Duel - The Movie

burtandnancy said:

Spielbergs first movie. The young ones won't remember, but it was in black and white, shot in the Saugus/Newhall area...

Click to expand...

I'm not young but it wasn't a Black and White film...

Additional Details
Parents Guide:View content advisory for parents
Runtime:90 min | USA:74 min (original version)
Country:USA
Language:English
Color:Color (Technicolor)
Aspect Ratio:1.33 : 1 more
Sound Mix:Mono (Westrex Recording System)
Certification:Iceland:L | USAG (1984) | CanadaG (Ontario) | Brazil:12 | Italy:VM14 (DVD rating) | UKG (video rating) | AustraliaG | Norway:12 | Sweden:11 | UK:AA (original rating) | USAG | West Germany:12 | SingaporeG | Spain:13 | Finland:S (1996) | Finland:K-16 (1973) | Finland:K-12 (1984)
Filming Locations:Acton, California, USA more
Company:Universal TV more

GOOFS:

Continuity: The glass of water at Chuck's Cafe is half full after being completely gulped.

Continuity: The license plate on the Plymouth Valiant changes colors throughout the movie. It appears as yellow on black California plates and again as yellow on blue. This is best viewed at the bus scene. You can see the black plates as he pulls up to help the bus. When the car gets stuck under the bus, the plates are yellow on blue.

Continuity: When the passing train wakes up Mann, the back left door of his car is slightly opened and the window is half-opened. Both the door and the window are closed in the next shot.

Continuity: The truck's license plates also disappear altogether in some scenes.

Continuity: The pool balls change positions and become more numerous after David Mann is thrown onto it at Chuck's cafe.

Continuity: After crashing into the fence, David Mann closes his car door as he prepares to go into Chuck's Cafe. Later, when he goes to get back in his car, the driver's door is open.

Crew or equipment visible: When the camera is coming up to Mann at his table at Chuck's Cafe, it's shadow can be seen on the back of the booth.

Continuity: The streaks on the back of David Mann's car change in size and number for no apparent reason.

Crew or equipment visible: Reflected in the phone booth, and in the table at Chuck's Cafe (it's Steven Spielberg).

Continuity: During the scene at the railway crossing, in one shot the lettering on the freight cars appears in mirror image. (It is not possible that we're seeing a reflection in the rear view mirror, as the train is in front of the car and still seems to be moving the right way anyway).

Crew or equipment visible: When Mann's car starts acting up you can see someone (Spielberg himself per various sources) in the backseat of his car in the rear-view mirror.

Continuity: In an early scene, when David Mann stops to get gas, he makes a phone call to his wife. His glasses are bent and distorted. In following scenes, when he has them on again in the car, the glasses appear undamaged.

Continuity: As we see the cars speed, we also see the odometer, which varies between 4600 and 5100 and back again.

Continuity: During one of the first chases, Mann's seatbelt disappears and reappears between shots.

Crew or equipment visible: As David Mann is walking towards his seat in Chuck's Cafe after his visit to the rest room, the shadow of the camera can be clearly seen on his back.

Continuity: When David Mann first passes the truck, we get a view of the landscape and roadside objects as he passes. When he has to pass the truck a second time, a few miles down the road, the same footage is used (as evidenced by the same objects appearing on the roadside and horizon).

Crew or equipment visible: In the chase scene leading to Chuck's Cafe, a camera mounted on the right rear side of the car can be seen briefly.

Continuity: When Mann careens into the lot across from Chuck's Cafe, we are seen an interior shot of the car, with a brief glimpse of the side of Mann's head. He is not wearing his spectacles. But when we go to the exterior of the car, he is clearing wearing them.

Crew or equipment visible: Many times when David Mann looks into his rear-view mirror, a crew member can be seen ducking in the backseat of his car.

Continuity: When Mann loses control of his car and hurtles into the 'Chuck's Cafe' parking lot, he crashes broadside into a fence. The collision knocked out the lower two bars of the three-bar fence. Later we see the car sitting surrounded by fence debris and the upper rail is broken, with runs fore and aft of the car sitting diagonally on the ground

Continuity: Almost every shot of every road chase has inconsistent yellow passing lines from shot to shot.

Crew or equipment visible: When David is trying to push the bus with his car, a shot of a bumper has a few crew members reflected in it.

Continuity: The weather changes from clear and sunny to dark clouds and back to clear and sunny towards the end of the movie when David Mann's car starts conking out on him.

Continuity: Throughout the film, there are numerous inconsistencies in surrounding terrain and landscapes during some of the chase scenes.

Continuity: After Mann leaps from the car and the car crashes head-on into the truck, the truck pushes the car backwards. After a brief shot of Mann, we see the car being pushed sideways, as if it had been broadsided.

Crew or equipment visible: In the wide shot overlooking the truck at the gas station, a camera shadow can be seen on the truck's roof, at the bottom of the screen.

Crew or equipment visible: A camera shadow can be seen around the edges when Mann is in the bathroom washing his face.

Anachronisms: As David flips through different radio stations, a sports broadcast mentions Texas beating the Yankees. The Texas Rangers began play in 1972. However, a few minutes later he is listening to a call-in show discussing the Census questionnaire. The Census was taken in 1970.

Crew or equipment visible: Towards the end of the movie, there is a shot of the driving column. Behind David's shoulder looking into the car is a crewmember at the bottom right-hand side of the screen.

Crew or equipment visible: In the cafe as Chuck stares at the truckers on the stools, the shadow of the boom operator and boom mic moves across the men several times as the camera zooms in.

Crew or equipment visible: Shadow of the camera visible on the left side of the screen as it zooms in on David after he takes his seat at the restaurant.

Continuity: When Mann first enters the service station in Acton, his car is covered in shadow, indicating the sun is below the building to the right of his car. In the next shot the sun appears overhead as his car is covered in sunlight.

Continuity: When David confronts the man whom he believes to be the truck driver in the café, the driver's beer is half empty on the table, but in the overhead shot when he goes to drink it, the glass is full again

Continuity: In the last scene where the truck is about to go over the cliff, the driver has feet on both the clutch and brake pedal, it is very obvious that the truck driver is accelerating and up shifting in the audio.

Anachronisms: The diesel locomotives pulling the Southern Pacific freight trains are too modern to be equipped with the deep single-note airhorns as heard in the film (they are no doubt canned sounds). Leslie or Nathan muti-chime horns can clearly be seen on the cab roofs of the locomotives and should have a blaring brassier tone. The horns are not blown in the normal 2 longs, a short and a long per regulation approaching grade crossings.

Continuity: Toward the end, Mann has smashed his car into the mountain and sustained considerable front-end damage; yet in the subsequent brief shot of him leaping from the vehicle, the front of the car looks perfectly fine.

Continuity: Inside the cafe, just as the cook says "oh? looked like a big complication to me", you see a table with a mostly-green floral arrangement on it, to the right of the window. A few moments later, that table and greenery has moved to the back corner of the area where Mann is sitting, and the wood chair that had been in that corner has shifted left, toward the center of the wall. The floral arrangement on that corner table remains mainly green.. ..until the waitress brings Mann's food, at which point it has changed to a completely different set of flowers (possibly the one that had been on the booth-table directly behind Mann, albeit turned - large yellow flower, red ribbon on a white vase)... Also, from that same moment, the wood chair is gone. Also, the yellow/red floral arrangement, during the time it was still on the booth-table behind Mann, alternated from being centered to being near the edge of the table.

Continuity: Throughout most of the film, a photo of [presumably] Mann's family can be seen clipped onto the wide part of his driver-side sun visor. However, it disappears in the shot where he waves giddily at the truck driver, after having passed him via the dirt side-road. It reappears a few seconds later. It's also absent in the scene where the truck is pushing Mann's car toward the train, only to reappear later.

Continuity: The original 74 minute version was filmed with a Peterbilt 281 (tag axle) that was re-powered with a 1674 270hp I-6 Cat, thus the yellow, horizontal air cleaner on the right side of the engine. The extra 16 minutes of the movie was filmed with a 351, which lacks this yellow air cleaner. This mistake is most visible when the truck comes out of the tunnel.

Continuity: At the crossing, the truck is pushing the car towards the train. Immediately after the train barely clears the crossing, Mann floors it over the crossing. The gates would not have even begun to raise yet, but the next shot shows Mann barely past the crossing and the gates are completely raised and off.

Factual errors: In the scenes where the car is overheating going up the hill they show shots of the gauges, and the car is in *neutral*.: