Hot answers tagged first-appearance
18
Since your question asks What is the first crossover movie? I'll submit two of the earliest I have found, depending on your definition of "crossover".
For movie horror/sci-fi franchises, there is Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943).
But I think the earliest could be Laurel and Hardy's appearance in the Our Gang comedy short Wild Poses (1933). Both Our ...
16
Francis the Talking Mule first appeared on film in 1950.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvj_Eunx3Ko
This pre-dates Mister Ed's TV debut by a decade.
Notes:
1. The Wizard of Oz featured a talking lion in 1939, but that was obviously an actor in a costume so I assume we're not going to count it.
2. You might be able to find an earlier film with a talking ...
15
A lot of people seem to think Juggernaut is the earliest film to use the "wire dilemma" trope. I found references to it everywhere from Amazon reviews to rap lyrics. Slightly more reliable references include:
Movies you should own: Juggernaut (Terror on the Britannic)
The first film to develop the 'red wire/blue wire' dilemma, it's a tense piece ...
13
I would think Alien vs. Predator would be an example of combining franchises, which was released in 2004.
While not a critical success (garnered only 22% Tomatometer), it did gross $80.2 million. It even spawned a sequel, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem in 2007.
12
The wikipedia page regarding alternate ending explained that:
In movies, alternate endings are often filmed before being scrapped, and may be subsequently included as a special feature in the film's DVD release. These alternate endings are a special type of deleted scene. In other cases, ideas that were presented but discarded early on are alluded to by ...
11
I think you'd be hard pressed to find any evidence of a cliche 80s montage earlier than the one from Rocky in 1976.
Obviously the idea of a montage wasn't new, nor even the idea of a training montage, but Rocky did combine those two elements with cheesy inspirational synth music, and that precise style was imitated in underdog action films ad nauseum ...
10
The earliest reference I could find is The Green Pastures (1936). The story relates "portrays episodes from the Old Testament as seen through the eyes of a young African-American child in the Depression-era South, who interprets The Bible in terms familiar to her." The film is based on the 1930 play of the same name.
The next one I could find is The Old ...
10
The record for most extras is with 1982 classic Gandhi, which used over 300,000 extras for the funeral scene.
IMDb Trivia snippet:
300,000 extras appeared in the funeral sequence. About 200,000 were
volunteers and 94,560 were paid a small fee (under contract). The
sequence was filmed on 31st Jan 1981, the 33rd anniversary of Mohandas
K. Gandhi's ...
9
French gentleman thief Arsène Lupin battles the English detective Sherlock Holmes in the 1910 German drama film serial Arsène Lupin contra Sherlock Holmes.
Wikipedia says:
A contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Maurice Leblanc (1864–1941) was the creator of the character of gentleman thief Arsène Lupin who, in Francophone countries, has enjoyed a ...
9
The link in Neil Baker's comment to Luke McKernan's "Tied to the tracks" article also gives a very detailed history of a woman being tied to the tracks, occasionally by the evil villain twirling his moustache.
And all those who do know silent films know that such scenes were hackneyed even before films were invented, and the few films that did show them ...
9
Seems taglines have been around almost as long as movies. There are a few online references for them. A quick search of an online database gives me one from 1915 for Birth of a Nation "The Fiery Cross of the Ku Klux Klan".There's also taglineguru.com that did a survey of 300 nominated taglines to come up with the top 100 of all time, and it's earliest ...
9
Definition: parody
a musical, literary, or other composition that mimics the style of another composer, author, etc, in a humorous or satirical way.
I would nominate the Laurel and Hardy movies as parodies of the originals. Movies were still in their infancy when Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy created shorts and full length feature films in the 1920s with ...
9
Spaceballs (1987) has this scene, in which the villains watch... Spaceballs, including the scene they're currently in. Even at YouTube image quality, you can see at least three levels on the screen — and, of course, the number of implied levels is infinite.
(The two-level version shows up as early as Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr. (1924), so I'm sure ...
8
It is generally considered that D.W. Griffith (Birth of a Nation, et al) was the inventor of cross-cutting, as he tended to pioneer virtually every other editing technique in the early 20th Century - it is evident in his film A Corner of Wheat from 1909.
However, I have found an earlier example, The Great Train Robbery (1903).
Here is what elements of ...
8
According to The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) there are only 17 movies (including shorts) that uses this rolling down credits technique, the earliest being just the one you used as example: Kiss Me Deadly (1955).
In the list of movies that match this request there's also, as you mentioned, Seven (1999).
Recently, the movie Next(2007) used this approach, ...
7
If we're not talking public domain characters, then my mind immediately turns to Japanese monster movies. There are several monsters with their own movies, but on occasion they would appear together in a "Vs." movie. Earliest one I could find is King Kong vs. Godzilla, which was release in 1962.
7
Are you asking specifically about comic book franchises? There have been no shortage of public domain crossovers, or crossovers between a branded character set and public domain characters. (For example, The Three Stooges Meet Frankenstein, The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (which has Sherlock Holmes meet Sigmund Freud). King Kong ...
7
This theme is not limited to martial arts movies and makes an appearance in many movie genres. The eating a bowl of noodles can easily be traded out with having a beer in a saloon from any number of westerns.
This device has occurs constantly in westerns:
See this clip from a 1939 western: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2GIirKPy6g
7
The earliest Disney animated movie I can find is Sleeping Beauty, from 1959, which shows the Dragon being slain by a sword, showing some blood. I found this picture, I see no reason why this picture is not genuine...
In live action movies, in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954), Captain Nemo (played by James Mason) is shot whilst boarding the Nautilus. ...
7
Here is a medical products company video of a Siemens SC 7000 patient monitor which starts off with the flat-lining sound. If you watch and inspect the configuration menus, you'll see that a wide variety of sounds can be configured for any of several conditions: high and/or low heart rate, high/low partial-pressure of oxygen saturation, high/low ...
6
The oldest I know is "The Great Train Robbery" (1903).
There is a youtube clip, see scene 4, approx. in minute 4ff
There are more information about the film at:
Wikipedia
IMDB
6
The theme of sacrifice oneself for another is quite common in film and literature, so finding the origin may be impossible.
However, searching Subzin, the earliest mention I found of "take me instead" is from The Battle of China (1944):
1:34:30 General, I beg you to let the girl go
01:34:36 She is innocent
01:34:40 Take me instead
The first ...
6
From the wiki page for 555:
The phone companies began encouraging the producers of television shows and movies to use the 555 prefix for fictional telephone numbers, roughly during the 1960s. One of the earliest uses of a 555 number can be seen in Panic in Year Zero! (1962), with 555-2106.
In the 1942 film: "Eyes in the Night", starring Edward Arnold and ...
6
This type of shot is most commonly known as a Deep Focus Shot.
From the wiki page:
Deep focus is a photographic and cinematographic technique using a large depth of field. Depth of field is the front-to-back range of focus in an image — that is, how much of it appears sharp and clear. Consequently, in deep focus the foreground, middle-ground and background ...
5
One of the earliest, if not the first such announcements was "All in the Family was recorded on tape before a live audience" from 1971.
According to Michael Tueth's Laughter In The Living Room (2005), one of the earliest American sitcoms to broadcast live was I Love Lucy (1951 – 1957). For personal reasons, Lucy Ball wanted to produce the programme from ...
5
Reading a plot summary of Thirteen Ghosts it seems like the ghosts are trapped by inscriptions written on the glass, so there is nothing specifically important about the glass rooms (please correct). There is no indication in The Cabin in the Woods that the glass rooms had a similar confinement - the use of glass seems unimportant - perhaps other ...
5
Predating all of the above, but not necessarily considered features (if the length of the film is of concern) the Dogville Comedies featured talking dogs in a variety of situations.
These shorts began being shown in 1929, not long after the advent of sound in motion pictures.
These can often be seen on TCM, or you can can see an example here on Youtube.
5
The oldest I can find is a 1921 silent drama movie, Don't Tell Everything (IMDb entry here)
De Briac twins (Charles De Briac and Raymond De Briac) starred in this movie. They also starred in The Bachelor Daddy (1922), Daddies (1924), Every man for himself (1924)
4
This originates in the world of comics, and there have been many "reboots" of comics turned into TV series and/or TV series turned into films.
But assuming your definition is restricted to movies rebooted from other movies only, Wikipedia tells us Godzilla is the earliest. First made in 1954, and rebooted at least in 1984 and 2000.
As new directors came in ...
4
A wikipedia search gave me the following information:
Competition from television drew audiences away from movie theaters in the late 1950s, and the theatrical cartoon began its decline. Today, animated cartoons are produced mostly for television.
American television animation of the 1950s featured quite limited animation styles, highlighted by the ...
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