Question: Does Danny's ability to "shine" have any connection to Jack's insanity and the events that occur in the hotel?
Answer: The movie is really 2 parallel story-lines with history repeating itself. In 1920s Jack visited the same hotel with his wife and son, they got stuck there due to snow storm along with rest of hotel crew (which leaves early in a hurry in 1980s). The director has carefully changed background score on things which were not present in 1920s when Dick is showing the facilities to Danny and his mother (like food cold storage). In the 80's version, Danny, Jack and Dick are the ones who have the power to shine or see scenes from the past in the same place. But as Dick says, its like reading a book and has no physical presence in current world. Whenever Dick is talking to Danny, it happened exactly the same way in 1920s, except replace the secret of shining with the secret of cannibalism around the hotel. Jack's insanity is just a repeat of his past, in the 20's the job of being the butcher (of human flesh) got to his mind and he started behaving weird. In the hotel lobby, replace the sound of heavy typing on the long table with sharp knife falling on human flesh. Red carpet depicts the blood and body parts all around the floor in 20s.
Question: Is there any reason why Luke believes what Darth Vader says when he tells him that he is his father?
Answer: The vision Luke sees in the cave on Dagobah is a clue to this. Luke is realizing he has a lot more in common with Darth Vader than the idealized father he'd always imagined. When Vader tells him he's his father, Luke doesn't want to believe it, but he simply can't deny that it feels much more true that his father would be someone passionate and reckless like himself rather than someone who exemplifies a noble Jedi, which feels like an obvious myth in hindsight.
Question: After going through the first storm they lose track of the incoming plane they set the barricade up for. The after a minute the plane lands and the pilot is brought in by stretcher. The commander looks at the young inexperienced pilot like something was wrong. Why did the director choose to do that? I think the pilot aged but they took it out of the movie for time or something else. Any ideas?
Answer: First, he had a look of concern for the young pilot under his command. Second, he is also confused as to what exactly happened. They believe it was a first strike weapon, that the world was ending.
Question: When Richard accidentally pulls a coin out of his coat pocket, he sees that it's a penny and he is sent back to his own time. After being weakened upon his trip back to the future, why, after what was likely several days to get his full strength back, wasn't he able to return to the past? His mentor told him returning to his own time would leave him weakened but, given enough time to get it back, he could have gone back to the past again.
Answer: He was no longer able to put everything out of his mind, which was a requirement to successfully time-travel. He was distraught and unable to focus enough mentally. He stopped eating, and as time went on he became weaker and weaker.
Question: When Over's wife gets the call about her husband's plane having problems, there is a horse in bed with her and she tells the horse to let himself out. This is the only joke in the movie I didn't understand. Is there anybody out there who got the joke and can help me understand it?
Answer: This is a reference to The Godfather, where a character being intimidated by the Mafia wakes up with his prize racehorse's severed head next to him on the bed. For comedy purposes this is twisted by the movie as an implied sexual relationship, when the horse is revealed to be alive.
Answer: This is an inside joke that Mrs. Over is cheating on her husband with a horse.
Question: What exactly was the enormous creature that came out of the ground and attacked Flash in the forest?
Answer: Spider.
Question: What song are Melio and Barf playing at the piano museum?
Answer: It's called Heart And Soul. Also known for the big piano scene in the movie Big.
Question: Did John Belushi do all the dancing, especially the turnovers in church, by himself or was it a double?
Answer: It was a double, and the "making of" documentary on the DVD shows this.
To be fair, John did do a lot of flips and dancing as Jake; just not all of them in the movie.
Question: What happens to Raul's little sister that makes him so upset?
Answer: She gets molested by a drug addict.
Question: There was a "Friday the 13th" TV series that ran from 1987-1990 and had about 70 episodes; does anybody know where I can see these episodes online?
Chosen answer: No, not all of them. The first three episodes are on Youtube. Direct TV new horror-movie channel - Chiller TV - is airing all the episodes currently, but you have to subscribe to the TV station (check out ChillerTV.com.) They are not officially on DVD, but are also sold on ebay. The series has no affiliation to the Friday The 13th Jason films.
Answer: The entire series is now on DVD. You can most likely find them on Amazon or a video store.
Question: Because the camera is hand-held, it's hard to get a clear picture of what is going on from time to time. Can anyone tell me why the filmmakers had to cut the leg off of their guide, as shown in the footage?
Answer: He was bitten on the foot by a poisonous spider that was hiding in his boot. They cut his leg off to stop the poison from spreading.
Question: Not being a gambler, the terms they use has always confused me. For example at the end the Black Widows tell Beekman that he still owed them $0.70 on the dollar. What does this mean? How much does this add up to?
Chosen answer: This means 70%, ie. for every dollar they are owed they will only recieve 70 cents.
Question: Why in the world is Alex, when unmasked at the end, wearing lipstick? Symbolic or something?
Answer: Alex is not the typical one dimensional slasher serial killer, but rather a complex individual with conflicting motivations. The lipstick is a symbol that he is portraying the hurtful people from his past even as he kills them.
Answer: The film doesn't provide an answer (which I think is a good thing). My interpretation is that Alex has somehow absorbed his sister's spirit, symbolically (not literally), and is avenging her death *as* Robin, in a way. Her name is his last word before he dies. A scene was shot but cut which revealed that Robin and Alex were twins. That scene was added back to the television edit of Prom Night.
Question: If you speak French, I am curious about this: Snoopy, driving a rental car, gets into a multi-car fender bender. Marcie stands up through the sun roof and chastises the drivers behind them in French. This happens again at the end of the film. A short time after they resume driving, Snoopy starts to whistle and Marcie says something else in French. Can anyone tell me what she is saying? I have been curious for years. Thanks!
Chosen answer: I just found a possible answer to my own question! According to a post in the question section of the IMDb entry for this film, one poster (dioro on March 23, 2009) claims that Marcie says: "Qu'est-ce que tu as dans la crane? Oooh, les cornes! Qu'est-ce que tu veux que je fasse? Que dalle! Le pied de nez! Tu veux nous frotter?" The poster goes on to say, "I'm fairly positive everything is correct, except for maybe the last question. I'd translate it something like: 'What's going on in your head? Ooh, [the] horns! What do you want me to do? Absolutely nothing (Jack schidt) Le pied de nez' is a gesture, putting the thumb on the nose and [wiggling] your fingers. Snoopy does this when Marcie says the line. 'You want a piece of us?' Then as they're leaving Marcie says, 'Ah, de la couille.' I put the last sentence into a Google translator, and it yielded "Ah, the testicle." I have my doubts about that last one.
Answer: To make the other person's answer better, when snoopy jumped up beside marcy and started gesturing, he was saying "f*ck you" in american sign language.
Question: If they hate their jobs then why not quit and sue their boss?
Answer: It's not easy to just quit and find a new job and they would not have good references. Lawsuits are difficult, being long, involved, and expensive processes with no guarantees of winning. (If one loses, they can be responsible for the other party's legal costs.) The three women were at a distinct disadvantage as they'd be up against an entire company that most likely would protect the boss, as they'd also be liable for allowing his abuse and be forced to implement new policies. The ladies also wanted to take a stand and fight back, not just for themselves, but for the other women who worked there, making positive company-wide changes while keeping the boss locked up.
Question: In the movie, Buford shoots two flying bottles whilst holding the gun at his hip. Is that even possible?
Chosen answer: Technically, yes, but no matter how adept the shooter, such a trick would always rely more on luck than skill. Shooting from the hip makes it impossible to aim any better than "in the general direction of the target."
Question: At the end of the movie, when the ship finds Richard, Emmeline, and baby Paddy in the lifeboat, Richard's father asks if they are dead. A crewman tells him that they are only asleep. Are they really dead and the crewman was trying to spare his feelings by lying to him, or are they really only sleeping?
Answer: The ending is meant to be ambiguous, and is identical to the ending of the original novel on which the film is based. It is never answered whether they are alive or not.
Answer: At the end of the movie, it says they are only asleep. But in the second film (The Blue Lagoon: The Awakening), they say that they are dead. However, the child is not, because he didn't actually eat any of the dead and buried berries. Then they named the baby Richard because that was the first word baby Paddy could say. He probably said it a lot, so they thought that was his name.
Answer: Effectively, Danny's shining is what brings the hotel to life. Because he has such an incredibly powerful shine about him, all these weird ghost things in the hotel are able to materialize and reveal themselves. These weird ghost things are always present to some degree, and those people with a small degree of shine get glimpses of them - like Dick Hallorann. (It's not quite made clear in the movie, but Dick saw the woman in room 237 in the book). However, Danny's shine is so great that he gives these forces enough life to appear to those without any shine, people like his father and mother. As it's the hotel that's slowly driving Jack crazy, and the hotel gets its power from Danny's shining, then I'd say there's definitely a connection between Jack's insanity and Danny's abilities. In the movie, it's not as clear as it is in the book, but Jack is effectively possessed by the hotel. He's not a flawed drunk with an anger problem who loses his mind because of isolation. He's a flawed drunk with an anger problem who's doing the best he can, until the forces of the hotel get inside his head and make him lose it.
If Danny's shining is what brings the hotel back to life, does this mean that all the previous "Jacks" had a son or daughter with the shining too?