Best mystery movie trivia of 1981

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The Howling picture

Trivia: While giving a lecture at the Hollywood Scriptwriting Institute, director Joe Dante trash talked the novel "The Howling" on which the movie is based. One person in the audience raised his hand and asked, "So, you don't like the book, huh?" with Joe stating, "No, not really." The man responded that he was the one who wrote the novel. To Joe's surprise, the man in the audience was Gray Brandner, the author of "The Howling."

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Friday the 13th Part 2 picture

Trivia: Part of the reason Alice (the survivor of the first film) is only on screen during the first scene and is killed off early is because the actress portraying her (Adrienne King) was dealing with a real-life stalker and was trying to limit her acting appearances.

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Halloween II picture

Trivia: Jimmy didn't die even though it never shows him after he faints on the steering wheel in the car with Lori. He simply passed out. The television cut shows him alive in the ambulance at the end, but for some reason in the theatrical version, they left it out for us to 'wonder'.

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Time Bandits picture

Trivia: Throughout the film there are several references to a character named Horseflesh, (such as "Horseflesh would never get us into this mess"). Despite the character being credited at the end of the movie he's never properly shown onscreen. There's a paragraph devoted to him in the published "Time Bandits" screenplay: "The trouble is quite frankly that if Horseflesh had been in it he would have made seven dwarves, and we'd have libel suits from Disney and all sorts of things. But we liked the name, so he remains the mystery dwarf." According to the interview with Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam on the extras DVD (produced in 2002), Terry Gilliam states that Horseflesh is the dwarf seen with Evil, though it isn't mentioned who he is; in the original script he had quite a few lines, but they were cut, eg "The map! Evil one, the very map I promised you, is yours" (from script excerpt shown on DVD).

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