"At the Late Night, Double Feature, Picture Show" Quiz

Answer: Michael Rennie

As the song goes, "Michael Rennie was ill the day the earth stood still..." Technically his character, Klaatu, wasn't so much ill as injured, having been shot by a trigger-happy soldier on exiting his spacecraft. He had come in peace, but that didn't stop the shooting. Michael Rennie is best known for the role of Klaatu, but the British actor had a busy acting career in both film and television, notably as Harry Lime in "The Third Man". Claude Rains and Spencer Tracy were both considered for the part of Klaatu, and it was Lock Martin who played the robot, Gort.

Answer: Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon was played by Buster Crabbe in the thirteen-part movie serial, which was the first of many screen appearances of the comic-book hero. That said, the most familiar screen "Flash Gordon" is probably the version played by Sam J Jones in the 1980 film - the one with the music by "Queen". The song tells us that "Flash Gordon was there in silver underwear," but silver underwear wasn't actually part of the Flash Gordon costume - this is a reference to Rocky Horror and his shiny gold (not silver) underwear.

Answer: The Invisible Man

Claude Rains played Dr. Jack Griffin, a scientist who discovered the secret of invisibility while investigating a strange new drug he called "monocane". He had, rather unscientifically, tested it on himself, and it drove him quite mad. Claude Rains was only seen clearly when his character died, at the end of the movie, and he mostly portrayed the character as a disembodied voice.

He went on to play his best known role as the French police Captain Renault in "Casablanca" in 1942. It can be no coincidence that the character with power of invisibility in the TV series "Heroes" (played by Christopher Eccleston) was named "Claude Rains".

Answer: King Kong

In "King Kong" a giant ape-like creature was found on the mysterious prehistoric Skull Island and brought to New York, where it escaped, creating havoc. This culminated in one of the most famous scenes in cinematic history - that of the giant ape on top of the Empire State Building, holding a blonde screaming woman in one mighty paw and being machine-gunned by biplanes. "King Kong" spawned a number of sequels and imitations, and was re-made in 1976 by Dino De Laurentiis, and again in 2005 by Peter Jackson. Fay Wray played in so many horror movies that she is known as Hollywood's first "scream queen", but there is no doubt that she is mostly remembered as the blonde Ann Darrow (even though she actually had dark hair).

Answer: An alien spacecraft

What the characters initially believed to be a meteor impacting the Earth proved to be a crashed alien spaceship. The aliens were in fact peaceful - and the movie benefitted by having a screenplay by the great science fiction author Ray Bradbury.

Answer: Doctor X

The title character, Doctor Xavier, played by Lionel Atwill, became a suspect after a scalpel was traced back to his medical academy - but he wasn't the guilty party. That was the deranged amputee Wells, who had donned artificial limbs and a horrific mask to carry out the murders as a means to collect samples of living human flesh for his experiments. So "Doctor X will build a creature"? Apparently not. Lionel Atwill is known for playing a number of roles in horror movies in the 1930s and early 1940s, including the insane sculptor in "Mystery of the Wax Museum" (1933).

Answer: Forbidden Planet

Anne Francis played Altaira, daughter of the mysterious Dr Morbius. They were the only survivors of a human colony on the planet Altair IV. This planet was previously inhabited by the alien Krell, who died 200,000 years ago and left behind a mysterious machine that Morbius was investigating.

It all came to grief as an invisible monster began to menace the crew of the rescue mission. Anne Francis went on to play the female private detective in the television series Honey West (1965-1966), for which role she won a Golden Globe.

Answer: Tarantula

It all started out with such good intentions. The professor was trying to solve the problem of world hunger and created a special nutrient, which had the unfortunate side effect of causing animals to grow to immense size when ingested. It had extreme effects on the laboratory's tarantula, which escaped and rampaged across the land. Leo G. Carroll was already a very experienced actor, having played in a number of Hitchcock movies, but he is best remembered for his later role as spymaster Alexander Waverly in the TV series "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." (1964-1968).

Answer: Ambulatory plants

The story goes that monstrous plants called Triffids appeared on earth after a meteor shower that blinded everyone who saw it, and went on the rampage. In the movie, unlike the book, the characters eventually discovered that the alien plant monsters can be destroyed by common seawater! According to most critics, however, this is one instance where a less than faithful adaptation of a classic novel (by John Wyndham) resulted in a less than classic movie. Janette Scott played biologist Karen Goodwin in the film.

She is the daughter of the famous British comedy actress Dame Thora Hird, and has since played in a number of movies, most recently as Mrs Young in the 2008 comedy "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People".

Answer: When Worlds Collide

The characters built a spaceship in order to escape to Zyra, a planet in orbit around Bellus. It has to be said that the idea of a star impacting the Earth, and both the star and its planetary system failing to end up in a big mix-up with our Sun, is stretching credibility (and the laws of gravity) a bit too far. Later "impact" movies like "Deep Impact" featured asteroids or comets colliding with the Earth in a rather more likely scenario.