Popcorn Crunchers, Reel 158 Trivia Quiz

Answer: True

William Castle's horror-thriller "Macabre" was made in 1958. Lamberto Bava directed "Macabre" in Italy in 1980. This mildly-pornographic film has no connection with Castle's film. The Mo Brothers (Timo Tjahjanto and Kimo Stamboel) remade their short slasher film "Dara" (2007) as the feature-length film "Macabre" in 2009. Both were made in Indonesia.

The latter film was based on the concept of and included the characters from the former. Neither had anything to do with Castle's "Macabre" excepting the shared title.

Answer: The Black Château

"The Black Castle" (1952) was first released in Sweden, then on Hallowe'en in the US, and not until March 20, 1953, in the UK. "The Castle of the Monsters" (1958) was first released in Mexico in Spanish as "El castillo de los monstruos" and then in the US with English subtitles. "Black Cat Mansion" (1958) was made in Japanese and released in Japan. It was subsequently subtitled in both English and Greek.

The artist Paul Cezanne painted a cubist oil painting titled "Montagne Sainte-Victoire and the Black Chateau" in 1906. The author Clark Ashton published a collection of his poetry titled "The Dark Chateau" with Arkham House in 1951. In 2004, on-line game developer Sucker Punch published a video game titled "Sly 2: Band of Thieves/Episode 1: The Black Chateau" for the PlayStation2. Children's author Yvonne Anne Golds wrote a book titled "The Ghost Of The Black Chateau" for younger readers in 2018. No one appears to have produced a theatrical motion picture titled "The Black Chateau" in the 1950s.

Answer: pod parasites which replace humans

Alien plant spores have silently fallen from space to Earth, germinated in farmers' fields, and grown into large pods. These pods could mimic, take over and replace humans. The resulting "pod person" was visually identical to the human it replaced but emotionless, soulless, and without affect.

This process occurs while the victim is asleep. The pods used in the film were created by Ted Haworth (1917-1993), the movie's art director Haworth won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction for "Sayonara" (1957).

The challenge was to depict totally-naked recognizable characters inside the pods as they burst open. Liberal quantities of foaming soap bubbles proved to be sufficiently obfuscatory.

Answer: Hazel Court

"The Man Who Could Cheat Death" was Hazel Court's last role for Hammer Films. Calvin Thomas Beck wrote about her in his book "Scream Queens: Heroines of the Horrors" (1978). He wrote that her performance in "The Man Who Could Cheat Death" was one of her "finest British thrillers".

Answer: Czechoslovakia

"Vynález zkázy"/"The Deadly Invention" was made in Czechoslovakia and has been aptly described as the most successful Czechoslovak film in history. This is true both from an economic point of view and from that of film critics. The production companies Ceskoslovenský Státní Film and Filmové Studio Gottwaldov were involved in its creation.

The copyright is held by Muzeum Karla Zemana located in Prague. This Czech museum is devoted to the preservation and display of the work of Karl Zeman.

Answer: Nothing except the names.

H.E. Barrie wrote the screenplay and Richard E. Cunha directed "Frankenstein's Daughter". The tagline was "IT reaches from the grave to re-live the HORROR, the TERROR." Carl K. Hittleman wrote the screenplay and William Beaudine directed "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter".

The tagline was "Roaring Guns Against Raging Monster!" In "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter", the American outlaw flees to Mexico to hide out and enters a remote castle owned by Maria Frankenstein and her brother Rudolph, the grandchildren of Dr. Frankenstein.

It was filmed at the same time and on the same sets as "Billy the Kid Versus Dracula" (1966).

Answer: the Andromeda Nebula/Galaxy/Constellation

The Andromeda Constellation contains the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way. The Andromeda Nebula is an older term for the Andromeda Galaxy. The most modern name for them is Messier 31 or M31. It is about 2.537 million light-years from Earth.

The aliens in "I Married a Monster from Outer Space" come from an unidentified planet in the Andromeda Galaxy, which planet was destroyed when its sun became unstable.

Answer: acting

John Carradine (1906-1988) played all manner of roles in all manner of media. He had 351 film and television credits at the time of his death. He was as comfortable playing on the Shakespearean stage as in low-budget B-movie horror films. As a youth, he attended Christ Church School in Kingston, Pennsylvania, and the Episcopal Academy in Merion Station, Pennsylvania. He was required to memorize and recite long passages of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, which Elizabethan English marked his diction for the rest of his life.

Here follows a remarkably long but highly edited list of some of his film credits: "Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1932), "The Invisible Man" (1933), "The Black Cat" (1934), "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935), "Revenge of the Zombies" (1943), "Voodoo Man" (1944), "The Invisible Man's Revenge" (1944), "The Mummy's Ghost" (1944), "Return of the Ape Man" (1944), "House of Frankenstein" (1944), "House of Dracula" (1945), "The Black Sleep" (1956), "The Unearthly" (1957), "Half Human: The Story of the Abominable Snowman" (1958), "The Cosmic Man" (1959), "Invisible Invaders" (1959), "Invasion of the Animal People" (1959), "Curse of the Stone Hand" (1964), "The Wizard of Mars" (1965), "House of the Black Death" (1965), "Billy the Kid Versus Dracula" (1966), "The Fiend with the Electronic Brain" (1966), "The Astro-Zombies" (1968), "Blood of Dracula's Castle" (1969), "The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals" (1969), "Horror of the Blood Monsters" (1970), "Bigfoot" (1970), "Blood Legacy" (1971), "Silent Night, Bloody Night" (1972), "Blood of Ghastly Horror" (1972), "Terror in the Wax Museum" (1973), "The Cat Creature" (1973), "The House of Seven Corpses" (1974), "Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary" (1975), "The Sentinel" (1977), "Doctor Dracula" (1978), "The Bees" (1978), "Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula" (1979), "Monster" (1980), "The Howling" (1981), "The Nesting" (1981), "Frankenstein Island" (1981), "Satan's Mistress" (1982), "The Tomb" (1986), "Monster in the Closet" (1986), and "Evil Spawn" (1987).

Answer: the North American Pacific Coast / San Francisco

Driven from its home in Filipino waters by hunger, the enormous octopus swims across the Pacific Ocean to terrorize the North American Pacific Coast. It comes ashore on an beach near Astoria, Oregon, where the Columbia River enters the Pacific Ocean. It destroys the Golden Gate Bridge, enters San Francisco Bay, and attacks the city. San Francisco, which has seen a lot of strangeness in its time, is the site of the cephalopod's final battle.

Answer: none whatsoever

Jim Craddock, the author of "VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever" (2001), describes the condensation of "King of the Rocket Men" to "Lost Planet Airmen" as an "intergalactic battle of good and evil". This would be true if only the evil scientist Dr. Vulcan came from someplace other than Planet Earth.

The feature film's working titles were "The Lost Planet" and "Lost Planetmen". It is inapparent what planet was referenced by those names, either. No other planet here; only Earth.