40 Fun Facts About AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills

Which shocker tops AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills at number one, ahead of Jaws and The Exorcist?

Psycho came out on top after 1,800 film-industry jurors were sent a ballot of 400 nominated titles and asked which thrilled them most.

Which director has the most films on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, with nine of the hundred?

Alfred Hitchcock is also the list's most-seen face: his walk-on cameos put him on screen in eight of the nine films, and in a photograph on a wall in the other.

Which Star Trek actor's face was the basis for the mask Michael Myers wears in Halloween?

William Shatner's face reached the screen through a Captain Kirk mask bought for under two dollars, its eye holes widened and its skin sprayed a bluish white.

What nickname did the Jaws film crew give their mechanical sharks, after Steven Spielberg's lawyer?

Bruce broke down so often in salt water that the director chose mostly to suggest the shark with music rather than show it.

Which actor was cast as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark until his Magnum, P.I. contract intervened?

Tom Selleck had to drop out only weeks before filming, when the network ordered his detective show as a full series.

Which actor, a star of four films on the list, hosted the 2001 CBS special that unveiled AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills?

Harrison Ford shares the record for most films on the list he presented: he is in Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Blade Runner and The Fugitive.

Titanic's eleven Oscars tied a record set by which 1959 epic, also on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills?

Ben-Hur collected Best Picture, Best Director for William Wyler and Best Actor for Charlton Heston among its eleven wins.

Which thriller on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills won Ingrid Bergman her first Best Actress Oscar?

Gaslight won Ingrid Bergman the Oscar and gave English the word gaslighting: a husband persuades his wife she is going insane while the lamps in their house dim for no apparent reason.

Which star leads three films on the list: The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre?

Humphrey Bogart plays a private eye, a nightclub owner and a prospector undone by gold fever across the three films.

Which Star Wars villain was played in costume by David Prowse and voiced by James Earl Jones?

Darth Vader's voice was dubbed in afterwards because George Lucas felt Prowse's West Country accent was wrong for the character.

Which New York skyscraper does the giant ape climb with Ann Darrow in the 1933 film King Kong?

The Empire State Building was the world's tallest at the time, and four biplanes shoot Kong from its top while he swats at them.

Which James Bond adventure, featuring the hat-throwing henchman Oddjob, ranks 71st on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills?

Goldfinger is the one 007 film among the hundred, with Sean Connery strapped to a table under an industrial laser.

Which Errol Flynn swashbuckler takes 100th place, the final spot on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills?

The Adventures of Robin Hood went to Flynn only after James Cagney, first cast as the outlaw, walked out on his studio contract.

Which silent comedy, with Harold Lloyd dangling from a clock, is the oldest film on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills?

Safety Last! dates from 1923, three-quarters of a century before the newest films on the list, The Matrix and The Sixth Sense.

In which neighborhood of the U.S. capital is The Exorcist set, around a steep flight of stone stairs?

Georgetown supplied many of the real locations, and its stairs were padded with half an inch of rubber for the priest's fatal fall.

On which American landmark do the hero and heroine of North by Northwest flee from spies in the climax?

Mount Rushmore was where the whole film began: its director said he had always wanted to stage a chase across the monument.

Which actress won an Oscar as FBI trainee Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs?

Jodie Foster got the part only after the director's first choice, Michelle Pfeiffer, and then Meg Ryan turned it down over the gruesome subject.

What is the name of the commercial space tug whose crew is hunted one by one in Alien?

Nostromo is hauling its seven-member crew home in stasis when a distress signal diverts it, and the Sulaco only arrives in the sequel.

Which animal's severed head does film producer Jack Woltz wake up beside in The Godfather?

A horse's head really was used for the scene: it came from a dog-food company, from an animal that was to be killed anyway.

Which bluegrass instrumental became a hit single after a backwoods boy played it in Deliverance?

Dueling Banjos climbed to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and won a Grammy, even though one of the duelling instruments on screen is a guitar.

Which actor won an Oscar as the hard-driving detective Popeye Doyle in The French Connection?

Gene Hackman was far from the first choice: the director almost settled for Rod Taylor before giving him the part.

Which actor spends much of Chinatown with a slashed nose as private eye J.J. Gittes?

Jack Nicholson's nose is slit by a thug played by the film's own director, Roman Polanski, wielding a special trick knife.

Which playing card triggers the brainwashed Raymond Shaw during games of solitaire in The Manchurian Candidate?

Queen of diamonds works so reliably that Shaw is set off by accident when a party guest turns up wearing the card as a fancy-dress costume.

Which actor's character makes a motorcycle dash for the Swiss border in The Great Escape?

Steve McQueen asked for the chase to show off his riding, but insurers barred him from the famous fence leap, which his friend Bud Ekins performed.

Which composer's Ninth Symphony becomes unbearable to Alex after his aversion therapy in A Clockwork Orange?

Beethoven is Alex's favourite, and the cure spoils the music only because it happens to accompany the violent films he is forced to watch.

Which family pet does the obsessed Alex Forrest boil on the stove in Fatal Attraction?

A rabbit, and the scene gave English the phrase bunny boiler for an obsessive, spurned lover.

What is the name of the snowbound Colorado hotel where the Torrance family spend the winter in The Shining?

The Overlook is fictional: an Oregon ski lodge supplied its exterior and studio sets in England its interiors, while the Colorado hotel that inspired the story was passed over.

Which rock formation is the secret landing site for the visitors in Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

Devils Tower is cleared by the Army with a false story about a train wreck spilling nerve gas, so the landing can be kept secret.

Which real New York apartment building plays the sinister Bramford in Rosemary's Baby?

The Dakota's exteriors stood in for the fictional address; in 1980 John Lennon, who lived there, was shot dead outside it.

Through which hilly city does the celebrated ten-minute car chase in Bullitt race?

San Francisco's hills were so punishing that the heavy sedans first lent for the scene could not take the jumps and had to be swapped out.

Which novelist, also the creator of the TV drama ER, wrote the book behind Jurassic Park?

Michael Crichton first conceived the story as a screenplay, and four studios bid for the film rights before the novel was even published.

Which song does Ilsa ask the pianist Sam to play at Rick's Café in Casablanca?

As Time Goes By nearly vanished: the composer wanted his own tune, but Ingrid Bergman had cut her hair for another film and the scenes could not be reshot.

What name does Die Hard give the Los Angeles skyscraper seized by Hans Gruber's gang on Christmas Eve?

Nakatomi Plaza is played by the real Fox Plaza in Century City, where almost the entire film was shot on location.

Which soft-spoken computer turns on the astronauts of Discovery One in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

HAL 9000 runs most of the ship's operations and blames a fault on human error, even when its twin computer back on Earth says the mistake is its own.

Which diner waitress is the target of a cyborg assassin sent back from 2029 in The Terminator?

Sarah Connor is targeted because of a son she has not yet had, who will grow up to lead the human resistance.

Which real nuclear accident happened just twelve days after The China Syndrome reached American theaters?

Three Mile Island made the film look prophetic: its plot follows a TV reporter and her cameraman who uncover a cover-up of faults at a nuclear power plant.

Which horror film on the list slipped into the public domain when its distributor left off the copyright notice?

Night of the Living Dead lost its protection when the distributor changed the title and failed to put the copyright line back on the new prints.

Which ruined landmark shows the astronaut Taylor where he really is at the end of Planet of the Apes?

Statue of Liberty wreckage on a beach tells him the alien world is Earth, long after a nuclear war; the scene was shot in a secluded cove at Malibu.

Which color pill does Neo swallow to learn the truth about his world in The Matrix?

Red is the pill for the truth and blue the one for going back to normal life, and the film turned the choice into everyday slang.

Which character actor, Casablanca's Captain Renault, shares the record of four films on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills?

Claude Rains is also in Notorious and Lawrence of Arabia, and in a long career of cultured villains he earned four Oscar nominations as a supporting actor.