Guess the Movies Trivia Quiz

Answer: Star Wars

"Star Wars" (1977) was a sci-fi movie by George Lucas in the style of the classic "Flash Gordon" serials. A simple farm boy, Luke, learns of a princess in danger from an evil empire and teams up with some cute robots and a cynical criminal with a spaceship and a big furry partner. The cast was all pretty unknown, including Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford, but with the addition of English character actor Alec Guinness in the exposition-heavy role of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke's mentor and an exponent of the mystical "Force".

Guinness was an established star, from movies such as "Great Expectations", "The Lavender Hill Mob" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai".

In his diaries, Guinness said that he admired George Lucas's work on "American Graffiti", although misnaming him Paul Lucas, but that the script for "Star Wars" was "fairy tale rubbish". Guinness is said to have answered one "Star Wars" fan's boast that he'd seen the movie over a hundred times with the words, "Promise me you'll never watch it again."

The picture is of Harrison Ford's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Answer: The Breakfast Club

"The Breakfast Club" was a 1985 movie by John Hughes about a group of five high school students on a Saturday detention, each on the face of it conforming to a stereotype. Molly Ringwald plays a "princess", Ally Sheedy a "basket case", Judd Nelson plays a "criminal", Emilio Estevez is an "athlete", and Anthony Michael Hall is labelled a "brain". Under the jaundiced eye of the Vice Principal, played by Paul Gleason, the students interact and learn stuff about each other and themselves - finding they have more in common than they thought. The movie was one of the most successful "Brat Pack" movies of the '80s.

A big success too was the song "Don't You (Forget About Me)" which featured in the movie, sung by the Scottish band Simple Minds. It was written by Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff, and offered to Brian Ferry and Billy Idol before Simple Minds were approached. The group was initially reluctant to record a song not written by themselves, but were persuaded to do so and were rewarded with their biggest hit single.

Hopefully the picture of a breakfast helped.

Answer: Harold and Maude

"Harold and Maude" is a 1971 movie directed by Hal Ashby and written by Colin Higgins. Bud Cort plays Harold, a twenty-ish young man obsessed with death, and desperate for attention from his mother. Ruth Gordon plays Maude, a 79-year-old he meets at a funeral who is full of life and mischief. Their relationship is short, shorter than he'd hoped, but serves to give the young man some life lessons and a measure of his friend's joie de vivre. The movie is enhanced by a soundtrack from Cat Stevens.

The picture is from the part of the Bayeux Tapestry that shows the death of King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings.

Answer: The Shining

"The Shining" is a 1980 movie directed by Stanley Kubrick, who co-wrote the script with Diane Johnson. It was based on the 1977 novel by Stephen King, although it didn't follow that narrative fully.

Jack Nicholson plays Jack Torrance, an author with writer's block who feels that a winter as caretaker at an isolated Colorado hotel, The Overlook, would give him the solitude he needs to concentrate on his work. He takes his wife and son, Wendy and Danny, played by Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd respectively. Things go wrong. A previous caretaker had massacred his family and killed himself at the hotel that was built on an ancient Indian burial ground. It seems like Jack Torrance is heading the same way, perhaps being possessed by spirits associated with the hotel. Danny is telepathic and sensitive to the oddities in the hotel. He writes REDRUM on a door, which Wendy realises is, more or less, MURDER backwards. Violence, terror and murder ensue.

There are many theories about the symbolism of images and features in the movie. The change of a room Danny is advised to avoid from 217 in the novel to 237 in the movie, for instance.

The picture is from the International Space Station.

Answer: The Last Seduction

"The Last Seduction" is a 1994 dark thriller, directed by John Dahl, from a script by Steve Barancik. Linda Fiorentino plays Bridget, who steals a lot of cash from her abusive husband (Bill Pullman) in New York City and runs away to a small town near Buffalo. She adopts the name Wendy Kroy, based on New York backwards, and gets her claws into Mike (Peter Berg). "Wendy" proposes they murder deadbeat husbands and share the insurance proceeds with the abused wives. Murder indeed occurs and Bridget stays one step ahead of the law and all the men. Linda Fiorentino's performance in this movie has been hailed as one of the best of the '90s, but she was not Oscar-nominated because the movie aired on HBO ahead of theatrical release.

The picture is of a man trying to seduce a woman in a seventeenth or eighteenth century Dutch print.

Answer: My Dinner with Andre

"My Dinner with Andre" is a 1981 movie directed by Louis Malle which was co-written by and starred Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, who play fictionalised versions of themselves. Shawn is, a writer based in New York City who has to work as an actor to make ends meet and is frustrated that his girlfriend has to work evenings as a waitress instead of cooking him delicious meals. He is persuaded by a mutual friend to have a restaurant meal with Andre Gregory, a former friend who he hasn't seen for five years and who he has been trying to avoid. The friend found Gregory crying in the street because he was overwhelmed by a line in a Bergman movie: "I could always live in my art, but not in my life."

Andre Gregory is a theatre director who left New York to find different experiences in places like Poland, Tibet, and Scotland. Their dinner conversation ranges over Andre's extraordinary experiences and discoveries, and discusses spirituality, and what it means to be human and to love. Shawn presents a more materialistic or skeptical view of life, but in the end when he travels home he seems to find new pleasure in his connections with the world - his sour mood from the beginning is completely gone. The film is very hard to categorise. It is thought provoking and funny. It was a big word-of-mouth hit. Shawn and Gregory were clear in interviews that they were not really playing themselves and expressed the view that if they remade the movie they would swap parts.

The photograph is of a TV dinner, quite unlike the delicious fare Shawn and Gregory ate.

Answer: Rocky

"Rocky" is a 1976 movie directed by John G. Avildsen that was written by and starred Sylvester Stallone. Stallone plays Rocky Balboa, a journeyman boxer plucked from obscurity to be a late substitute for a title fight in his home town of Philadelphia.

He gets a trainer, played by Burgess Meredith, and finds romance with Adrian, played by Talia Shire, on the way to the big bout. The fight is a brutal 15 round affair, with a split decision in the champion's favour. The unconventional training scenes include Rocky using a side of beef as a punchbag bag. A training montage where he runs through the streets of Philadelphia followed by herds of children and hurdling park benches to the backing of the title song "Gonna Fly Now" and culminating with a run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art is particularly memorable. Stallone based the character of Rocky on Chuck Wepner who, likewise, was given a shot at glory when he fought Muhammad Ali in 1975.

Stallone's underdog movie won three Academy Awards, including picking up the Oscar for Best Picture.

The photograph is of rocks.

Answer: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" is a 1969 movie directed by George Roy Hill and written by William Goldman. The story is loosely based on the real-life characters of Robert LeRoy Parker (Butch Cassidy) and Harry Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid), who were played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford respectively. The pair are shown as the leaders of the Hole in the Wall Gang, who specialise in robbing from railway trains.

Butch is the brains - "Boy, I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals" - and Sundance is lightning quick on the draw. A "super posse" is set up to kill or capture them, and they run away to Bolivia with their girlfriend, Etta Place (played by Katharine Ross). After some successful robberies in Bolivia they are worried about the super posse having followed them, so they attempt to go straight as guards for a miner's payroll, but get ambushed on their first trip. Sensing the end is near, Etta goes back to the USA and Butch and Sundance are soon gunned down by a large number of Bolivian soldiers.

Goldman's Academy Award-winning script is full of wit and sparking dialogue.
An example.

"Butch: What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful.
Guard: People kept robbing it.
Butch: Small price to pay for beauty."

A scene with Butch and Etta fooling around on a new-fangled bicycle is set to the Academy Award-Winning Bacharach and David song "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head".

The picture is of Bolivia, where they escaped to and died.

Answer: Halloween III: Season of the Witch

"Halloween III: Season of the Witch" was a 1982 movie written and directed by Tommy Lee Wallace. John Carpenter and Debra Hill, who created the franchise, acted as producers and Carpenter provided the music. The decision to not use the William Shatner-masked Michael Myers or his adversary the "final girl" Laurie Strode in the movie was certainly unusual.

The plot centred on Conal Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy), the proprietor of the Silver Shamrock factory, whose "Happy Happy Halloween" adverts to the tune of "London Bridge..." are aired on TV, counting down to Halloween, and encourage children to buy their masks. The masks are part of a sinister murderous scheme also involving androids and Stonehenge, and only alcoholic doctor Dan Challis (Tom Atkins) can prevent it.

The picture is of a White House pet cat dressed up for Halloween.

Answer: The Long Goodbye

"The Long Goodbye" is a 1973 movie directed by Robert Altman with a script by Leigh Brackett, based on the novel by Raymond Chandler. Elliott Gould stars as Philip Marlowe, a private eye whose best friend Terry Lennox is accused of murdering his wife and then committing suicide. He believes neither of these things about his friend are true.

Marlowe is an idealistic loner - a man out of time, constantly smoking, who lives in squalor with his ginger cat. He gets a job to investigate a missing alcoholic writer (Sterling Hayden), which opens up links with the case of the Lennoxes. He doggedly follows the complex trail, despite being threatened by gangsters and beaten up. A hilarious scene where a gangster who says the writer owes him money makes everyone take their clothes off, which he feels make them less inclined to lie, despite one of his men saying sotto voce, "George Raft never took his clothes off," features an early screen appearance by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Eventually Marlowe finds the truth - his friend was guilty and has faked his own death. Marlowe shoots him dead and walks off cheerfully, passing the wife of the writer who had colluded with Terry.

A quirky feature by Altman was to have the theme song "The Long Goodbye" by John Williams and Johnny Mercer played in multiple styles throughout the movie.

The picture is called "Good Bye, Sweetheart, Good Bye" and was from a series that were used to promote a tobacco manufacturer.