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Night Skies
''Night Skies'' is an unproduced science fiction horror film that was in development in the late 1970s. Steven Spielberg conceived the idea after ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind''. Instead, material developed at the time was used in ''Poltergeist,'' '' E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' and ''Gremlins.'' Origins Steven Spielberg came up with the idea for ''Night Skies'' in the late 1970s when Columbia Pictures wanted a sequel to ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind''.Sinyard 1987, p. 77. He had no interest in a sequel, but also did not want Columbia to make a sequel without him, as Universal Pictures had done with '' Jaws''. Instead, he came up with a horror film treatment for a ''Close Encounters'' follow-up initially titled ''Watch the Skies'' (which had also been a working title for ''Close Encounters''). Spielberg based the story on the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter, where a Kentucky family claimed that they had been terrorized by gremlin-like aliens. Spielberg had heard t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tobe Hooper
Willard Tobe Hooper (; January 25, 1943 – August 26, 2017) was an American filmmaker, best known for his work in the horror film, horror genre. The British Film Institute cited Hooper as one of the most influential horror filmmakers of all time. Born in Austin, Texas, Hooper's feature film debut was the independent ''Eggshells (film), Eggshells'' (1969), which he co-wrote with Kim Henkel. The two reunited to co-write ''The Texas Chain Saw Massacre'' (1974), which Hooper also directed. The film went on to become a classic of the genre, and was described in 2010 by ''The Guardian'' as "one of the most influential films ever made." Hooper subsequently directed the horror film ''Eaten Alive'' (1976), followed by the 1979 miniseries ''Salem's Lot (1979 miniseries), Salem's Lot'', an adaptation of the novel by Stephen King. Following this, Hooper signed on to direct ''The Funhouse'' (1981), a major studio slasher film distributed by Universal Pictures. The following year, he dir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lawrence Kasdan
Lawrence Edward Kasdan (born January 14, 1949) is an American filmmaker. He is the co-writer of the ''Star Wars'' films '' The Empire Strikes Back'' (1980), '' Return of the Jedi'' (1983), '' The Force Awakens'' (2015), and '' Solo: A Star Wars Story'' (2018). He also wrote '' Raiders of the Lost Ark'' (1981) and '' The Bodyguard'' (1992), and is the writer-director of '' Body Heat'' (1981), '' The Big Chill'' (1983), '' Silverado'' (1985), '' The Accidental Tourist'' (1988), and ''Dreamcatcher'' (2003). Kasdan is known for updating old Hollywood genres—film noir, science fiction, westerns—in a classical dramatic style with quick-witted dialogue, but dealing with contemporary social themes. As a director, he has made various personal films that examine characters and generations. Kasdan has been nominated for four Academy Awards: as a producer for Best Picture nominee ''The Accidental Tourist'', for which he was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, and for Best Origi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
''The Texas Chain Saw Massacre'' is a 1974 American independent horror film produced, co-composed, and directed by Tobe Hooper, who co-wrote it with Kim Henkel. The film stars Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, and Gunnar Hansen. The plot follows a group of friends who fall victim to a family of cannibals while on their way to visit an old homestead. The film was marketed as being based on true events to attract a wider audience and to act as a subtle commentary on the era's political climate. Although the character of Leatherface and minor story details were inspired by the crimes of murderer Ed Gein, its plot is largely fictional. Hooper produced the film for less than $140,000 ($ adjusted for inflation) and used a cast of relatively unknown actors drawn mainly from central Texas, where the film was shot. Due to the film's violent content, Hooper struggled to find a distributor, but it was eventually acquired by the Bryanston Distributing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Searchers
''The Searchers'' is a 1956 American epic Western film directed by John Ford and written by Frank S. Nugent, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May. It is set during the Texas–Indian wars, and stars John Wayne as a middle-aged Civil War veteran who, accompanied by his adopted nephew (Jeffrey Hunter), spends years looking for his abducted niece (Natalie Wood). It was shot in VistaVision on Eastmancolor negative with processing and prints by Technicolor. The film was a critical and commercial success. Since its release, it has come to be considered a masterpiece and one of the greatest and most influential films ever made. It was named the greatest American Western by the American Film Institute in 2008, and it placed 12th on the same organization's 2007 list of the 100 greatest American movies of all time. ''Entertainment Weekly'' also named it the best Western. The British Film Institute's '' Sight & Sound'' magazine ranked it as the seventh-best film of all time based ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Wayne
Marion Robert Morrison (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), known professionally as John Wayne, was an American actor. Nicknamed "Duke", he became a Pop icon, popular icon through his starring roles in films which were produced during Hollywood's Golden Age, especially in Western film, Western and war film, war movies. His career flourished from the silent film era of the 1920s through the American New Wave, as he appeared in a total of 179 film and television productions. He was among the top box-office draws for three decades and appeared with many other important Hollywood stars of his era. In 1999, the American Film Institute selected Wayne as one of the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars, greatest male stars of classic American cinema. Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa, but grew up in Southern California. After losing his Athletic scholarship, football scholarship to the University of Southern California due to a bodysurfing accident, he began working for the 20th Century Fox, Fox ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Native Americans In The United States
Native Americans (also called American Indians, First Americans, or Indigenous Americans) are the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous peoples of the United States, particularly of the Contiguous United States, lower 48 states and Alaska. They may also include any Americans whose origins lie in any of the indigenous peoples of North or South America. The United States Census Bureau publishes data about "American Indians and Alaska Natives", whom it defines as anyone "having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America ... and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment". The census does not, however, enumerate "Native Americans" as such, noting that the latter term can encompass a broader set of groups, e.g. Native Hawaiians, which it tabulates separately. The European colonization of the Americas from 1492 resulted in a Population history of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, precipitous decline in the size of the Native American ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comanche
The Comanche (), or Nʉmʉnʉʉ (, 'the people'), are a Tribe (Native American), Native American tribe from the Great Plains, Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the List of federally recognized tribes in the United States, federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma. The Comanche language is a Numic languages, Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan languages, Uto-Aztecan family. Originally, it was a Shoshoni language, Shoshoni dialect, but diverged and became a separate language. The Comanche were once part of the Shoshone people of the Great Basin. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Comanche lived in most of present-day northwestern Texas and adjacent areas in eastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, and western Oklahoma. Spanish colonists and later Mexicans called their historical territory ''Comancheria, Comanchería''. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Comanche practiced a nomadic h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drums Along The Mohawk
''Drums Along the Mohawk'' is a 1939 American historical drama film based upon a 1936 novel of the same name by American author Walter D. Edmonds. The film stars Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert, was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, and directed by John Ford. Fonda and Colbert portray a couple who settle on the New York frontier during the American Revolutionary War and defends their farm from Loyalist and Native American attacks before the conflict ends and peace is restored. Edmonds based the novel on a number of historic figures who lived in the valley. The film—Ford's first Technicolor feature—was well received. It became a major box-office success and was nominated for one Academy Award. Plot Lana Borst, the eldest daughter of a wealthy colonial family, marries Gilbert Martin. Together, they leave her family's luxurious home to embark on a frontier life on Gil's small Deerfield farm situated in the Mohawk Valley of Central New York. In July 1776, after the Ameri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Film
The Western is a film genre defined by the American Film Institute as films which are "set in the American West that mbodythe spirit, the struggle, and the demise of the new frontier." Generally set in the American frontier between the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the closing of the frontier in 1890, the genre also includes many examples of stories set in locations outside the frontier – including Northern Mexico, the Northwestern United States, Alaska, and Western Canada – as well as stories that take place before 1849 and after 1890. Western films comprise part of the larger Western genre, which encompasses literature, music, television, and plastic arts. Western films derive from the Wild West shows that began in the 1870s. Originally referred to as "Wild West dramas", the shortened term "Western" came to describe the genre. Although other Western films were made earlier, '' The Great Train Robbery'' (1903) is often considered to mark the beginning of the gen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Straw Dogs (1971 Film)
''Straw Dogs'' is a 1971 psychological thriller film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George. The screenplay, by Peckinpah and David Zelag Goodman, is based on Gordon M. Williams's 1969 novel, '' The Siege of Trencher's Farm''. The film's title is derived from a discussion in the ''Tao Te Ching'' that likens people to the ancient Chinese ceremonial straw dog, being of ceremonial worth, but afterwards discarded with indifference. The film is noted for its violent concluding sequences and two complicated rape scenes, which were censored by numerous film rating boards. Released theatrically the same year as '' A Clockwork Orange'', '' The French Connection'' and ''Dirty Harry'', the film sparked heated controversy over a perceived increase of violence in films generally. The film premiered in the U.K. in November 1971. Although controversial at the time, ''Straw Dogs'' is considered by some critics to be one of Peckinpah's greatest films, and was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Thing From Another World
''The Thing from Another World'', sometimes referred to as just ''The Thing'', is a 1951 American black-and-white science fiction-horror film directed by Christian Nyby, produced by Edward Lasker for Howard Hawks' Winchester Pictures Corporation, and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film stars Margaret Sheridan, Kenneth Tobey, Robert Cornthwaite, and Douglas Spencer. James Arness plays The Thing. ''The Thing from Another World'' is based on the 1938 novella " Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell (writing under the pseudonym of Don A. Stuart).Warren 1982, pp. 151–163. The film's storyline concerns a United States Air Force crew and scientists who find a crashed flying saucer frozen in the Arctic ice and a humanoid body nearby. Returning to their remote arctic research outpost with the body still in a block of ice, they are forced to defend themselves against the still alive and malevolent plant-based alien when it is accidentally thawed out. Plot In Anchorage, journali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piranha (1978 Film)
''Piranha'' is a 1978 American comedy horror film directed and co-edited by Joe Dante from a screenplay by John Sayles, based on a story by Richard Robinson and Sayles. The film stars Bradford Dillman, Heather Menzies, Kevin McCarthy (actor), Kevin McCarthy, Keenan Wynn, Barbara Steele, and Dick Miller. It tells the story of a river being infested by lethal, genetically altered piranha, threatening the lives of the local inhabitants and the visitors to a nearby summer resort. Executive produced by Roger Corman, ''Piranha'' is the first installment in Piranha (film series), a series of low-budget B movies inspired by the film ''Jaws (film), Jaws'' (1975), which had been a major success for Universal Pictures and director Steven Spielberg. Initially, Universal had considered obtaining an injunction to prevent ''Piranha'' being released, particularly as they had released ''Jaws 2'' the same summer, but the lawsuit was dropped after Spielberg himself gave the film a positive commen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
