Popcorn Crunchers, Reel 52 Trivia Quiz

Answer: explosion of an off-course Earth rocket

A manned space rocket misfires and the astronaut uses an ejection capsule to return to Earth. The rocket continues, with its atomic drive engaged, and explodes in the Delta asteroid cluster. This changes the course of those asteroids and they become a giant cluster of asteroids on a path directly toward Earth.

Answer: The Devil Went Down to Georgia

The "Devil Girl from Mars" (1954) was dispatched to Earth to bring back males with whom her people could reproduce. "She Devil" (1957) is a woman whose tuberculosis is cured by a serum which also turns her into a homicidal monster. "The World, the Flesh and the Devil" (1959) describes a United States in which almost all human life has been destroyed by a radioactive poison. "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" is a 1979 song written and recorded by the Charlie Daniels Band.

There does not appear to have ever been a motion picture titled "The Devil Went Down to Georgia".

Answer: a carnivorous amoeboidal alien

The on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia defines "The Blob" as "a carnivorous amoeboidal alien". While that phrase is never used in the 1958 motion picture, it is nonetheless apt. The Blob is carried to Earth inside a meteor. An elder gentleman named Barney finds the meteorite and (foolishly) pokes it with a stick.

It breaks open and a small pink gooey mass attaches itself parasitically to his hand. It continues to consume humans, growing larger with each meal. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said the Blob was his favourite Hollywood alien.

Answer: Richard Long

Richard McCord Long (1927-1974) had leading roles in three major ABC television series: "The Big Valley" (1965-1969), "Nanny and the Professor" (1970-71), and "Bourbon Street Beat" (1959-60). He was also a regular character on "77 Sunset Strip" (1961-1962).

He played Lance Schroeder in the 1959 motion picture "House on Haunted Hill" and Paul Able in "Cult of the Cobra". In the film, Able deduces that the curse placed upon him and his fellow servicemen is real but is unable to persuade the police of the truth.

Answer: Walter hires her, kills her and sculpts her.

With Walter's new success as an artist, the people at the Yellow Door Café treat him as an equal. Everyone is nice to him except Alice who is snobbish and aloof. He hires her to model for him. She removes all her clothes and he strangles her with her own scarf. He then covers her body with clay and she becomes another of his "sculptures".

Answer: Bride of Frankenstein

"The Incredible Shrinking Man" (1957), made just a year before "Attack of the Puppet People" (1958), involved a single man and he didn't live in a glass tube. The miniature murders in "The Devil-Doll" (1936) weren't kept in glass tubes, either. "The Incredible Shrinking Woman" was made in 1981.

In "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935), Boris Karloff and Colin Clive are joined by Ernest Thesiger who plays Dr. Septimus Pretorius. He is working on producing life but is able to create only miniature people who he keeps in glass jars.

Answer: the Queen of the gorillas

Laura is deeply troubled by dreams in which she seems to be living in an African jungle. Dr. Reiner hopes to get to the root of these dreams by hypnotizing her and taking her back to visit her past lives. In so doing, Reiner and her husband Lance discover that she was formerly a royal gorilla.

Answer: acting

William Alexander "Bud" Abbott (1897-1974) was an American actor, best known as the straight man of the comedy team Abbott and Costello. From 1940 and 1956, the team made 36 motion pictures. A few of these were tangentially horror-science fiction films, e.g. "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948), "Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man" (1951), "Abbott and Costello Go to Mars" (1953), "Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1953), and "Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy" (1955).

Answer: True

The US Navy delivers a second team of scientists and sailors to an uncharted island to investigate the effects of radiation from a recent nuclear test on Bikini Atoll and to find out what happened to the first team, which disappeared. The caves in which the crab monsters live were filmed in Bronson Caves in Griffith Park, Los Angeles.

The beach scenes were shot at Leo Carrillo State Park in Malibu, one of director Roger Corman's favourite locations. He used this same location in "Monster from the Ocean Floor" (1954), "The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent" (1957), "The Terror" (1963), and "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet" (1965).

The underwater scenes were shot in a tank at Marineland of the Pacific (sadly, no longer there) in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

Answer: Yes

The cat women live in a cavern under the surface of the Moon where there is an atmosphere which contains oxygen. The crew of the American spaceship Moon Rocket 4 discover this (by lighting a cigarette) and remove their space suits accordingly. They learn, however, that this atmosphere is dwindling which motivates the cat women to seek another place to live: the Earth!