An easy one- in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, Harrison Ford uses his famous Star Wars line: “I’ve got a bad feeling about this”.
The only one of Rathbone/Bruce movies set at that time is “Hound of the Baskervilles”. If the scene is from that movie, then you’re correct. The rest of those movies were set in the time they were filmed, 1939-46.
I notice errors all the time. Some of them are listed at IMDb, some aren’t.
E.g., in The Big Lebowski, the floating empty bottle near Karl in the pool changes position based on the shot. When the taxi driver stops to throw The Dude out, he he stopped in the first travel lane from one angle and next to the curb (in the parking spots) in another.
I notice a lot of “Oh, these two actors were also in this other movie together as well.” Especially when in one movie, say, a couple play a brother and a sister and in a later movie are lovers. (Squickiness ensues.) Problem is, I get people confused and when I look them up I am wrong sometimes.
I like asking older Star Trek fans if Leonard Nimoy’s name appeared in the opening credits of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. They may remember that it wasn’t clear when the film was released if Nimoy was definitely going to come back in the role he made famous.
The answer is yes. The trick is that he shows up as the director, not as an actor.
Not quite true – the second of the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes films was also set in the proper Victorian time spot. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is an original story featuring Moriarty as the Bad Guy. It’s pretty decent, if not great. For some reason, after this one they transported Holmes to the then-modern-day 1940s.
This isn’t mine, but I’ll still take credit for it.
The actor who is playing the new Dr. Who was a doctor of WHO (World Health Organization) in World War Z.
Do you tell people these thing as they happen, or just keep them in the locker?
What’s the context for this? that’s the correct spelling of the name of the famous children’s author who wrote Ballet Shoes.
I noticed that in Wait Until Dark, the Braille that Audrey Hepburn as Suzi is writing is nonsense. It’s just random dots that doesn’t make any words, let alone the numbers it’s supposed to be.
I saw Wait Until Dark a couple of years ago, but I can’t remember a scene where Audrey Hepburn was writing in Braille. Could you refresh my memory?
Had to look that one up. Wow.
In Home Alone, when the older cousins is counting kids in front of the airport van, not only does she count the neighbor kid as Macauley Culkin… she counts herself twice. So Kevin wasn’t the only kid who got left behind…?
Yes, I typed out the correct spelling. When she spells it out loud, iirc, she spells it “S-T-R-A-E…”
I have a file of the movie on my desktop (I’m on my laptop now). When I get a chance, I’ll take a screenshot of it and post a link. I might not get to it for a while, but I’ll try to do it by the end of today.
One that I found out while discussing movies on this message board: in The Empire Strikes Back, there’s a subplot involving two Imperial officers, Ozzel and Piett. Captain Piett is made an admiral to replace the hapless Admiral Ozzel when Vader force-strangles him for coming out of hyperspace too early on the Hoth approach. At the end of the movie, when the Falcon goes into hyperspace and escapes, Piett has an “oh shit” moment as he realizes his force-choking is coming.
Anyway, the guy who played Piett, Kenneth Colley, played Jesus in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. And the guy who played Ozzel, Michael Sheard, has played Hitler about half a dozen times, including in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. So, in their scenes together, you have a guy who played Jesus and a guy who played Hitler hanging out with Darth Vader.
Thanks very much. I look forward to seeing that. 
In the 1980 film Altered Statesthe hero transforms into a wild creature one night and awakes the next morning in an enclosure for wolves at the city zoo. In An American Werewolf in London, also released in 1980, the hero transforms into a wild creature one night and awakes the next morning in an enclosure for wolves at the city zoo. Danny Perry pointed this out in one of his Cult Filmsbooks.
In the 1986 film BurglarWhoopi Goldberg is a fugitive wanted for a murder she did not commit. She arranges a meeting with the only person who knows for a fact she is innocent. They meet at the city aquarium. In The Bedroom Window, also released in 1986, Steve Gutenberg is a fugitive wanted for a murder he did not commit. He arranges a meeting with the only person who knows for a fact he is innocent. They meet at the city aquarium.
The coincidence about the meeting place can perhaps be explained by considering that in The Lady from Shanghai Orson Welles is falsely accused of murder. He arranges a meeting with someone who knows of his innocence in the city aquarium. Welles, in turn, may have been influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s film Sabotage where two men hold a clandestine meeting at the city aquarium.
In the 1986 film Howard the Duck a group of people who have been witness to hair-raising inexplicable events go to an all-night diner to regroup. There they receive an important message when one of them becomes possessed and channels a message from an otherworldly force. In the similarly awful 1986 film Poltergeist II a group of people who have been witness to a hair-raising inexplicable events go to an all-night diner to regroup. There they receive an important message when a stranger becomes possessed and channels a message from an otherworldly force.
When Jean Adair makes her first appearance in Arsenic and Old Lace she is coming through the front door holding a small bucket with a lid. When she is next shown it has disappeared. Her sister, Josephine Hull then comes from the kitchen with a container of homemade soup which she gives a policeman. The container is the bucket Adair had been holding. This is one of my all-time favorite films and I suppose I had seen it at least a half dozen times before I noticed this.
I’m kind of sorry I brought up the business about Dr. Watson and the revolver.
The first two Sherlock Holmes films with Rathbone and Bruce were released in 1939 by 20th Century–Fox. They were set in Victorian times. I’m confident the film I was describing was one of the twelve Universal Studios releases from the 1940s, all of which were set in the 1940s.
IIRC, the victim was lying facedown and had been shot from the front, so it is possible that there would realistically have been no bullet wound showing. It would even have been possible he had been stabbed. The possibility about the absence of a spent cartridge had occurred to me, but it is possible the spent cartridge would have been in a place out of sight, such as under the victim. It would, in any case, have been greatly out of character for Nigel Bruce’s character to have noticed this immediately and to have drawn a conclusion, as his Dr. Watson was famous for his obtuseness. I suspect the screenwriter simply liked the stuffy drawing room “feel” of saying “revolver” where he could and didn’t give it much thought.
On the subject of the Holmes movies, Professor Moriarty appeared three times: in the Fox film The Adventures of Sherlock Holmeshe was played by George Zucco. In the Universal filmSherlock Holmes and the Secret Weaponhe was played by Lionel Atwill. In the Universal filmThe Woman in Greenhe was played by Henry Daniell. Each time he appeared to die by falling from a great height. This is how he died in Conan Doyle’s story The Final Problem. Zucco and Daniell appeared together as Nazi spies in another of the Universal films with Rathbone as Holmes, Sherlock Holmes in Washington.
Just noticed one tonight that I’ve never heard mentioned. In Twin Peaks, the mother of murder victim Laura Palmer is played by Grace Zabriskie, and the doctor who pronounces her dead is played by Warren Frost. (who also happens to be the real-life father of the co-writer of the series)
A few years later, Grace Zabriskie and Warren Frost portray the parents of Susan, George Costanza’s fiance, on Seinfeld, who is killed by licking cheap wedding invitation envelopes.
Did you get it?
I noticed this when Seinfeld aired. It’s cute.
No. I tried, but the snapshot function on VLC isn’t working right now, for some reason. I’m not sure what I need to do-- try it in IE; see if the file will run in windows movie player; copy the file to a flash drive, and try it on my laptop, and see if it works in Win8.
Anyway, there are a couple of scenes where they show what she’s written, and the one I just looked at said “PUPUCCCC”. (I know the period goes inside the quotes, but I wanted it clear that the period was not part of the Braille writing.) Later, we see more writing, and it’s something like “SH-CH-EN”, and it’s supposed to be a phone number. It’s not even like it’s just the wrong number. There’s no number sign, and no digits-- it’s complete gibberish.
Obviously, Hepburn was just making random punches on the paper, and in 1967 no one conceived of home theater systems where people could slow down, rewind, pause, and take screenshots of individual frames. No one thought anyone would get a close look at it, and at any rate, the majority of people who know Braille are blind and wouldn’t see the mistake. I happen to know the Braille alphabet, and some contractions because when I was interpreting, I had a Deaf-blind endorsement, so I took a Braille seminar. But now, anyone who wants can look up Braille on the internet and compare a screenshot to the alphabet.
Both of the lead actors in Withnail and I, Paul McGann and Richard E. Grant, went on to play the Doctor.