Questions from the blood simple to the die hard . . . by Donald Clarke
1. Which 1999 science fiction film was subsequently reloaded and then underwent a revolution?
2. I was on the USS Indianapolis. I like scratching my nails down blackboards. I get eaten in the end. Who am I?
3. Which species were Harvey, Thumper and General Woundwort?
4. The theme to which popular 1963 war film is often sung by English football supporters when their team has just got out of a potentially embarrassing scrape?
5. Linda Hunt in The Year of Living Dangerously. Barbra Streisand in Yentl. Quentin Crisp in Orlando. John Travolta in Hairspray. Who's the odd one out?
6. Which director's pictures have inspired a song by Scott Walker, a musical by Stephen Sondheim and a horror flick by Wes Craven?
7. Which English comic actor, now resident in The Isle of Man, has a bewilderingly large following in Albania?
8. The plot of which picture was inspired by Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (1958)?
9. Which absence unites Evan Almighty, Predator 2, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and The Ghost of Frankenstein?
10. In Paul Schrader's upcoming The Walker, the hero (Woody Harrelson) comes up with an interesting film trivia question: Which actor has played the most real-life American presidents. What is the answer?
ANSWERS
1. The Matrix
2. I am Quint (Robert Shaw) in Jaws
3. Rabbits in Harvey, Bambi and Watership Down
4. The Great Escape
5. Barbra Streisand. All the rest played people of the opposite sex. Streisand played somebody who was herself pretending to be of the opposite sex. (Or Linda Hunt, as she is the only one playing a man.)
6. The late Ingmar Bergman. Walker sang The Seventh Seal. Sondheim's A Little Night Music was based on Smiles of a Summer Night. Craven's The Last House on the Left was inspired by The Virgin Spring.
7. Norman Wisdom
8. Star Wars
9. These are the first sequels in their respective series not to feature the original star. (Pedants alert: yes, we are regarding Boris Karloff, Frankenstein's Monster, as the star of that series.)
10. Rip Torn. The great actor has played three US presidents: Ulysses S Grant, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
