Friday 26 August 2011

STRANGE FINAL DESTINATION TRIVIA

With final Destination 5 hitting UK cinema screens today. I give you some strange facts from the last ten years of Final Destination films.

Throughout the film series, many characters have been named after directors, producers or stars from genre films over the ages. Here’s a rundown of how they got their names:

Final Destination
Character NameInspiration
Chaney“Man of a Thousand Faces” Lon Chaney (The Wolfman)
WaggnerDirector George Waggner (The Wolfman)
BrowningTod Browning (Dracula, Freaks)
Larry MurnauDirector F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu)
SchreckMax Schreck, star of Nosferatu
Valerie LewtonProducer Val Lewton (The Body Snatcher)
Blake DreyerDirector Carl Theodor Dreyer (Vampyr)
Howard SiegelDirector Don Siegel (Dirty Harry)
Billy HitchcockDirector Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho)

Final Destination 2
Character NameInspiration
Kimberly CormanDirector/producer Roger Corman (Fall of the House of Usher, Little Shop of Horrors)

Final Destination 3
Character NameInspiration
Wendy and Julie ChristensenDirector Benjamin Christensen (Häxan)
Erin UlmerEdgar G. Ulmer (Detour, Isle of Lost Souls)
Lewis RomeroDirector George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead)
Jason Robert WiseDirector Robert Wise (The Haunting)
Carrie DreyerDirector Carl Theodor Dreyer (Vampyr)
Ashley FreundCinematographer/director Karl Freund (Metropolis)
Ashlyn HalperinDirector Victor Halperin (White Zombie)

The Final Destination
Character NameInspiration
Nick O’BannonWriter/Director Dan O'Bannon (Alien)
Janet CunninghamDirector Sean Cunningham (Friday the 13th)
Lori MilliganDirector Andy Milligan (The Ghastly Ones)
Hunt WynorskiDirector Jim Wynorski (Chopping Mall)

Final Destination 5
Character NameInspiration
Peter FriedkinDirector William Friedkin (The Exorcist)
Candice HooperDirector Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre)
Olivia CastleHorror impresario William Castle (House on Haunted Hill)

UNLUCKY NUMBERS
The first film, originally titled Flight 180, was based on a concept originally written as a unfilmed script for The X-Files. The title was changed but the number remained.
  • In the first Final Destination, a bedside clock fades in from 1:00am to 180.
  • In Final Destination 2, a police officer radios in an accident at mile marker 180. The number repeats again when a character is pulled out of the way of a truck, in a road work sign that says "next 180 feet."
  • In Final Destination 3, a light rail train number is 081, which, reflected in the mirror is 180. In the hardware store scene, a tag that fatefully catches on a chain has UNIT 081 written on it.
  • In the fourth film, The Final Destination, victims at the race track accident are seated in area 180 (as shown on a sign behind them). The number repeats in video camera footage and on the roof of a bus in the final scene.
In Final Destination, the ill-fated flight is scheduled to take off at 9:25, which is the same as the main character’s birthday (25th September). When he gets on the plane, he sits in seat I (the 9th letter of the alphabet) in row 25.

The number “666,” generally considered to be a bad omen, appears on a luggage cart in the first film and on the car that crashes at the speedway in the fourth film.

In The Final Destination, two characters go into auditorium 13 (considered an unlucky number) and to their doom.

MORE STRANGE TRIVIA
In the first film, the original plan was to have Death as a much more obvious entity, as illustrated when the character Tod sees a shadow in the mirror and the water running back into the toilet to “cover its tracks.” Subsequently, it was decided to have the deaths appear simply as accidents.

Death foreshadowed: During the opening credits of the first film, a hanging doll, a guillotine and a picture of a knife in someone's chest foreshadow what will soon befall the characters. One character is shadowed by a dagger in the first film, while in the second film, a character’s face fades into the outline of a skull, and yet another character unwisely ignores warnings about his eye. In Final Destination 3, two characters hear the song “Love Rollercoaster,” which refers to the rollercoaster that should have killed them.

In order to film the massive pileup sequence in Final Destination 2, several miles of highway had to be closed down for several days.

In Final Destination 3, the cast members on the rollercoaster had to ride the coaster 26 times on the same night in order to shoot the film's main premonition scene.

Tony Todd, who plays Bludworth in the first, second and fifth films, provides the voice of the devil above the entrance to the roller coaster in Final Destination 3. In that third film, he also provides the speaker's voice saying, “This is the end of the line” in the subway.

The opening titles of The Final Destination recreate death scenes from all three of the previous films. The fourth film holds the distinction of containing 11 “kills,” the most of any film in the series.

In The Final Destination, when he is hit by the bus, the character George is in the middle of stating, “My wife said that Deja Vu is like God's way of...” and then he's cut off by the impact. Some viewers wonder what the end of his sentence was going to be. The answer is that of a common expression “...telling you that you are in the right place at the right time,” hence the irony of the situation.
In “Final Destination 5,” Death is just as omnipresent as ever, and is unleashed after one man’s premonition saves a group of coworkers from a terrifying suspension bridge collapse. But this group of unsuspecting souls was never supposed to survive, and, in a terrifying race against time, the ill-fated group frantically tries to discover a way to escape Death’s sinister agenda.

The second of the Final Destination films to be shot in 3D, “Final Destination 5” is directed by Steven Quale, marking his major feature film directorial debut. The film brings together an ensemble cast led by Emma Bell (“Frozen,” TV’s “The Walking Dead”) and Nicholas D’Agosto (“Fired Up!,” TV’s “Heroes”), along with Miles Fisher (TV’s “Mad Men” and “Gossip Girl”), Arlen Escarpeta (“Friday the 13th”), Jacqueline MacInnes-Wood (TV’s “The Bold and the Beautiful”), P.J. Byrne (“Dinner for Schmucks”) and Ellen Wroe (TV’s “Huge”). Rounding out the rest of the cast are Courtney B. Vance (TV’s “Flash Forward,” “ER”), David Koechner (“The Office,” “Anchorman”) and “Final Destination” franchise icon Tony Todd (“Hatchet II”).
find out more on facebook or on twitter
FD5 is in cinemas now.

No comments:

Post a Comment