Dean Koontz' "Phantoms" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Snowfield

Jennifer Pailey and her younger sister are headed to Snowfield, Colorado. Jennifer is a practicing doctor in the small resort town. In the novel, Snowfield was in California and Lisa Paige was 14 years old. Rose McGowan's Lisa was probably 18-23 years old. I am not really sure why there was a need to change their last name, even if it was just a little bit.

Answer: False

The book opens with 24 year old Deputy Henderson alone and on duty. The town is quiet in fall, and does not begin to get busy until winter. In this movie, Henderson is already dead when we first see him. Though we are left hanging at the end of that first chapter, I suspect Henderson was the book's first victim. In the movie, it was Jenny's maid they find first, and Henderson second.

Answer: 5

Sheriff Bryce Hammond, Deputy Stu Wargle, Deputy Steve Shanning, and the Pailey women are all standing in the darkened street. In the book this occurs in the same time frame, right after the exploration of Aida (instead of Anna) and Jakob Liebermann's bakery. The difference is that Jenny and Lisa are alone when the whistles and sirens blow, and the law enforcement is on its way.

Answer: I Fall to Pieces

The song was not playing when the five of them walked into the inn. After it starts, Bryce and Stu slowly travel upstairs first. Jenny, Lisa, and Steve follow a minute later. Bryce finds the radio playing the song in one of the rooms, and turns it off. After exploring the upstairs and coming back down, the song starts playing again.
They grab a passkey in the book and travel upstairs, but no random music plays to get their attention.

Answer: lipstick

The message is written in red lipstick and they ponder if Timothy Flyte is the killer. The room containing the message had been locked from the inside, but no one was in the room. There were no windows for anyone to get into the room or to escape from the room.

It is after the gang travels back downstairs that they find a severed hand holding the lipstick used to create the message. The hand had not been there when they first arrived at the inn. Eyebrow pencil was the cosmetic used in the book.

Answer: a giant moth

The gang head back to the police station after their tour of the Candleglow Inn. While inside, they receive a phone call from the creature. After the call ends, the lights all go out and a fluttering creature appears at the window. They open fire on the window, destroying it, and when they stop the lights come back on. Stu walks over to the gaping hole in the wall and the moth flies in and attacks him.

Answer: the devil

Jenny to Bryce: "It almost got Lisa."
Lisa: "No, it wanted Deputy Wargle first. It wants men like him most of all."
Jenny: "What do you mean, men like him?"
Lisa: "Well, it's the devil don't ya think? Come up from hell tonight. I think he wants to dance with us."
It's Dr. Flyte that describes the creature, his ancient enemy, as chaos in the flesh.

Answer: Wide World News

You see the name of the tabloid as the FBI agents pull up in front of the building. Flyte also says the name aloud when he's talking to the two agents inside his office. The tabloid seems to specialize in the world of the paranormal. The agents want to talk to Flyte about his Oxford articles on the ancient enemy.

Answer: Paleobiologist

This is the term used by the FBI agents, but they are commonly referred to as paleontologists. A person in this specialty studies fossilized remains of past geological periods and usually works for museums. Dr. Flyte worked with a tabloid for the money.

Answer: she drinks

Jenny felt that it would help both her and Lisa to have Lisa spend time in Snowfield. At the beginning of the movie, Lisa said she was staying a month in Snowfield. In the book, Jenny was bringing Lisa to Snowfield to live after the sudden death of their mother. Their father had died when Lisa was only two, so Lisa had no else besides Jenny.

Answer: She became sick.

She had Bryce check out the bathroom first, and then he stood outside of the door. There were three stalls in the bathroom and the middle one flushed itself just as Lisa was about to retrieve her cigarette from the sink. After checking the stall and finding it empty, she turned around to see a not so dead Stu Wargle leering at her.

She ran screaming from the bathroom, but Bryce did not find anyone inside when he checked. Afterward, when he and Jenny checked the bagged bodies of Stu Wargle and Paul Henderson, they found them empty.

Answer: Hoer-Verde in Brazil in 1923

All of these are actual documented cases of mass disappearances. In Brazil the police found a gun and the words "there is no salvation" written on a chalkboard. Approximately 600 people of Hoer-Verde disappeared without a trace. Roanoke Island had soldiers march into the village to find no one left, dinners set but not eaten, and one hastily scratched message on a tree that read "it doesn't look like...".

In Nanking, 3000 Chinese soldiers vanished overnight and the same occurred for the people in an ancient Mayan city.

Answer: Jesus Loves Me

A common misconception about the song "Ring Around the Rosie" is that it is a reference to the Black Plague of the 14th century, but the first written documentation of this nursery rhyme dates back to 1881. If it were true about it originating in the 14the century, it would predate Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales".
The creature, which appears much like the black oil seen in "The X-Files", can take on the memories of all it ingests. It sang "Jesus Loves Me" to the scientists in the bio-hazard gear that investigated the garage.

Answer: ego

The creature acquires the knowledge of the devil, or Satan, by taking in people from the town. It now believes itself to be like Satan. That ego, the belief of invincibility, similar to what Satan has, makes it weak. It does not believe it can be killed, so it hands over a sample of its body to Dr. Flyte.

They use that sample to discover it is similar to petroleum, and that crude oil eating bacterium could destroy it.

Answer: No

At the end of the movie, Stu Wargle can be seen in a barroom. He starts laughing at one of the patrons, and she asks if he thinks what was said is funny. He replies, "No mame. Hey, you wanna see somethin'?"
Stu had appeared after his death a few times, and was an obvious drone of the creature. It reminds me of "The Blob" and "Twilight Zone: The Movie".