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Once again, I hear Alice Cooper in my head screaming out that anthem of freedom: “School’s out for summer!” I was actually on the cusp of high school when that song became a hit, and I took the lyrics very much to heart. Back then, summer seemed like a time of endless possibility- parties to attend, girls to meet, and um, everything else associated with that.

As producer/director Roger Corman once told me, movies are a kind of alchemy, an outcome of many complex elements. Bad movies can be forged from wrongheaded decisions, great ones can often be attributed to … plain dumb luck. The resulting concoction is all that counts. Of course, when you watch an amazing performance in a great film, it’s hard to envision how it could have been done any other way. Casting is crucial because most often we associate movies with the actors that star in them. But consider how differently a movie might have turned out if an alternate choice had been made. Just a tiny shift in the recipe can make a world of difference.  Here then is a list of 9 actual “what might have been” casting choices from some of our favorite films that prove my point. 

Man versus Nature. It’s a struggle as old as the movies—even as old as man himself. (Man, that’s old.) Many movies have thrilled us by pitting their leading characters against the elements. Floods, blizzards, tornados, tsunamis and other cases of severe and, at times, catastrophic weather conditions are the stuff film drama is made of.  It seems that hardly a calendar year goes by without stormy weather whipping around audiences. Earlier his year, Russell Crowe’s “Noah” encountered a flood of Biblical proportions. And just when we thought the memory of Hurricane Sandy was starting to fade, “Into the Storm” arrives in theaters shortly, bringing destructive cyclones and tornadoes with it.

Submarines perform wonderfully as containers for high-tension drama as the challenges of close quarters, the inability to see what’s going on above, and the vulnerability of sailors working at many fathoms beneath the sea become as compressed as the oxygen they breathe.

Using smiles, warm hugs, fresh-baked goods, outright manipulation, and, occasionally, a baseball bat, Hollywood mothers shaped our favorite characters to be the men and women they are today. We all have mothers, after all – or did. Even the most evil entities the world has ever seen – Hitler, Godzilla, Michael Bay – have or had mothers who loved them. The characters in our favorite films are no different, and would probably be sending their mothers some cinematic roses if they could. So, just in time for Mother’s Day, we bring you the most memorable movie moms from the best films ever made. 

Even though much of the appeal of horror movies lies in their power to tap into primal fears, I’d like to think our cerebral cortexes have evolved to the point where we want our thrills to test our minds as well as our nerves. After all, horror movies often leave the greatest, and most lasting, chill when they hinge on psychological, rather than fantastical, terrors.  The higher the intelligence of the piece, the harder it is to dispel that chill, and the more elegant the premise, the more likely it is to stay lodged in our psyches. Smarter scary movies just seem more believable, even when they are set in space, or when ghosts crawl out of the television. Not surprisingly, a large percentage of such titles are adapted from works of fiction. The “interior” aspect of fiction reminds us that the worst nightmares are often conjured not by reality but by our own imaginations.