Dwayne the Tub, I'm Dwowning! Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Truman Show

"The Truman Show" was inspired by a similar episode of "The Twilight Zone" called "Special Service". In both TV episode and movie, the gist is the same: a man comes to realize that his entire life is the subject of an unending, 24-hour documentary, filmed by hidden cameras and involving hundreds of actors pretending to be real people. In the Carrey vehicle, the clueless TV star is Truman Burbank, who has been more or less imprisoned in Seahaven, California against his will, while thousands of people tune in to see his actions and thoughts.

Truman comes to figure out the truth--it's not that difficult when people start magically coming back to life and strangers he's never met address him by first name. The film does end on a happy note, however. Truman manages to find the exit to his "set" (marked, unobtrusively enough, with a sign reading "EXIT"). As he turns to the television cameras for the last time, he remarks, "In case I don't see you... good afternoon, good evening, and good night."

Throughout the film, the audience gets to meet members of Truman's audience as well, including one gentleman who enjoys watching Truman's plight from the safety of his own bathtub. Weir, the film's director, even released a book providing backstory for many minor characters, which is where we learn that the bathtub man is tragically electrocuted. The film's foresight (it was released a decade before reality TV became popular through shows like "Big Brother" and "Survivor") guarantee it a place in sci-fi lore.

Answer: Thomas Merton

With his in-depth studies of spiritualism and religion, Thomas Merton was one of the great intellectual minds of the 20th century. Born in the Pyrenees Mountains in France in 1915, the son of a Quaker mother, Merton was raised Anglican but moved to the US at an early age due to WWI. During the 20s and 30s, Merton returned to live in Europe, but he didn't find faith until a trip to Italy in 1933, where he was impressed by a Trappist monastery near Rome. Opened to religion, he then converted to Catholicism in 1938, joined the Franciscans at St. Bonaventure University in 1940, then decided to become a Cistercian monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky the year after. He would live there the rest of his life, becoming priest Father Louis in 1949.

Merton's best-known for his writings, including his popular autobiography "The Seven Storey Mountain". The book was immensely popular and resulted in hundreds of people pledging themselves to a monastic lifestyle too. Merton was an advocate for interfaith understanding and spirituality, particularly with Buddhism. His death in Thailand in 1968 was unforeseeable and tragic.

Answer: Bride of Chucky

In the original "Child's Play" horror film (1988), the Barclay family is terrorized by a doll originally intended as a birthday present for the six-year-old child Andy. The doll, as it turns out, has the soul of a voodoo serial killer nicknamed Chucky trapped inside of it. Not the best choice for a birthday present. After two mysterious murders are blamed on the six-year-old, Mrs. Barclay figures out that the doll is talking--without any batteries plugged in. She eventually manages to kill the doll, by burning it to a crisp and then shooting it in the heart. Except it didn't really die, because then where would all the money for sequels have gone?

Fast-forward to "Bride of Chucky", the fourth in the series, actually, and Chucky's former acolyte Tiffany finds herself in a tight situation. The re-animated doll makes use of a fortuitously-placed television set on a cart and pushes it right at Tiffany's bathtub. A sixth film in the franchise made in 2013 had surprisingly strong reviews, considering it was made direct-to-video.

Answer: Groundhog Day

The concept behind "Groundhog Day" doesn't sound a lot more appealing than the concept behind "The Truman Show". In this flick, Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray, is a rude, nauseating weatherman who learns a thing or two when he's forced to relive the same day, over and over and over again--a tedious Groundhog's Day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. At first, Connors is confused, but it makes way for elation when he realizes that he can get away with anything that he wants, since he'll always wake up the same time the next morning, unharmed. Plus, he gets really good at that day's "Jeopardy" board.

Elation makes way for desperation, when Connors attempts suicide to escape his situation, leading to a comedic sequence in which the weatherman admits that he has been, "been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted, and burned...and every morning I wake up without a scratch on me, not a dent in the fender... I am an immortal". Eventually, Phil escapes the loop, by acting like a genuinely nice person and winning the love of a co-anchor.

Answer: Goldfinger

Leave it to James Bond to come up with the worst one-line puns after escaping near-death. The pre-credits sequence to "Goldfinger" (1964) may be the worst offender. The agent, played by Sean Connery in what's generally considered one of the franchise's strongest entries, throws a lamp into the bathtub to kill a man who desires his life. He turns his disdain to the nightclub dancer who betrayed his whereabouts and proclaims, "Shocking. Positively shocking."

Of course, then the real storyline begins, as Bond enters into the intricate plot hatched by Auric Goldfinger to ruin all the gold being held in Fort Knox, making his own assets worth far more. Bond manages to stop the criminal, infiltrating the repository too, and preventing a bomb from going off just in the nick of time. He is accosted by Oddjob, Goldfinger's henchman who knows how to throw a steel-rimmed bowler hat with deadly precision. For the film's second death-by-electrocution, Bond manages to kill Oddjob by turning on a live wire just as Oddjob is reaching to retrieve his hat from between two conductors. Then, the agent saves his own skin and manages to get Goldfinger blown out of a plane to his death, as the film comes to a satisfying conclusion.

Answer: Stephen King

Unlike many of the works mentioned in this quiz, the bathtub in Stephen King's "A Very Tight Place" doesn't electrify, for the simple reason that the hair dryer isn't on. The bather is nasty man named Tim. The hair-dryer-tosser is Tim's neighbor Curtis, who's been embroiled in a legal dispute with Tim because Curtis' dog was killed by (you guessed it!) electrocution on Tim's fence. After Tim locks Curtis in a portable outdoor toilet, Curtis escapes certain death, returns to Tim's house, and makes his threat with the hair dryer, and, well, some other moves only appropriate for an X-rated audience. It's effective. Tim commits suicide.

King, though well-known as a novelist in the horror genre, is highly acclaimed for his mastery of the short story form. "Just After Sunset" was published in 2008, but he also wrote the O. Henry award-winning story, "The Man in the Black Suit" in 1995. In addition, a novella by King was made into the ever-popular film "The Shawshank Redemption". (The novella itself is titled "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption", actually.)

Answer: What Women Want

Though all four titles were movies released in 2000, it's Mel Gibson's role in the romantic comedy "What Women Want" that raked in 374 million dollars in box office worldwide. Gibson plays a chauvinistic ad-man named Nick who is turned down for a promotion in favor of a woman named Darcy. In a freak accident involving a bathtub and a hair dryer, Nick emerges unscathed, except he's miraculously gained the ability to learn what nearby women (and female dogs) are thinking.

The ability is alternately thought of as a curse, then a boon, as Nick realizes that he can listen in on his new boss' thoughts and claim credit for her innovations. However, Nick and Darcy grow close to one another. By the film's end, they've broken up and subsequently reunited, Nick loses his "gift" while trying to stop a woman from committing suicide, and the chauvinist has even learned a thing or two.

Answer: The Ring

Gore Verbinski directed the 2002 American adaptation of the 1998 Japanese film "Ringu" to wide critical and commercial success. The movie stars Naomi Watts as Rachel, who's investigating a string of odd, gruesome murders, which she eventually links to a cursed videotape. After she watches the tape for herself, a mysterious voice on the telephone informs Rachel that she has "seven days". Rachel's son Aidan watches the tape, too.

Doing further investigation, Rachel traces the tape to a horse ranch owned by Anna and Richard Morgan. She learns that the Morgans had an adopted daughter, Samara, who they trapped first in an attic, and later, for seven days in a well outside. As she stumbles toward the truth, Rachel watches first-hand as Richard commits suicide in his bathtub. Rachel survives the seven-day curse, but at the film's end, realizes that the only reason she survived was because she'd made a copy of the videotape and sent it to her ex-boyfriend, passing along the curse.

"The Ring" earned 20th on a list made by "Bravo" of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments--the scene in which Samara emerges, dripping wet, from a television set, stalking her prey.

Answer: Fester

"The Addams Family" (named for creator Charles Addams) first debuted, believe it or not, in the 1930s, in a series of cartoons in "The New Yorker". The "creepy" and "kooky" and "altogether ooky" family first drew national prominence, however, when a popular TV show in the '60s. The show only ran for two seasons, never reaching the critical success of his contemporaneous competitor "The Munsters", but the memorable theme song and humorous, macabre tone prompted further adaptations, including a namesake film in 1991 and its 1993 sequel "Addams Family Values".

The second film is where we're introduced to Debbie, a serial killer who marries and then murders rich men for the money. She becomes romantically involved with Fester, but since we're talking about a man who screws his head on tighter to survive migraines, and who can light light bulbs in his mouth, it doesn't work. The rest of the film details Debbie's misguided attempts to earn a share of the Addams' family fortune, including a diabolical plot to electrocute the entire family, which is foiled at the last second by the baby Pubert.

Answer: Throw the hair dryer out of the tub

The jury's still out on whether or not an electrical device dropped into a bathtub would actually kill you. A working ground fault interrupter for the device would prevent the accidental electrocution, but if the GFI is broken or not present, then electrocution can absolutely happen.

However--do NOT pick up the hair dryer. The electricity is seeking to complete an electric circuit, trying to reach ground, which, in the bathtub, is most likely the metal drain. If the hair dryer falls into the bathtub, then the water is a convenient conductor for the current. If you're lucky, the current will pass around your body and go straight for the drain. But, if you pick the hair dryer up, then the most convenient path of least resistance is straight through your heart. Human blood, full of dissolved solutes, makes a great conductor.

"Mythbusters" found that many electrical devices without a GFI created a current through their test dummy's heart sufficient to kill a human, but the modern hair dryer with appropriate safety wiring was harmless. Be careful in the bathroom, folks!