“Movie Titles Derived from Hamlet”

A Jeopardy Category James Would Love to See

By James MacDonald, WCT Artistic Director

We’re all spending a lot of time these days wondering what films to catch up on while we’re at home. I’ve always thought a great Jeopardy category would be “Movie Titles Derived from Hamlet”. Let’s play! Answers Below (but wait until you want to see all the answers at once) 

$200 category 

This 1998 shmaltzfest featured a weepy Robin Williams chasing his wife (Annabel Sciorra) through the afterlife.

$400 category

This 6th Star Trek film, the final one with the original cast, featured a Shakespeare-quoting Klingon villain played by noted Canadian thespian Christopher Plummer.

$600 category

This terrific 1942 Carole Lombard/Jack Benny comedy about a Polish acting troupe outwitting the Nazis was remade in 1983 by Mel Brooks.

$800 category

This 1964 film based on an Agatha Christie mystery was the third of four movies starring Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple.

$1000 category

This 1959 Alfred Hitchcock thriller, one of my all-time favourites, features Cary Grant on the run from James Mason in a case of mistaken identity, espionage, and romance.

Final Jeopardy

This outstanding Canadian TV series – streaming now! - detailed the darkly comic misadventures of theatre-making at the thinly disguised “New Burbage Festival”, a stand-in for Canada’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Having worked there, it’s very accurate…

JEOPARDY ANSWERS

$200 category: What is What Dreams May Come

$400 category: What is The Undiscovered Country

$600 category: What is To Be or Not to Be

$800 category: What is Murder Most Foul

$1000 category: What is North by Northwest   

Final Jeopardy: What is Slings and Arrows (Can be seen for free on CBC Gem)

Funny story about the image above: In all of WCT's 45 plus years, in one form or another, Hamlet has been performed but once, in 1973 in a Shakespeare Composite by several local schools. However, in Summer 2018, our Stage One Theatre School Performance Class, pictured, shone in "Hamlet Hears a Who", perchance an apt reference to WCT's origins as a Youth Theatre.