The Vine: March 30, 2012
Perhaps you or your readers could identify this film for me?
It was a B&W science-fiction film (or perhaps something shorter) from the 1950s or 1960s, but I saw it on TV at least 15 years ago. All I remember was one particular scene, where a man — recently fished out of a river or lake, and understandably disoriented — is being questioned by several people, with a tape recorder and stenographer/secretary to hand.
The man speaks English, but his answers to our protagonists’ questions are nonsensical, and after a few minutes he is left alone while the others discuss the situation. Then one of them, looking over the stenographer’s notes, has a flash of inspiration, and reads out the interrogation dialogue out of sequence: the man has been answering questions from 30 seconds in the future! Cue spookiness.
I have no idea of the ultimate cause (probably some nuclear accident), or of what happens in the rest of the film. But I would really like to know what it was. I’ve read through Wiki’s brief descriptions of original-series Twilight Zone and Outer Limits episodes, but nothing seems to fit. Help?
Thanks,
Giant Ants Were Probably Involved
*****
Hi Sars,
I’m hoping you and/or the readers can help me out with this. There’s a movie I remember watching as a kid, and I’ve been trying to figure out FOR YEARS what it was called in the hopes of tracking it down. Here’s what I remember:
- It would’ve been late 1980s or early 1990s.
- Possibly a made-for-TV movie? Lifetime or something similar? I know I watched it on TV, not in a theater.
- In the beginning of the movie, a young girl with long brown hair drowns in a river/lake near her backyard. Her father is present but unable to save her. This happens offscreen.
- The ghost of the little girl haunts the mother, clearly trying to leave clues about her death.
- The ghost keeps giving clues about a butterfly. By the end of the movie, it is revealed that the father actually drowned the little girl, and the butterfly she was referring to was a design on his wrist watch (one of the last things she saw, I guess).
No combination of search terms (drowning, girl, haunting, butterfly, wristwatch, etc.) has been able to turn up ANYTHING that even sounds remotely similar. Can the Nation find this one?
M
Tags: Ask The Readers popcult
M- I think your movie is called Death Dreams. The summary sounds pretty similar:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101691/
Katie, yes, that’s it! I knew this was the kind of thing the nation would be able to find in no time flat. I can’t find a full description anywhere, but that poster looks like the right characters, and it says the translated title in Italian is “The Butterfly In The Lake,” so I’m calling that one solved. Thank you so much! I have been trying to figure out this movie for at least 10 years.
Ants, I think your movie is The Atomic Man:
http://totalscifionline.com/features/6164-cult-movie-vault-31-the-atomic-man-1955
Ants here, and I can’t believe this was answered so quickly. Thanks, Georgia! One more tiny weight off my mind.
Reading the description, it looks like I only caught the first part of the film. Sadly not in Netflix’s catalogue, but now at least I know what I’m looking for.