick Warlock, the stunt man who played Michael Myers in Halloween II (1981), is credited under ‘assassin’ in the credits.
The film’s original director, ‘Joe Dante’, approached Nigel Kneale to write the film while Kneale was temporarily living in Hollywood writing the remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) for director John Landis that was never made due to budget cost. Dante wanted a new and different story than the two previous films in the series, so he suggested Kneale write a treatment around the word Halloween. The producers liked the idea, and after Joe Dante moved on to another project, producer John Carpenter’s regular collaborator, Tommy Lee Wallace, came in as the new director. Kneale initially blamed the drastic changes to his script on executive producer ‘Dino De Laurentiis’ not understanding his dialogue when it was translated to Italian. Kneale requested his writing screen credit be removed once his comical mystery screenplay was rewritten by an uncredited Carpenter, and then later Wallace (who received sole screen credit as writer), to include more gore and simplify the story.
Garn Stephens refused to wear the prosthetic mask during the misfire scene. So a body double was used to complete the scene.
Village of the Giants is a 1965 science-fiction/comedy movie with many elements of the beach party film genre. It was produced, directed and written by Bert I. Gordon, and based loosely on H.G. Wells’s book The Food of the Gods. The story revolves mostly around a chemical substance called “Goo”, which causes giant growth in living things, and what happens after a gang of rebellious youngsters get their hands on it. The cast was mostly teens, or young actors playing teens, and The Beau Brummels and Freddy Cannon make musical guest appearances. The movie was a low-budget exploitation film and not a huge hit (released mostly to drive-ins as part of a double bill), but had some notable use of special effects and undoubted sex appeal, and went on to become a cult classic. The movie proved far more successful years later, when released on home video.
Tagline: They’re 30 feet tall!
In one scene one of the giants reads an issue of “Famous Monsters of Filmland” with another Bert I. Gordon film, War of the Colossal Beast (1958), in the cover.
Exteriors were shot on the Columbia Studios backlot (now part of the Warner Bros. Backlot), the same lot as the exteriors for the TV series “Bewitched” (1964) and “I Dream of Jeannie” (1965). Many scenes were shot on Courthouse Square at Universal Studios, which doubled as Hill Valley in Back to the Future (1985).
Buy this Title on DVD
Loosely based on the H.G. Wells story “The Food of the Gods”, about a substance that causes giant mutations in growing organisms. Children fed the substance become giants (capable of producing giant offspring), who choose to fight when their existence is threatened by adult authorities.
The brand of chicken that the giant teenagers eat is a tie-in to the once-famous restaurant chain called Chicken Delight. The chain was known for home delivery of chicken and ribs, as well as it’s catchy motto: “Don’t cook tonight, call Chicken Delight.” A banner for the restaurant chain can be seen on a wall behind the adults who turn in their rifles.
The beer that the delinquent teens drink after crashing their car is the once popular Blatz Beer.
The fountain that Freddy Cannon sings in front of is the same one seen in the opening of “Friends” (1994).
An alternate version of the theme music – “The Last Race” – was reused by Quentin Tarantino in Death Proof (2007).
The “Teen Magazine” that Merrie (Joy Harmon) reads was an actual issue of the magazine published in July 1965.
Ron Howard plays a boy genius who invents a super growth formula. He later played the same kind of role in “Land of the Giants: Genius at Work (#1.21)” (1969)
Meteor is a 1979 disaster film in which scientists detect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and struggle with international, cold war politics in their efforts to prevent disaster. The movie starred Sean Connery and Natalie Wood. It was directed by Ronald Neame and with a screenplay by Edmund H. North and Stanley Mann, “inspired” by an MIT report Project Icarus. The movie co-starred Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Henry Fonda, Johnny Yune, and Katherine DeHetre.
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires was a 1974 horror film produced by Hammer Studios and Shaw Brothers Studio. Starring Peter Cushing, David Chiang, Julie Ege, and John Forbes-Robertson.
Both Roy Ward Baker, a British director who had helmed several previous Hammer films, and Chang Cheh, a veteran Hong Kong action director, worked on the movie, though only Baker is credited.
Tagline: Deadly Horrors! Dragon Thrills! The First Kung Fu Horror Spectacular!
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires was a co-production with Hong Kong’s Shaw Studio, made in the hope of garnering some of the kung fu movie market share.
The movie was released with various titles in different locations, including The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula and Dracula and the Seven Golden Vampires. It is a clear precursor of the ghost kung fu comedy genre initiated by Sammo Hung some ten years later (Encounters of the Spooky Kind, Mr. Vampire).
The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula version trims twenty minutes of the film’s footage and soundtrack and loops several remaining scenes to fill the running time. The Anchor Bay DVD release features both the Seven Brothers Meet Dracula version and the original uncut Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires version.
Although Christopher Lee was offered the role of Dracula, he declined after reading the script.
WILHELM SCREAM: During the big fight scene at the village (at 1hr 12mns) when Van Helsing shoves a zombie into the fire pit.
The Vampire Lovers is a 1970 British Hammer Horror film directed by Roy Ward Baker and starring Peter Cushing, Polish actress Ingrid Pitt, Madeline Smith and Kate O’Mara. It is based on the J. Sheridan Le Fanu novella Carmilla and is part of the so-called Karnstein Trilogy of films. Other films in the trilogy are Lust for a Vampire (1971) and Twins of Evil (1972). The three films were somewhat daring for the time in explicitly depicting lesbian themes. In the early 1980s a punk group in tribute Vampire Lovers (Australian band) named themselves after the movie.
Buy this Title Here!
Tagline: Beautiful temptress …… or Bloodthirsty monster?
In The Vampire Lovers (based on J. Sheridan LeFanu’s “Carmilla”), Ingrid Pitt’s sensuous bloodsucker seduces Hammer starlets Madeleine Smith and Kate O’Mara and incurs the vengeful wrath of Peter Cushing. The Vampire Lovers aims for comic-book thrills with plenty of nudity and violence (much of which was trimmed from the American version, but reinstated in the DVD).
Before production the script of The Vampire Lovers was sent to the chief censor John Trevelyan who warned the studio about depictions of lesbianism, pointing out that a previous lesbian film The Killing of Sister George had had five minutes excised by his office. In
Madeline Smith 12x16 Photo
response Hammer replied that the lesbianism was not of their doing but was present in the original story by Le Fanu. Trevelyan backed down (Sinclair McKay 2007: 118). Production of The Vampire Lovers began at Elstree Studios on 19 January 1970 and used locations in the grounds of Moor Park Mansion, Hertfordshire (standing in for Styria, central Europe). It was the final Hammer film to be financed with American money — most of the later films were backed by Rank or EMI.
Peter Cushing was cast at a late stage.
The role of the Man in Black was offered to Christopher Lee but he declined the role and John Forbes-Robertson was cast instead. Forbes-Robertson would also later replace Lee in Hammer’s The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974).