Best movie questions of 1976

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Carrie picture

Question: When Tommy and Carrie are at the prom, does he start to like her for real, or is he just pretending to make Carrie feel better about herself?

Answer: He starts to genuinely like her, hence his disgusted reaction at the sick practical joke played on her.

Manky

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Taxi Driver picture

Question: When Travis goes into his fitness phase, it shows him hovering his fist over the stove fire. Why is he doing this? What does that achieve?

Answer: It helps him create a tolerance for pain. As we see, he certainly gets a lot of that dished out to him.

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Logan's Run picture

Question: Why were the enforcers called sandmen?

Answer: In popular American lore, the Sandman is responsible for putting sand over your eyes to make you go to sleep. In this context the "sleep" is a euphemism for death, and the enforcers are responsible for making sure that everyone dies on time.

Phoenix

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Rocky picture

Question: How accurate is the boxing depicted in the movie compared to real boxing?

Answer: It's pretty inaccurate. Real life fighters would tire out long before the 15th round after throwing so many haymakers (knock out punches). The amount of punches that connect clean without a knock out is also unrealistic. Creed doesn't seem to ever miss with his punches. Even an inexperienced boxer should be able to see at least a few punches coming and move to avoid them, Rocky seems to have no defense at all. The reaction to being punched is exaggerated for dramatic effect (Creed being lifted off the ground due to the power of Rocky's body punches, Rocky's head being thrown back due to the power of Creed's jab). It is also likely, though this is debatable, that the fight would have been stopped prior to the 15th round as both fighters could hardly stand going into that round.

BaconIsMyBFF

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Midway picture

Question: When is The Coral Sea Battle shown?

Answer: It's shown in the original 4 hour movie. Most of the scenes from the Coral Sea Battle are cut from this version and the battle is referenced, but never really shown.

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The Omen picture

Question: How could Damien's mother be a jackal? That has always thrown me for a loop and I could never understand why they'd do that unless it was for entertainment purposes. I mean, I know it's Hollywood and all but that's just too far-fetched.

Enchantress

Chosen answer: The idea wasn't entirely Hollywood's. The antichrist is sometimes said to be "born of a jackal. " Jackals are mentioned in the Bible, and some interpretations consider them a symbol of something that is "not of God." In the movie, it means that the kid was scary as hell, literally.

Hobbes

Answer: It's Satan's twisted and macabre mockery of Jesus' virgin mother.

TonyPH

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Silver Streak picture

Question: While a number of cigarettes show up in the silver streak, none appear to be lit. Am I wrong or was this subtle comedy, or production preference?

Answer: Most likely it was a production decision. Having multiple extra actors continually smoking during multiple takes and over hours of filming would make for a smokey set, affect breathing and burn peoples' eyes, be a fire hazard, and create consistency problems with cigarettes being in various stages of use (freshly lit or almost down to a stub).

raywest

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Sybil picture

Question: I have always wondered how the movie crew and cast worked with Natasha Ryan, the actress who played young Sybil. There were scenes that were very frightening, dealing with terrible tortures. I always wondered if that was traumatic for the young girl? Or, if not, how was trauma avoided. More generally, does anyone know how movie productions deal with children on the set of films with frightening, traumatic and/or controversial themes?

Michael Albert

Chosen answer: In these types of movies, where young actors are involved in intense scenes, every precaution is taken to ensure that they are never frightened or emotionally compromised. Child psychologists, acting coaches, and the director are on set and work closely with them. A child's parent or guardian is also always close by. Child Protective Services oversee how child actors are being utilized in films and TV shows and there are strict laws and regulations regarding how child actors are treated, how many hours per day they can work, etc. Scenes are also carefully filmed and edited in such a way that can appear to be very intense, but were not emotionally stressful to the child. Also, stand-ins can be used for certain shots.

raywest

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Answer: He didn't have the money to pay the diner bill, so he called the operator, in the phone booth, to call the diner number to test the line.

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The Outlaw Josey Wales picture

Question: After the raid on his farm and he has buried his wife and son, where did he get the ammunition (powder, caps and balls) to do all the practising with, as they would have burned up in the fire and the lead balls would have melted?

Answer: At first, the story advances very rapidly, essentially giving the audience a primer lesson on Josey's angry motivation; so, many minute details aren't explored, such as where he acquired his ammunition. We might conjecture that Josey had a separate out-building, called a "powder house" (which was common in that era) where gunpowder and shot was kept for safety reasons. If he did, that raises the question of why the raiders didn't ransack and burn his powder house as well.

Charles Austin Miller

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Answer: I think she is a lady...remember at the end when he said she was the daughter of Lionel Twain.

Answer: According to the script, she is mouthing "I think he's lying."

Answer: "I think he's lying."

Answer: No, he mouths "I think he's blind." It's right after the scene where he tests that. The Marbles character responds "who is?"

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The Pink Panther Strikes Again picture

Question: Does the ray that hits Drefus at the end kill him, or does it just turn him invisible?

Answer: Just Invisible. Besides the fact that his eyeball and eyelid remain intact and in the same position, he returns in a full, visible form (possibly in a film logic borrowed from Looney Tunes cartoons) in the next Panther film.

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The Slipper and the Rose picture

Question: Why doesn't the King enjoy seeing his nephew (the Prince's cousin) when he arrives near the beginning of the film to congratulate the Prince?

Answer: For the same reason everyone else is unhappy to see him: He's getting on their nerves!

Ioreth

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Barney picture

Question: I'm looking for a movie from the late 80's or early 90's. It's a hilarious comedy, a family movie, about two guys who are on some kind of island and there is a dead dude named Barney with an arrow through his head and sunglasses on it. They discover that when they play music, he walks like a zombie. When the dead guy is walking with the music, he actually is walking to the sea to find a chest with money in it. In the movie there is also a voodoo magic; I remember them sacrificing a goat.

tomica.jovevski

Chosen answer: You're thinking of "Weekend at Bernie's 2".

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King Kong picture

Question: When Long let Dwan fall into the water, we see that the water she plunged into is pretty deep. How deep was the waterfall when she fell in?

Answer: He probably knew it wasn't deep. It's his island; he knew every inch of it. Besides, it's a pool, not an ocean. It most likely had a small underground tunnel which spilled out somewhere on the island.

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Answer: Mrs. Tredoni was enraged that Father Tom refused to give her communion during Mass after he had given it to Catherine, who Mrs. Tredoni calls a whore.

raywest

Why did he refuse to give her communion?

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The Missouri Breaks picture

Question: The Missouri Breaks starred Jack Nicholson (as Tom Logan, a rustler) and Marlon Brando (as Robert E Lee Clayton, a "regulator" tasked with eliminating him). Yet they never appear together. Brando is absent from over half the scenes featuring Nicholson, and vice-versa. When they do meet, there is a close up of Nicholson speaking to Brando, followed by a close up of Brando replying to Nicholson, and so on. Why do Nicholson and Brando never appear on screen together?

Rob Halliday

Answer: At this point, Brando used cue cards for his dialogue and liked to improvise lines. Nicholson found this difficult and distracting because Brando continually shifted his gaze to the cue card behind the cameraman and went off script. Although Nicholson said Brando was exceedingly cooperative and "gentle as a lamb" on the set, the two actors took an instant dislike to one another. Each actor was filmed separately while reciting their lines.

raywest

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Assault on Precinct 13 picture

Question: Is the ice cream man the same person who plays the man who says "We've got a stretcher for you, ma'am"?

Answer: No.

Gavin Jackson

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Marathon Man picture

Question: Why does Babe throw Szell's diamonds away when he could've kept a few? Why would Szell be stupid enough to risk exposure when going to the diamond district of New York where somebody might recognize him?

Rob245

Answer: The diamonds were "blood money" that were stolen at the expense of many Jewish lives during the holocaust and also resulted in Babe's brother, "Doc" being murdered. For that reason, Babe would not want them, nor would he allow others to profit from them. Szell needed to risk being recognized in New York in order to retrieve the entire cache of diamonds from the bank safe deposit box after his brother, Klaus, was killed. Klaus would retrieve as many diamonds as Szell needed to sell to support himself in South America. Once Klaus was dead, no-one else could gain access to them for Szell, or if they could, probably would have stolen them.

raywest

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The Gumball Rally picture

Question: I don't understand what the women in the Porsche were on about. What's so significant about lights at 32 miles per hour?

Answer: They are moving thru city streets where the traffic lights are setup to sequentially change so that a vehicle traveling at 32mph will get a green light all the way through the area, never having to stop.

johnrosa

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