And Now The Return of Another New Slideshow (Sort of) [**Now featuring alternate versions of scenes - see replies #60,#82,#116,#138,#157,#180,#224,#240,#280,#372,#526**]

[Gothick]

I'm probably misremembering, but I recall that the FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND "filmbook" of this movie which had nearly the entire story set out in text and photos (so why bother to go see it, some may have asked) ended with the scene of Tracy screaming in the basement room.

I assume those captures are from the "blu ray."  I have to admit they look awesome.

G.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I honestly don't remember how the FM NoDS article ended, and I'm too lazy right now to check. But I'll definitely look the next time I have my NoDS stuff out to post something (which will be quite soon).

As for the captures, yes, they're from the Blue-ray. I'm constantly astounded at what a great transfer of the film it is (missing music cue and stray music cues that shouldn't be there, notwithstanding). As I said, after going through the Blu-ray this year for the slideshow, I can't even stand to look at the VHS anymore, and at one time it was one of my prized DS possessions...

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Moving on to start Scene 223 as scripted:

223    INT - BASEMENT CORRIDOR - NIGHT                    223        As Quentin reacts to the SCREAM, he runs to the door.

And that's when today's quote -

Page 103/Scene 223 - Quentin: 'Tracy!'

comes up, followed in the script by:

TRACY (O.S.) Quentin!

And as for the dialogue, in the film it's switched around. First we see Quentin and hear Tracy scream for him -

"Quentin!"

- (not simply scream) - and then, as in today's capture/quote, we see/hear Quentin call to her -

"Tracy!"

And as an aside, once again I never noticed something until I was getting captures for the slideshow. Can you spot it in this post? If not here's a capture from an upcoming moment from Scene 223 that should help:

[KMR]

Does anybody know where these basement scenes were filmed?  Main house, stables, bowling alley, swimming pool, ...?

[KMR]

And as an aside, once again I never noticed something until I was getting captures for the slideshow. Can you spot it in this post? If not here's a capture from an upcoming moment from Scene 223 that should help:

The only thing that seems noteworthy to me is a continuity problem with candle flames.  Or, possibly, the candelabra switching hands.  (But I'd have to watch the scenes play out to determine if that's what it is.)

[Gothick]

Was Quentin supposed to have a scar already in this scene? It's so long since I last watched the film I can't recall.

cheers, G.

[KMR]

Yes, Quentin should have the wound (not a scar yet--it's a scar in the past...  wait, this is really weird...)  This scene comes some time after the incident on the bridge, where Gerard had the knife.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Picking up Scene 223 as scripted, dealing with Scene 224 as scripted, and moving into the start of Scene 225:

QUENTIN                  Yes, I'm here.  Are you O.K.?                              TRACY (O.S.)                  Yes!                              QUENTIN                  The damn thing's stuck.  Push                  on the inside --        As he starts to pull on the handle. 224    INT - SMALL ROOM - NIGHT                           224        It is almost in total darkness as Tracy pushes hard        against the door. 224    CONTD                                       CONTD  224                              QUENTIN (O.S.)                  Come on, Trace.  Harder --        HOLD on Tracy as suddenly ALL THE SOUND IN THE ROOM        BEGINS TO DIMINISH.  The SOUND OS QUENTIN'S STRUGGLING        AND AD LIB URGING at the door gets SOFTER AND SOFTER        as Tracy begins to react to the oppressive dead air.        TRUCK IN TO HER CLOSE-UP as she senses another pre-        sence in the room.  She turns to look TOWARD CAMERA        and, as in the cottage, the SOUND TRACK COMPLETELY        DROPS OUT.        ANGELIQUE - TRACY'S P.O.V.        On the other side of the room, materializing before        Tracy's eyes, is the mist-like ghostly figure of        Angelique.        TRACY - CLOSE-UP - SLOW MOTION        as she opens her mouth to scream, not a sound comes        out. 225    INT - BASEMENT AT DOOR - NIGHT                     225        Here the SOUND IS NORMAL, so thatQuentin, who is        pulling at the door, reacts in horror to the SOUND        OF TRACY'S SCREAM.  Wildly, he pulls at the door,        SCREAMING.                              QUENTIN                  For God's sake, Tracy!  What                  is it, Tracy!  Answer me!        Suddenly Tracy's SCREAM stops abruptly as Alex and        Claire ENTER THE SHOT, running toward Quentin.                              CLAIRE                  Where's Tracy?                              QUENTIN                  Help me with this door!        As Alex grabs the handle with Quentin, they both start        pulling.

And that's when yesterday's quote -

Page 104/Scene 225 - Quentin: 'She's in there! We've got to get her out!'

comes up.

And as for the dialogue, the descriptions, and the directions, we'll deal with them in an upcoming post.

But before I end this post, I keep forgetting to mention that "candelabra" is indeed misspelled in the script for Scene 222's "As the candleabra is blown out". And somewhat similarly, in the Scene 225 portion of the script in this post, there is no space in "thatQuentin" like there should be.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Does anybody know where these basement scenes were filmed?  Main house, stables, bowling alley, swimming pool, ...?

That's a very good question that doesn't seem to have an answer. Back in 2001 Darren Gross searched the basement of Lyndhurst and some other places on the estate and couldn't find the location...

[Mysterious Benefactor]

The only thing that seems noteworthy to me is a continuity problem with candle flames.

That's pretty much it. As we can see in the following capture, when Quentin calls out -

"Tracy!"

in Scene 223, his breath blows out the candle nearest to him - but in the same scene when he shows up after having rushed to the door to the room where Tracy is trapped, all the candles on his candelabra are once again lit -

- so I guess we're supposed to believe that as Quentin was rushing to the door, he was also relighting the candle!! 

It's amazing how much one can miss when one is really into a scene and not paying attention to the little details...

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Getting back to the parts of the script that were dealt with in reply #547, when Quentin reaches the door, he actually says -

"Trace? Are you all right?"

- and to that, as scripted, Tracy replies off screen -

"Yes."

- after which Quentin puts his candelabra down - and after we see Tracy -

- inside the room, things shift to Quentin frantically trying to pull the door open and he actually says -

"But the damn door's stuck. Push on the inside."

- and Tracy tells him an unscripted -

"I'm pushing."

- to which Quentin, who's actually on screen, tells her -

"Come on. Try harder --"

- but, again unscripted, she tells him -

"I can't."

- and then, unlike how the script says Quentin's struggling and ad lib urging at the door will get softer and softer as Tracy begins to react to oppressive dead air in the room, what actually happens in the film is that slowly a strange luminescence starts to appear in the room and Tracy begins to -

- react to it - and after she turn to look in the direction it's coming from, we actually see Tracy -

- scream in terror - and it isn't until after that that we see Angelique has -

- materialized in the room - and after Tracy slides along the wall -

- but there is no escape, Angelique moves closer and closer and closer -

- while outside the door a distraught Quentin begs -

"Tracy, for God's sake, what is it? Answer me!"

And that's how thing's end in the current version of the film  - but as we can see from the script, a great deal more goes on - and there's more to come when we deal with yesterday's and today's quotes from the slideshow...

[Patti Feinberg]

And that's how thing's end in the current version of the film

Was that the original ending of NoDS?

Lara Parker sure looks nice in those shots.

Patti

[Darren Gross]

Does anybody know where these basement scenes were filmed?  Main house, stables, bowling alley, swimming pool, ...?

That's a very good question that doesn't seem to have an answer. Back in 2001 Darren Gross searched the basement of Lyndhurst and some other places on the estate and couldn't find the location...

Howdy!  The location for all the NODS basement scenes is actually the basement underneath the greenhouse.

[Darren Gross]

As you'll see as Scene 106A unfolds in the slideshow and the posts following this one, some of it is very much the same as Grayson's script's continuation of Scene 106 - but things will change radically before too long. But here's how things were originally supposed to play:

GERARD                  I'll saddle your horse.        He walks to the saddle rack, takes one and throws it        over a tall gray.                              TRACY                  This isn't Dubloon, is it? The                  horse my husband rode this morning --                              GERARD                  We don't have a Dubloon.  He rode                  Ulysses.        Tracy thinks about this.                              TRACY                  Where's the Mill on the property?                              GERARD                  There's no mill.                              TRACY                  Are you sure?                              GERARD                  Yes -- I'm sure.        Tracy mounts her horse as Gerard makes no move to help        her but just stands staring at her.  Then, unable to

And that's how the version I have ends - unfortunately, the last line on the page was never copied. But I suspect we might surmise that Tracy was unable to get on the horse by herself so Gerard helped her in some manner that, uh, overstepped his place...

There's only one line of text missing from your script copy, as follows, from "Then, unable to" "bear his presence any longer, she rides off."  End of scene/end of page.

One note on scene 105, 106, 106A that may be of interest here.
Based on the director's notes (on the reverse pages of the director's script, not included in the movie book), scene 105 was filmed almost exactly like the scene of Vicki visiting the stables from the 91 pilot (a scene from the expanded version, if memory serves), ie: shot from inside the stables almost as a Gerard POV shot, panning to follow Tracy as she walks past the stable windows towards the door.  Mr. Curtis had a penchant for repeating blocking/framing, etc. and the extra fun thing here is that in the DS 91 pilot scene, Vicki is wearing a white sweater that is almost identical to one Tracy wears in several scenes in NODS.

For scene 106, there is one still from the official set of bloody scratched Gerard leering at a cornered Tracy in a medium/2-shot, inside the stable near the stable door.  There are also several images recovered of Tracy on the horse inside and outside the stable, Gerard leading it, clearly having the dialogue about the mill.  A couple of color shots of Gerard only exist for this scene as well, though they're mostly portraiture, not continuity stills, but nice to see the costuming and make-up in color.

I was told from the animal trainer Captain Haggerty (the bald gentleman in the tower invasion sequence) that the dogs had just passed training and were relatively inexperienced on movie sets, and that trying to get them to growl, snarl, etc. and look threatening was a big problem- all they wanted to do was play.  It's also hard to get pairs of dogs to growl, so I was told, because the more you stimulate and antagonize them to growl and snarl, the more riled up they become and they can end up snapping or biting each other, since they're leashed together.  If I was a betting man, I'd say that the first stable scene was re-staged when they couldn't get the dogs to menace Quentin in a time-efficient manner, then tried again with Scene 106 and got something that didn't quite come off, so rather than keep part of the scene (Tracy leaving on the horse) it was left on the cutting room floor.  If  the rough cut had included close-ups of snarling dogs, you can bet your hat that it would have ended up in the trailer.

[Darren Gross]

- until we actually see Angelique's spirit -

- come down the corridor - approach -

- Alex - and then turn into -

- the mist-like vapor that envelopes Alex' body. So, the camera doesn't actually do a slow pan of the living room because, as we could see in the above captures, the camera actually remains stationary and focused on Alex asleep on the couch - and the camera also doesn't do a truck down the hallway, and we never actually see Claire and Alex through the bedroom door and asleep in their twin(!) beds (especially considering we've already seen Alex asleep on the couch in the living room) - and the camera doesn't continue to truck in as it enters the room.

What actually happens is that there's more like a Scene 176A in which we immediately see Claire waking up alone in bed -

- and as was already discussed above, she calls out Alex a few times - but then she suddenly realizes that something is wrong and she gets up - and once she's in the corridor, she sees what's happening to Alex - and after momentarily stopping dead in her tracks -

- and screaming, she reaches for the floor lamp but knocks -

- it over in her frenzy - but once she does turn -

- it on, the other light also comes back and the mist-like vapor that envelopes Alex' body -

- disappears - and as we can see in today's capture -

- she rushes to Alex side, desperately trying to revive him, until -

 - he does indeed revive. So, all that means that a lot of what's scripted to happen in Scene 177 doesn't actually happen in the film. And in some ways that's too bad because much of what was scripted would have been quite interesting to see. But who knows if things were changed because it would have been too costly or too complicated to shoot, or perhaps for some other reason? Though at least some of the planned effects were reworked and used. And actually, I think having Angelique's spirit arrive and transform into the mist-like vapor was actually better than how it was introduced in the script.

One thing that's very interesting, though, it that one can easily tell that there are three distinct cuts in the background music for Scene 177, so apparently it's quite likely that footage was removed for time during the marathon James Aubrey imposed editing. And that sort of ruins how things were to play in slow motion. But perhaps they still do in the 129 minute version...

The blunt cuts in the music do indeed point to last minute cuts in the scene that were made during the Aubrey-imposed re-edit.  In the short version of the film, it cuts right from Alex to Angelique's ghost moving down the hallway.  That shot has a longer beginning- it cuts to the camera panning down the empty hallway and as it does, Angelique slowly dissolves in until, walking/floating left to right as in what remains of the shot.

Also, when Claire knocks the lamp over the entire scene/shot switches to slow motion as Claire kneels down and reaches for the lamp to turn it on, looking toward Alex in helpless fear, then boom the cut to the shot of her turning on the lamp, back to normal motion.

A new shot of Alex coughing, recovering as Claire holds onto him at end of scene also included.