h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Also, the car must spontaneously combust upon impact. A huge explosion will be follwed by a small scene showing our hero jumping out of the car just at the last moment. He/She will of course suffer no injuries other than a few cuts and bruised, burst eardrums, shrapnel wounds etc. never occur in filmworld.

Classic Horror film cliche number 3. A tense scene of the hero searching through a house at night by torchlight will be interrupted by a quick look in a cupboard resulting in a cat bolting out or a pigeon flying out, giving both the hero and the audience a heart attack.

Actually, Orcus, yours is one of the two possibilities following the car leaving the road. The other is where the car rolls over several times down the embankment before it lands on its roof and is stopped by a tree. Despite all this, the headlights will still work. This is so that we can see what's happening now that we're away from the streetlights. There will be a shot of one of the wheels still going round, and steam will come from the bonnet. We will hear groaning from inside the car. Another car or a police motorcycle will appear at the top of the embankment, but just as they're about to scramble down the hill/radio for help, the car will burst into flames. A dramatic minor chord from the orchestra will signal the onlooker's cue to cast their eyes groundwards and shake their head.

And no, I never wear red tops anymore for that very reason.

The red top has to be there, he has a very important function... the cue for the line "Its worse than that.....

may I offer a friendly suggestion here?
if you've grown tired of cliche movie stuff, try a Terry Gilliam film.
I guarantee, he will take a non-traditional approach to any topic.
good luck

Which is probably why he's my favourite director!! We're not talking class in these postings, we're talking about unimaginative mash.

yes, and I agree that most directors today take the unimaginative approach to film making...it's an easy buck.
I just wanted to give Terry Gilliam credit for not being MOST directors. he's one of my favourites as well and I have so much respect for what he does as a film maker and an artist.
Simply pointing out that there is still good film making going on (it's just harder to find amidst all of the c**p)...when I see that Gilliam has directed something, I know it will not be the same hum-drum cliche film...
that's all

"What line of business are you in?"
"Insurance" (Twelve Monkeys)
I think we should sue the american film industry for patronising our intelligence. Or something.

To get extremely anoraky here, have you noticed that the red top can be a barometer for how much they had left in the budget to spend on special effects?

If it's a slow week for SFX, red top will get to say something like 'Over here, Captain!' on screen before his inevitable demise. However, if there are a lot of effects in that episode, there will just be a blood-curdling scream off camera, at which Kirk, Bones et al will rush round to the back of a nearby rock to find a small, conical pile of white powder.

Cue 'It's worse than that...', dramtic chord and fade out to the obvious gap for the ad break in the US.

Hi Daisy! I just popped in to tell you that if you put your own page up (even if you just use the plain text type and put "hi" in the body) then we can all pop in and say, "Hi! Welome to H2G2!" without stalking you to a forum to do it.

I've just thought of another one.
When you see a plane about to take off or land in a film,if the airline is known I.E Pan Am transworld BA etc then you know that the person on the plane will reach his destination.If the the airline is something like Long Haul U.S or Hawkman Airlines guaranteed the plane will be in a crash!!!

Now THAT'S a good one to look out for. I'd never noticed that before, but you can see why they'd do it, can't you, with the States being so litiginous and all...

of course, "english accent = baddie", often applies to real life as well.

or perhaps its just my imagination.

Does anyone notice that Englishmen are rarely acted by Englishmen?

For example in the Bond films, he's played by either a Scotsman (e.g.Connery) or an Irishman(e.g. Brosnan)

That's cos all the Englishmen are busy playing Germans, Russians and all the other evil world-conquering nationalities.

I've got one of those. In Cliffhanger (FULL of cliche quotes), the baddie is an Englishman played by John Lithgow (forever known here as Dick)

In any deliberately multinational organisation, it's highly likely that the leading security officer will tall, slim, dark, female and have a heavy Russian accent.


Any pair of police or FBI officers, on encountering yet another large, unlit warehouse at night, must refuse to call for backup, particularly if they're on the trail of a mass murderer or alien. When searching the warehouse, on no account must they stay together. When one of them momentarily meets their target, they will shout or scream, and be thrown to the ground for a few seconds, while their assailant runs away.
Their partner, who was in the other half of the building, will have managed to locate them precisely from the brief noise, and will arrive just as they struggle to their feet. Whatever route their partner may use to reach them, they will never bump in to the assailant, though they may just catch sight of them disappearing around a corner as they arrive.


When on the trail of dangerous lifeforms, it is expected that at least one human should touch any strange, evil-looking slime that is found without bothering to put on gloves, or even sniff it first.


People wearing ankle-length black coats and heavy leather boots in high summer are free to carry any number of long-barreled firearms without arousing any suspicion.


Most 'gutsy' parts for women have still have to show them as being unnecessarily emotional, and somewhat less than logical (eg Aliens -'The planet's about to self-destruct, so I guess I'd better hang around for a few minutes to shoot some egg cases in a fit of spite while I allow the alien to catch up with me.')

Hey Potholer, let's you and I do a screenplay - shouldn't take more than about twenty minutes...

People being chased by a car are too mesmerised by the situation to do anything other than run in a straight line, thereby giving the car the best possible opportunity to run them down. Fear obviously prevents them from working out that if they run into the trees instead of along the forest track, the car would be unable to follow them. Furthermore, instead of putting their head down and running as fast as is humanly possible, it seems to be essential for them continually to look over their shoulder to check if the car's any closer to them.

Any piece of electrical equipment, however small, can readily be made to self-desruct with the simple push of one wrong button. Whatever its power capacity, it will still be able to shower the room with an inordinate amount of sparks, which will be able to penetrate any other equipment in the room and cause that to do the same. This enables the hero to destroy the villain's lair in the shortest possible time. Villains never seen to learn the value of individual fuses on their equipment.

Or they have to be men. You can't be femine and still kick ass, oh no.

Or if you're feminine and really really trying to kick ass, you must be forced to understand that you do have a mile-wide maternal streak, somewhere, and therefore will be made to bond with any small child you can find lying around. (Though a cat or dog will do at a pinch.)