Popcorn Crunchers, Reel 160 Trivia Quiz

Answer: a male created out of the body parts of others

Professor Frankenstein comes to the US from England to lecture at an unnamed university. He brings with him a collection of "spare parts" -- bits of expired humans kept in chilled drawers. He plans to assemble a "perfect" human out of cadaverous parts.

A boy is killed in an automobile accident: head crushed, face burned, both hands crushed, right leg irreparably shattered. Frankenstein steals the corpse and amputates its hands and damaged leg. A track team which died in a plane crash is to be buried. Doctor Frankenstein goes to the funeral home and steals two hands and a right leg.

The original monster has no face and only one eye; he kills a handsome lad named Bob on Lovers' Lane. Bob's eye is transplanted and his face grafted, which makes the monster rather presentable.

Answer: Beast in the Night

"The Colossus of New York" (1958) is about an oversized robot. "War of the Colossal Beast" (1958) is about an oversized human being. "Gigantis the Fire Monster" (1959) is about an oversized dinosaur like a Tyrannosaurus rex, but looks more like a mutated basal archosaur.

There was a 1958 motion picture called "Night of the Blood Beast". There was another film called "Beast of the Yellow Night" (1971) and a third called "Night of the Howling Beast" (1975). In 1986, a singer named Randy (no last name) recorded a song called "Beast in the Night". In 1993, a feature-length movie called "Night of the Beast" was released. Author September May (sic) wrote the novel "Beasts in the Night" (2019), and author Michael Katz Krefeld wrote the novel "Beast in the Night: An Inspector Cecilie Mars Thriller" (2023). Apparently, nobody produced a movie called "Beast in the Night" in the 1950s.

Answer: He is not.

The screenplay for "Creature From the Black Lagoon" provided for built-in uncertainty as to the demise of the Gill Man. He was shot. He was impaled with a harpoon. He was cut with a spear gun. He was dosed with Rotenone (twice). And he was sprayed with bullets by Dr Carl Maia and Captain Lucas, outside the entrance to his cave, many of which bullets struck him. Dr David Reed asks them to stop shooting.

Then men watch the badly wounded creature struggle into the water and sink slowly out of sight.

While the implication is that the Gill Man died underwater, this proves to be untrue when, in "Revenge of the Creature" (1955), a second expedition to the Black Lagoon locates and captures him.

Answer: Leslie Bradley

The Symbol Maker is torn between his duties to the tribe to uphold the law and his love for his son who continues to transgress it. The youth is played by English actor Leslie Ernest Bradley (1907-1974). Bradley's career included a role as a scientist, Dr Karl Weigand, in another Roger Corman motion picture, "Attack of the Crab Monsters" (1957).

Answer: "Astounding She-Monster" (1957)

There is a subgenre of horror film called "body horror" which deals with disturbing things that happen to a person's body. These films may be sorted into those which involve a person getting larger or smaller such as "War of the Colossal Beast" (1958) and those which involve some sort of disfiguring of a person such as "The Fly" (1958), "The Wasp Woman" (1959), "The Quatermass Xperiment" (1955), "Night of the Blood Beast" (1958), "First Man into Space" (1959), "Cult of the Cobra" (1955), and "The Manster" (1959).

The motif carried on into later films, e.g. "Fantastic Voyage" (1966), "The Incredible Shrinking Woman" (1981), and "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" (1989). See, generally, Michael C. LaBarbera, "The Biology of B-Movie Monsters" (2003). In "Astounding She-Monster", shapely Shirley Kilpatrick played the role of an alien who came to Earth wearing a skin-tight, low-cut leotard.

Answer: Yes

No motion picture attempted to pick up the thread where "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" left off. A large number of films "borrowed" the premise as it was the prototypical flying-saucer movie. In 2008, as part of their "Ray Harryhausen Signature Series", TidalWave Productions released a comic book mini-series titled "Flying Saucers vs. the Earth".

The four comic books in this series retold the original story from the perspective of the aliens (called the Sons of Aberrann).

Answer: Kronos attracts the plane and absorbs the blast.

The US Air Force sends a B-47 carrying an atomic bomb with which to destroy Kronos. Upon the sudden realisation that the nuclear explosion will likely provide the robot with more energy, the mission is called off. When Kronos determines that it is about to miss a meal, it draws the bomber in to crash into itself. The alien machine absorbs the blast's energy and grows in size as a result.

Answer: make-up and special effects

American artist Paul Blaisdell (1927-1983) worked in two-dimensional painting, sculpting, and in monster-suit and make-up creation. He worked out of a studio which he built at his residence in Topanga, California. Blaisdell created the monster costume for each of the following motion pictures: "The Beast with a Million Eyes" (1955), "Day the World Ended" (1955), "It Conquered the World" (1956), "The She-Creature" (1956), "Voodoo Woman" (1957), "Not of This Earth" (1957), "The Amazing Colossal Man" (1957), "Cat Girl" (1957), "From Hell It Came" (1957), "Invasion of the Saucer Men" (1957), "Attack of the Puppet People" (1958), "War of the Colossal Beast" (1958), "Earth vs. the Spider" (1958), "How to Make a Monster" (1958), "It! The Terror from Beyond Space" (1958), "Invisible Invaders" (1959), and "The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow" (1959).

Answer: Dr. Barton's ranch in Sausalito, California

The Gill Man escapes from the Ocean Harbor Oceanarium in Florida. A team pursues him into the Everglades on board the yacht Vagabondia III berthed in Ft. Myers, Florida. Once the creature has been recaptured, Dr. William Barton has it transported to his ranch in Sausalito, California, on Richardson Bay, which connects to the Pacific Ocean.

The underwater scenes were shot at Silver Springs and Wakulla Springs Florida, both of which later became state parks.

Answer: a 65-minute feature-length film

Although previous incarnations of The Bowery Boys (The Little Tough Guys) played in theatrical serials, the Bowery Boys themselves made only feature-length movies. As The Bowery Boys, they made 48 motion pictures, of which "The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters" was the thirty-fourth. One of the reasons that this film ran only 65 minutes was that the producers repeatedly reduced the budgets over the life of the series. See, generally, David Hayes, "The Films of the Bowery Boys" (Secaucus, NJ: The Citadel Press (1984).