Ahh – I’d forgotten the names of the parts. If you’d said “interociter” I would’ve known what you were onto right off.
Ignore the movie (unless you’re watching the MST3K version, or are just grooving on the effects). Read Raymond F. Jones’ original novel (which is, at long last, back in print). They tossed most of the book out when they made the film. The book makes sense (and explains the title).
In the book, by the way, some of the parts break, and Cal Meacham has to buold new ones from scratch. And there’s no circuit diagram. He has to work it all out himself (it is supposed to be a test, after all.)
Ah, my reference was a bit too obscure. Oh, well. Perhaps I should have quoted from The Seven Samurai.
The novel is one of my favorite stories, as the whole concept of building an unknown machine from scratch based only on the catalog seems to sum up the hacker* mentality quite nicely.
Actually, I don’t know if I have read the entire novel… the part I have read may only be an extract, ending with Cal flying off in the pilotless airplane. The bulk of the movie had nothing whatever to do with the novel, but I have always attributed that to Hollywood.
I am using “hacker” in its classic sense, NOT to mean someone who cracks into other people’s computer systems
The part that broke was one of the six cathemarine tubes… He had to have one of his standard contractors reconstruct it. When he got it back, he found that it’s albion factor was off by ten percent, but several of the originals had that much variation, so it worked…
Going back to the OP, the idea of a family taking a spaceship to avoid the atomic war comes from Ray Bradbury’s The Million Year Picnic, but that is more clearly is inspired by the story of Noah & his ark (it has two families, matched for breeding).
Virgil’s Aeneid is a shameless rip-off of O Brother, Where Art Thou?. I felt Cold Mountain (the movie at least) dipped into that same well without much acknowledgement (unlike O Brother …).
Brother Cadfael – you may have read Raymond F. Jones’ original story “The Alien Machine” which, combined with several other stories of his, and a lot of filler (what Van Vogt called a “fix-up”) became the novel This Island Earth:
It’s worse than you think. Homer’s The Odyssey shamelessly rips off Brother, Where Art Thou?, although it’s clear that Homer didn’t pay really close attention, only parodying the more salient points.
There are also a billlion version of The Most Dangerous Game wherein the protagonist finds himself on an island/spaceship/planet/mansion as the prey of a hunter who has hunted every “great beast” and wants a new challege.
My favourite version was the Hulk TV series.
Er, was the short story based on anything? (Legend of antiquity?)
In the 1990 HBO movie “Cast a Deadly Spell,” a man is protecting his daughter from all outside influences so he can make sure she’s a virgin when he sacrifices her so he can have godly powers. (From what he’s yelling at the end, I have to assume Cthulhu.)
In (I can’t believe I’m admitting I watch this) “Angel,” season 2, there’s an episode called “Guise will be Guise” in which a man is protecting his daughter from outside influences so that she will be a virgin when he sacrifices her so he can have godly powers. (Some gross-looking demon thing that looks like old oatmeal this time.)
“Cast a Deadly Spell” is better than “Guise will be Guise” because there are detectives named Lovecraft and Bradbury, and it stars Fred Ward. A young Julianne Moore is in it too. Oh, and the King of the Bad Guys…David Warner.
Well, IIRC, Watership Down was one of the few books Stu Redman read cover to cover. He hearkens back to it at one point, thinking about how a story about rabbits didn’t really seem up his alley, but once he got started he was hooked.
Also, Shardik, also by Richard Adams, is echoed quite blatantly in The Drawing of the Three. So King seems to be a fan of his work.
And now a question regarding similar plots, quite apropos considering Hamadryad’s post just above:
In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 7, when the potentials are being killed off, I believe it is the second potential who is in Germany, has pink hair, and runs for her life to the driving beat of some kind of techno music (or whatever it is those darned kids listen to these days). Is that a deliberate riff on Run Lola Run or just an amazing coincidence?
Actually, Homer was riffing off James Joyce’s Ulysses, which was a direct rip-off of O Brother Where Art Thou. This is why there are many parallels between OBWAT and U, which didn’t make it into Homer’s homage. For example, Homer’s Polyphemus bears little resemblance to the bigoted brobdignagian bully that Joyce borrowed from the Cohen brothers, although Joyce changed the Klan member to a general anti-semite.
Anyway…
There’s a Star Trek episode where Kirk is forced by a third party to fight to the death with a big green lizard-man on some desert planet. Adapted from Frederick Brown’s classic story “Arena,” but with a cornier alien. (The original alien was a compact little organic wheel.) I think that one was credited.
Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, and Last Man Standing are all the same movie (so much so that the writers of Yohimbo sued the writer of Fistful over copyright, and won; Last Man Standing credits the writers of Yojimbo).
To add one more stage of “inspiration”, Yojimbo is directly based on Dashiell Hammet’s novel Red Harvest.
Fredric Brown did receive Story By credit on that episode, though supposedly TREK producer/writer Gene L. Coon wrote the first draft without being aware of Brown’s story. When the similarities were pointed out to him, Coon immediately contacted Brown, bought his story, and used more elements from it. Normally I’d say “hogwash,” but I have heard nothing but testimonials to the ethics and fair dealings of the late Mr. Coon (unlike the late Mr. Roddenberry), so I’ll say it could have happened exactly that way.
What irks me the most are when TV commercials or music videos clearly rip off an earlier Movie and give no credit. (Although I’m not sure if they have to pay to do so). My two examples:
McDonald’s commercial: the guy that repeats everything twice “little hungry, little hungry” was in a restaurant and thought this woman was making eyes at him, so he returned the favor, thinking they were flirting. Turns out the woman had a baby and was making faces for the baby. This entire commercial was ripped off from the movie Swingers.
The “Stacey’s Mom” video rips off the famous jerking off scene from Fast Times as Ridgemont High, leaving an entire generation of teens thinking that was original. (Like my nephew, who got all angst-ridden when I explained to him and his friends that it was stolen from a movie from my generation).
It goes further back. O Brother is a direct swipe of The Warriors
It’s little things like a gang dressed in baseball uniforms and mime make up, or a villian sticking his fingers in beer bottles and clanging them togethr to intimidate his opponents ( Warrr eee yers, come out and play yay.) that tip you off that this is the original Homer and all the others can only imitate.
A quick check of the story confirms my memory that the alien is yard-tall sphere.
Hamadryad
IIRC that would be Yeska.
Back to the OP
Hamlet, though cleverly disguised, is lifted from the McKenzie brothers’ Strange Brew.
And as was mentioned in Shadow Of The Vampire, Murnau’s Nosferatu was Bram Stoker’s Dracula with the characters and locations renamed in an attempt to avoid having to pay Stoker’s estate. It didn’t work. The estate sued. The court found against Murnau, and most copies of the film were seized and destroyed.
The Matrix takes a lot from Alice. Besides the obvious “Follow the white rabbit.”
‘One side of the mushroom will make you bigger. The other will make you small.’
‘One pill will show you the truth. The other will make you fall asleep and think this was all a dream’
Tea party with the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Door Mouse.
I’d always heard that The Lion King was a (rather loose) adaptation of Hamlet. It’s got a ghost father, a murderous uncle, a pair of distracting friends, etc. Sure, the details are a bit off, but it seems like a reasonable explanation to me.
I can go you one better than that: the diner scene in Cast a Deadly Spell was taken from a short story called, IIRC, “Casting the Runes,” although I forget the author.
Speaking of Lovecraft references… well, that’s a whole thread in itself, but so far as I know, I’m the only person who noticed a striking similarity between the Cthonians* of the Lovecraft mythos, and the Graboids from Tremors.
*Originally from a story by Brian Lumley, if I’m not mistaken.
[QUOTE=Fish]
I’d swear that Stephen King was thinking of Watership Down and The Lord of the Rings when he wrote The Stand.
QUOTE]
AND Night of the Hunter… Lillian Gish as Mother Abigail & Robert Mitchum as Randall Flagg!
Leaning, leaning… leaning on the everlasting arms!
RE Dory in FINDING NEMO- the short-term memory of fish was part of Ellen DeG’s original standup… “Look! Cool castle!..swims Look! Cool castle!..swims Look! Cool castle!..”
And more Star Trek. The TNG episode (which I saw again just yesterday) where Picard gets tortured by the Cardassians seems very similar to Orwell’s 1984. Especially the “how many lights can you see?” bit.
That would be Chain Of Command part two. I’ve been a fan of David Warner ever since I saw Tron. In CoC2, he gives a wonderful performance as a Cardassian who sees nothing wrong with torture, and is also a doting father who thinks the world of his little girl.
I’ve never gotten around to reading 1984. So many of the great books I read in school turned out to be such worthless crap. So, I can’t say for sure that the scene wasn’t inspired by room 101. But I doubt it. Picard is ready to resist questioning. Asking for codes or positions or any similar information would only result in “Jean Luc Picard, Captain, 24601”. The process with the lights is to confuse him, and break him. The goal is to turn his mind to jello. At that point, he’ll tell the interogator anything.