Popcorn Crunchers, Reel 182 Trivia Quiz

Answer: setting fire to the sewers in which they hide

Realising that the H-Men in the sewers of Tokyo must all be destroyed, the police and scientists develop a plan. They use a "high voltage discharge unit" to ignite gasoline spread in the sewers. The creatures are first corralled in one part of the sewers, and any escape is blocked by fire. Creatures made of liquid do not stand up well to fire.

When the flames finally flicker out, Dr Maki reports that all of the H-Men have been destroyed. If this exciting climax appears to be comparable to the ending of "Them!" (1954), that's because it is.

In "Them!", the giant ants, mutated by radiation resulting from atomic bomb tests, are trapped in the sewer system under Los Angeles and burned to death with flame throwers.

Answer: The Lost Sisters

The feature-length movies "Lost Continent" (1951), "The Lost Missile" (1958), and "Mesa of Lost Women" (1953) are all actual, not-made-up, existent, and authentic motion pictures. "Lost Continent" stars Cesar Romero, Hillary Brooke, Whit Bissell, Sid Melton, Hugh Beaumont and John Hoyt. "The Lost Missile" stars Robert Loggia, Philip Pine, Selmer Jackson, Robert Shayne, and Lawrence Dobkin. "Mesa of Lost Women" stars Jackie Coogan, Allan Nixon, Richard Travis, Lyle Talbot, and Tandra Quinn.

Director Christopher Sankey created a short film in 2014 called "The Lost Sister". Author Holly Black wrote the novel "The Lost Sisters" in 2018. Singer-songwriter Gitla released an album called "Long Lost Sister" in 2006. Los Angeles artist Ethan Caflisch painted (acrylic on canvas) "Long Lost Sister" in 2018. No one appears to have made a feature-length movie in the '50s called "The Lost Sisters".

Answer: no monsters at all

A number of 1950s motion pictures featured giant spiders: "Cat-Women of the Moon" (1953), "Tarantula" (1955), "The Black Scorpion" (1957), "The Spider" (1958), and "Earth vs. the Spider" (1958). A number of movies made later than the 1950s featured carnivorous worms: "Dune" (1984), "Tremors" (1990), "Attack of the Flesh Devouring Space Worms from Space" (1998), and "Mongolian Death Worm" (2010).

The serial "Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars" (1938) introduced the Clay People, who could walk through cave walls. "Missile to the Moon" (1958) featured creatures made of stone, as did the American television cartoon "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" in 1983.

There were no monsters in "Abbott and Costello Go to Mars".

Answer: Howard Duff

Dr Stephen Mitchell, an engineer played by Howard Duff, is part of a British team trying to launch a satellite into permanent Earth orbit. He suspects his wife, Vanessa, is having an affair with Dr. Philip Crenshaw, another member of the team. When Vanessa and Philip go missing around the time that the rocket carrying the satellite launches. Mitchell is accused of a jealousy-motivated double murder.

In response, he decides to ride a second rocket into orbit to see if their bodies are on the first rocket and thereby clear his name. (If this sounds more like a murder mystery than a science-fiction adventure to you, you are joined in that thought by many of the film critics who reviewed the motion picture in 1953-4.)

Answer: the Theremin

Van Cleave (1910-1970) was a multi-talented musician. He played trumpet in several big bands. He was an arranger, composer and orchestrator in films, television, and radio. Director Jack Arnold recruited him to do the score for "The Space Children". Cleave chose the Theremin to produce the weird, mysterious, and hypnotic sounds for the film.

He wrote the piano score for "The Colossus of New York" (1958). Van Cleave pioneered the use of the Theremin in television musical scores on "The Twilight Zone".

The Theremin was invented in 1919 by the Russian physicist Lev Sergeyevich Termen, and patented in the United States in 1928. His musical instrument looks like a small radio with two antennae in front of which the thereminist waves his or her hands which, without touching the device, alters the pitch and volume ... and sounds creepy.

Answer: Yes, a remake

The United Paramount Network, known as UPN, was in business from 1995 until 2006. UPN produced a remake of "I Married a Monster from Outer Space" called "I Married a Monster" in 1998. The remake is fairly faithful to Louis Vittes' original (1958) script. Actors Tom Tryon and Gloria Talbott, who played the newlyweds Bill and Marge Farrell in the original film, appear in the remake as the parents of the groom.

Consider also the following somewhat similar films: "Xtro"(1982), "Strange Invaders" (1983), "My Stepmother Is an Alien" (1988), and "Mars Needs Moms" (2011).

Answer: Derivative

One might be led to believe that the 1959 Hammer Films' "The Mummy" was a remake of Universal Pictures' 1932 movie "The Mummy" by the identity of their titles. This would be a misstep. The 1932 screenplay was written by John L. Balderston. adapted from a treatment by Nina Wilcox Putnam and Richard Schayer. Of the 1959 Hammer picture, Putnam wrote to Time Magazine, "This disgusting English remake was done without my knowledge or consent, and it has been a terrible shock at the age of 75, to find such a work attributed to me, however wrongly and by indirection."

The true forebears of the English film were "The Mummy's Hand" (1940), "The Mummy's Tomb" (1942), and "The Mummy's Ghost" (1944). The plot echoes both "Hand" and "Tomb". The characters are those who populated "Hand" and "Tomb". The exciting conclusion also concluded "Ghost". From the original 1932 motion picture, the Hammer film uses the character name Joseph Whemple, the use of the sacred scroll, and the part where the sight of the walking mummy drives one of the archaeological party insane. The review in "Variety" said that there was "little of actual newness" in the movie.

Answer: acting

American actor Lloyd Bridges (1913-1998) played in over 150 motion pictures, on stage, and as the lead in several television programmes. Two of his children, Beau and Jeff, went into acting, as well. He played the lead, Mike Nelson, on television's "Sea Hunt" (1958-1961). Bridges was a WWII veteran of the US Coast Guard and remained in the Coast Guard Auxiliary until he retired with the rank of commodore.

His several horror and science fiction films included "Lost Horizon" (1937), "Secret Agent X-9" (1945), "Rocketship X-M" (1950), "Around the World Under the Sea" (1966), "Stowaway to the Moon" (1975), and "Honey, I Blew Up the Kid" 1992).

Answer: Cairo Café

Rontru says she will meet the boys at the Cairo Café. A waiter there informs them that the medallion in their possession carries a curse. Abbott hides it in his hamburger and eats it. Rick's Café Americain was the "gin joint" run by Rick Blaine, played by Humphrey Bogart, in "Casablanca" (1942). L'Idiot (pronounced LEE-dee-oh) was the very upscale Los Angeles restaurant in the motion picture "L.A. Story" (1991); the French maître d' was played by Patrick Stewart. Al-Abbas was a Palestinian chicken restaurant in the long-running television satire "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (2000-2024).

Answer: They were locked in a bank's vault.

Oliver P. Barnstaple was an officer of an unnamed bank. Charles was a bank teller in the same bank. On the day of the atom-bomb extinction event, they were together in the bank's vault and were accidentally locked in. When the vault door automatically opened and released them, they discovered that everyone else in the bank was dead.