any early films in this genre featured similar fanciful special effects and thrilled early audiences. The pioneering science fiction film, a 14-minute ground-breaking masterpiece with 30 separate tableaus (scenes), Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon) (1902), was made by imaginative, turn-of-the-century French filmmaker/magician Georges Melies, approximating the contents of the novels by Jules Verne (From the Earth to the Moon) and H.G. Wells (First Men in the Moon). With innovative, illusionary cinematic techniques (trick photography with superimposed images, dissolves and cuts), he depicted many memorable, whimsical old-fashioned images

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Premiere Magazine compiled a list of the 50 Greatest Comedies of All Time in the July/August 2006 issue - the unranked list in chronological order represented a wide range of some of the best comedies ("the funniest stories ever told on film"), from "the Little Tramp to the Wedding Crashers". Descriptions are from the original source. See also this site's descriptive section on the Comedy Films genre, and illustrated listings of the Funniest Movie Moments and Scenes in the best comedy films in film history.

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Action-oriented (and adventure-oriented) survival films have commonly been set in harsh, uncivilized locales - a desert, an island, a searing jungle, or a cold polar area, where an individual (or a group) must struggle against the forces of nature to keep alive. The threats of death, the selfishness of other individuals in the group, and other forces test the spirit (ingenuity, will-power, and altruism) of the survivors under these grueling circumstances.

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Other notable, low-budget supernatural/horror films in the late 1950s through the 1970s included:

* Bell, Book, and Candle (1958), a romantic fantasy adapted from the Broadway stage comedy of the same name, with pre-Vertigo James Stewart (as a stodgy book publisher) and Kim Novak as his bewitching Greenwich Village neighbor
* The Innocents - 1961William Castle's ghost-infested B-movie House on Haunted Hill (1959), starring Vincent Price as a wealthy and eccentric man who offers $10,000 to his wife and others to survive one entire night in a ghostly manse; with decapitated heads, vats of lye, crashing chandeliers; inspired the parody Saturday the 14th (1981), and was remade in 1999
* 13 Ghosts (1960), another haunted house thriller from William Castle, memorable for its "Illusion-O" process (viewers were given the option of using ghost-viewing glasses)

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One of the greatest and most-beloved of the comedy teams was the one of British-born Stan Laurel and the fat-faced Oliver Hardy, first purposely teamed together toward the close of the silent era by producer Hal Roach in the slapstick film Slipping Wives (1926). They had first met, by accident, during the filming of Lucky Dog in 1917. Director Leo McCarey at Hal Roach Studios recognized their potential as a team and capitalized on their contrasting, disparate physical differences (Stan: the "thin" man and Oliver: the "fat" one - each with derby hats) and classic gestures (bewildered head-scratching, tie-twiddling, eye-blinking and baby-like weeping).

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Once talkies emerged, the most famous and popular comedy team was the zany foursome of the Marx Brothers. They were the only real-life sibling comedy group in Hollywood history:

* the witty, wise-cracking, ad-libbing, absurdly-punning, caustic, fast-talking Groucho (famous for his crouched walk, mustache, cigar, round glasses and leering eyes)
* piano-playing, broken Italian-accented Chico, famous for distorted logic
* the mischievous mute-pantomimist/harpist Harpo (with an old taxi horn and numerous harp solos), known for chasing girls
* the straight-man Zeppo (who left the other brothers in 1933 after his performance in Duck Soup (1933), his fifth film)


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Cast
Gretchen Mol as Catherine Caswell
James Rebhorn as Lucian Carver
Cameron Bright as Adam Stafford
Perrey Reeves as Adrienne Stafford
Mark Pellegrino as Graham Caswell
Noah Wyle as Mike Stafford
Fearless Swift as Miley Walker
Laurel Astri as Faith


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To Hitchcock's tribute, there are a number of Hitchcock-like thrillers from other notable directors. All of these films serve up thrilling tales of terror, intrigue, menace, revenge, obsession, and insanity:

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