Popcorn Crunchers, Reel 202 Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Scroll of Life

Stephen Banning and Joseph Whemple enter the Tomb of Ananka and find her sarcophagus. Joseph rushes back to tell the injured John Banning of their discovery. Stephen finds a cartouche box on the wall of the mausoleum and opens it. It contains the Scroll of Life. When he reads aloud from it, a door in the wall opens. The party of archaeologists hears Stephen's scream and rush inside to find him comatose.

The box used in the film was a reproduction of a similar box discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922. It is called a cartouche box because the lid is decorated with an oblong containing hieroglyphics representing the name of the pharaoh.

Answer: "The Night of the Thing"

Howard Hawks directed most of "The Thing From Another World" (1951) although his friend and colleague Christian Nyby got most of the credit. Scottish director/producer Will Cowan directed "The Thing That Couldn't Die" (1958), his only horror film, although he also directed a score of Westerns. Edward L. Cahn directed "It! The Terror From Beyond Space" (1958), along with these other films: "Creature with the Atom Brain" (1955), "The She-Creature" (1956), "Voodoo Woman" (1957), "Zombies of Mora Tau" (1957), "Invasion of the Saucer Men" (1957), "Curse of the Faceless Man" (1958), "The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake" (1959), and "Invisible Invaders" (1959).

In 1930, Katharine Virden's " crime novel "The Thing In The Night" was first published. In 2023, Atlas Games published "Lair of the Night Thing," an RPG by David Somerville. In 2010, the motion picture "Night Things" was released in which six people die by the closing credits. Invisible Man's Band recorded their funk/soul/disco number "All Night Thing" in 1979. Diligent research has not revealed a 1950s feature-length science fiction or horror movie named "The Night of the Thing."

Answer: "The Day the Sky Exploded" (1958)

In "The Thing from Another World," team members spread out to determine the shape of an object recently frozen in the Arctic ice and find themselves standing in a circle, the shape of a flying saucer. In "Devil Girl from Mars," a Martian woman crash-lands her flying saucer on a Scottish moor, on her mission to kidnap fertile males from Earth. In "Warning From Space," many flying saucers, occupied by starfish-men, are spotted flying over Tokyo. In "The Day the Sky Exploded," a cluster of asteroids is headed for Earth with no flying saucers involved.

Answer: Jackie Coogan

Hank Johnson is one of the civilian engineers employed by the Eagle Point Missile Project and the father of Eadie. When she goes missing, he searches for her, sees the alien in the cave, is zapped with some sort of light weapon, and ends up hospitalized. Hank Johnson was played by Jackie Coogan (1914-1984). Coogan was a child movie star who played opposite Charlie Chaplin in "The Kid" (1921).

He was (briefly) married to Betty Grable (1937-1939). Although he acted in films and on television all of his adult life, his best-known role was as Uncle Fester Addams on "The Addams Family." Actor John Astin (who played Gomez Addams on the television programme) gave the eulogy at Coogan's funeral.

Answer: Exploding H bombs will destroy humanity

"The moral of the story" is the message delivered or lesson taught by a narrative. A parable is the definitive exemplar. The moral of the story often urges one to live a better life or be a better person. "The H-Man" is a distinctly anti-nuclear-weapons movie. Dr. Maki is the scientist who calls the liquid creature "the H-Man." He returns to the surface from destroying all of the monsters in the sewer by fire.

His last line (in voice over) is "If man perishes from the face of the Earth, due to the effects of hydrogen bombing, it is possible that the next ruler of our planet may be The H-Man".

Answer: A BBC television serial

Nigel Neale wrote a six-episode television dramatic series for BBC which was very successfully broadcast as "The Quatermass Experiment" in 1953. [Note the more conventional spelling of "experiment."] Director Val Guest and screenwriter Richard H. Landau severely condensed Neale's script into an 80-minute motion picture for Hammer Films.

The resulting movie was distributed in the UK as "The Quatermass Xperiment" (where the reference to the television programme would be obvious) and in the US as "The Creeping Unknown." [The spelling of "Xperiment" was ostensibly an effort to emphasise the movie's X-rating.] This was Hammer's first attempt to adapt a television drama as a motion picture. Quatermass was followed by "Quatermass 2" (1957) and "Quatermass and the Pit" (1967), both of which were based on scripts by Nigel Kneale first produced by BBC-TV.

Answer: Eric

Eric, played by James Anderson, is saved from contamination by radioactive dust by being near the top of Mount Everest at the time of the extinction event. Eric is a professional mountain climber, accomplished sailor, and an airplane pilot. When the blizzard relents, he climbs down Everest to his party's base camp and finds everyone there -- climbers and Sherpas alike -- dead.

Answer: Acting & producing

John Ashley (1934-1997) was connected to the entertainment industry in many ways. He was a rock-and-roll singer, an actor and a producer of both motion pictures and television programmes. Ashley owned a chain of about forty movie theatres in Oklahoma.

He co-owned a movie production company. On television's "The A-Team" (1983-1986), he was an executive producer who also did narration and played the occasional bit part. As a singer, he recorded such memorable songs as "Let Yourself Go-Go-Go" (1957), "Pickin' on the Wrong Chicken" (1958), "You Gotta Have Eee-Ooo" (1958), "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini" (1965), and "That's What I Call a Healthy Girl" (1965). Setting aside all of the teenage beach party movies, he appeared in the following science fiction and horror films: "How to Make a Monster" (1958), "Frankenstein's Daughter" (1958), "The Eye Creatures" (1965), "Brides of Blood" (1968), "The Mad Doctor of Blood Island" (1968), "Beast of Blood" (1970), "The Twilight People" (1972), "Beyond Atlantis" (1973), "Black Mamba" (1974).

Answer: California, Nevada, New Mexico

Dr. David Conway works at the University Seismology Laboratory in Los Angeles, California. He invents a device which can more accurately predict the time and place of earthquakes. While demonstrating it, the machine predicts a major earthquake in California in 24 hours. This actually occurs causing immense loss of life and damage to property. The doctor moves his equipment to the bottom of the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. Sheriff Quinn of Las Serinas, Nevada, warns of volcanic activity threatening Horseshoe Dam. There is a "La Serina" in Nevada (near Henderson) but not a Las Serinas. There is a Horseshoe Dam north of Phoenix, Arizona, and another in Nye County, Nevada.

"The Night the World Exploded" was shot in part at the Carlsbad Caverns, in part at the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, California, and in part at the Datatron Corporation Building in Pasadena, California.

Answer: The Mummy (1959)

Jimmy Sangster wrote the script for "The Mummy" (1959), drawing less on "The Mummy" (1932) and more on "The Mummy's Hand" (1940), "The Mummy's Tomb" (1942), and "The Mummy's Ghost" (1944). Peter Cushing plays archaeologist John Banning, seeking the tomb of the Princess Ananka.

The explorers inadvertently roused Kharis, the mummy of the high priest of Karnak, played by Christopher Lee. Yvonne Furneaux plays Isobel Banning who is the reincarnation of the Princess Ananka. As Kharis murders those who desecrated the tomb of Ananka, Police Inspector Mulrooney, played by Eddie Byrne, investigates until he is knocked out by the mummy.