FILM 1523: ANNABELLE

TRIVIA: The movie portrays the Annabelle doll as a porcelain doll, but the real Annabelle doll is a large "Raggedy Ann" doll. The Warrens had a special case built for Annabelle inside their Occult Museum, where she resides to this day.

The baby mobile hanging over the crib plays the same tune as the music box from The Conjuring.

The real Annabelle doll was given to Donna (a college student at the time) by her mother in 1970. Her and her roommate Angie noticed that the doll would move subtlety, then within a few weeks became fully mobile moving from one room to another while they were gone.

Ellen DeGeneres lived in the apartment used in the movie. While promoting Annabelle (2014) in her show (Ellen: The Ellen DeGeneres Show: Shia LaBeouf/Gina Rodriguez/Padma Lakshmi/Guest DJ Meghan Trainor (2014)), she explained that: "The apartment in the movie was my first apartment that I moved to in L.A. That was the building I lived in; where they shot the movie. I was watching it going: 'That looks familiar' and it was my building. It was scary back then too."

A 1963 episode of "The Twilight Zone" called "Living Doll" involves a talking doll given to a young girl by her mother. The doll's innocent vocabulary soon takes a sinister tone, especially towards the girl's cruel stepfather. The girl's mother is named Annabelle.

Prequel to "The Conjuring" (2013).

The doll prop used for Annabelle is the same one from the 2013 film 'The Conjuring'.

The elevator scene was directed by James Wan.

Annabelle (2014) carries references to the cult classic Rosemary's Baby (1968) starring Mia Farrow as Rosemary and John Cassavetes as Guy, a young couple moving into a new building. The leading characters in Annabelle (2014) are Mia and John. They name their newborn daughter Leah; this is the name of one of the neighbors Rosemary and Guy meet in their new building. Both films also incorporate a dramatic scene involving an elevator. Annabelle (2014) is set in 1969, Rosemary's Baby (1968) in 1966. In 1969 actress Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson Family. She was eight months pregnant at the time. Sharon Tate was married to director Roman Polanski who directed Rosemary's Baby (1968).

FILM 1247: SUSPIRIA

TRIVIA: Director Dario Argento's original idea was that the ballet school would accommodate young girls not older than 12. However, the studio and producer Salvatore Argento (his father) denied his request because a film this violent involving children would almost certainly be banned. Dario raised the age limit of the girls to 20 but didn't rewrite the script, hence the naiveté of the characters and the occasionally childlike dialogue. He also put all the doorknobs at about the same height as the actress' heads, so they would have to raise their arms in order to open the doors, just like children.

The woman playing Helna Markos is not credited. According to Jessica Harper, she was a 90-year-old ex-hooker who director Dario Argento found on the streets of Rome.

Dario Argento was inspired to make this film by stories of Daria Nicolodi's grandmother, who claimed to have fled from a German music academy because witchcraft was being secretly practiced there.

Director Dario Argento composed the creepy music with the band Goblin and played it at full blast on set to unnerve the actors and elicit a truly scared performance.

According to Jessica Harper, since the film was going to be dubbed after principal photography, sound was rarely recorded during shooting. Harper remarked that it was strange to her to be in the middle of shooting a scene and hearing the background sound of a stagehand hammering away on another set in the studio.

Director trademark: [Dario Argento] Murder victim crashes through window.

Dario Argento had cinematographer Luciano Tovoli watch Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to have him model the color scheme of that film for this one.

Dario Argento cast Joan Bennett as Madame Blanc because of her association with director Fritz Lang, of whom Argento was a great admirer.

Film 900: Ghostbusters II

Trivia:  In the scene when Egon looks up information about Vigo in the database, Vigo's full name is listed as Vigo Von Homburg Deutschendorf. The actor who plays Vigo is Wilhelm von Homburg and the twins who play Oscar are William T. Deutschendorf and Henry J. Deutschendorf II. The twins are the nephews of singer John Denver whose real name was Henry J. Deutschendorf I.

The kid who tells Ray that, according to his dad, the Ghostbusters are "full of crap" is played by Jason Reitman, the son of director Ivan Reitman. Reitman's daughter Catherine Reitman plays the girl with the puppy in Egon's lab.

The cameo appearance of Slimer the green ghost of Ghostbusters was prompted by the fact that in the years in between the two films, the cartoon series The Real Ghost Busters introduced the idea that Slimer was living at the firehouse as the Ghostbusters' pet. Because the original film and the cartoon series were so popular with children, they put Slimer in the film.

In the courtroom scene, the prosecuting lawyer is carried out of the room upside-down by her leg by one of the ghosts. In the trailer, you see the prosecuting lawyer floating out of the room upside-down as the ghost SFX have not yet been added.

The pneumatic subway line that Ray finds when they lower him below the street was based on a pneumatic line built in 1870 by Alfred Beach. It operated using compressed air and was built as a demonstration of a pneumatic transit system. The one-block-long tunnel was built prior to any other subways in the area and without any City approval. It had a single beautifully appointed station adorned with frescoes, easy chairs, statues and a goldfish pond. The line was shut down in 1873 due to lack of official and financial support. The tunnel entrance was sealed and the station was reclaimed for other uses. In 1912, when digging for the modern subway system, workers found the original tunnel, still in good condition, and the remains of the passenger car. The tunnel was removed to make way for the contemporary subway lines and the passenger car has disappeared into history. Today there are no physical remains of Beach's experimental and ambitious subway project.

A scene where patrons run out of a movie theater as slime oozes from the area has Cannibal Girls with Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin showing on the marquee. "Cannibal Girls" was one of Ivan Reitman's first films as a director.

The psychiatrist at the mental hospital is played by Bill Murray's real life brother, Brian Doyle-Murray.

Janine's appearance was significantly different than in the first movie to coincide with the appearance of how she looked in the animated show, The Real Ghost Busters.

Bill Murray told Entertainment Weekly he was very disappointed with the way the film turned out. He commented "it was a whole lot of slime, and not much of us."

Film 885: The Possession

Trivia: While promoting the film on Craig Ferguson [airdate 8/29/12], Jeffrey Dean Morgan reported that strange incidents took place during production that couldn't be explained. Lights exploded during the filming of key scenes; and just two days after wrapping principal photography, all of the props for the film, stored in case of re-shoots, were destroyed in a fire that mysteriously erupted from within the storage-house.

In the final scenes Em takes hiding in the hospital's morgue. A hospital's morgue plays a crucial part in Ole Bornedal's breakthrough movie Nightwatch (1997).

Demon in the box speaks Polish.