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New Layout Vignette: From Spielberg's "Duel".

A friend of mine suggested this scene for my railroad, and it sounded
like fun.
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For those of you who've never seen "Duel", it's a 90 minute chase
movie about the driver of an old tank truck who's trying to kill
businessman Dennis Weaver ("Chester", from "Gunsmoke"). We never see
the driver of the truck, nor do we ever find out why he's trying to
kill Weaver, so the truck itself becomes the bad guy.
It's worth a watch if you like adrenaline-pumping movies.
Trailer:
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Movie:
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~Pete
Reply to
Twibil
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A couple of interesting bits of trivia about the movie: (1) It was originally a short story in Playboy magazine. (2) It was Steven Spielberg's movie directorial debut, albeit a made for TV movie. Previously he had directed TV series, shorts, or homemade films.
Reply to
Rick Jones
At the very end of the movie, the tractor-trailer goes over a cliff and you can clearly see the driver's cab door is open through which the stunt man obviously abandoned ship. Guess they decided not to do a retake. :-)
Good movie for it's time though.
Reply to
Roger Traviss
I thought that's where I first read it. Of course, I only purchased the magazine for the articles.
Reply to
Roger Traviss
Playboy has articles?
Wow! Who knew?
~Pete
Reply to
Twibil
If the movie fulfills the promis of the trailer, then it will be a pretty good movie (I'm d/l'ing it now.)
But SPEED is still the best in that genre.
Wolf "likes any movie about things that move" K.
Reply to
Wolf K
Playboy has articles?
Wow! Who knew?
~Pete
======================================================
And cartoons and a comic strip ...
Reply to
Lobby Dosser
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And what's the dinosaur about?
Reply to
Graham Harrison
Just passing through, on his way to the Jurrasic Pork feed lot.
Gotta have industries on a switching layout ya know...
~Pete
Reply to
Twibil
Ever seen "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad world"? A two-hour-long chase comedy featuring a whole bunch of great actors and some of the wildest stunts ever captured on film.
Filmed well before the advent of computer graphics, when you see that Beechcraft Twin fly through the billboard in the film it's because stunt pilot Frank Tallman actually flew it through a billboard; not to mention through an open-ended hanger, etcetera.
Fun movie.
~Pete
Reply to
Twibil
-Ever seen "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad world"? A two-hour-long chase -comedy featuring a whole bunch of great actors and some of the wildest -stunts ever captured on film. --- -Fun movie. ~Pete
Yes INDEED!!
And, Oh Dear, what they did to that poor RICHFIELD gas station!
Anybody here have a Richfield gas station on their layout?
Reply to
a425couple
Just passing through, on his way to the Jurrasic Pork feed lot.
Gotta have industries on a switching layout ya know...
~Pete
:-)
Reply to
Graham Harrison
No, but I was once a rising young executive with Richfield, and had the urge to level more than one Richfield gas station during that time...
BTW: Woodland scenics makes a Ford convertable very much like the one Phil Silvers ruined/sank in "Mad World", so you could model that gas station scene pretty well if you wanted to.
Hmmmmm!
~Pete
Reply to
Twibil
Ever seen "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad world"? A two-hour-long chase comedy featuring a whole bunch of great actors and some of the wildest stunts ever captured on film.
Filmed well before the advent of computer graphics, when you see that Beechcraft Twin fly through the billboard in the film it's because stunt pilot Frank Tallman actually flew it through a billboard; not to mention through an open-ended hanger, etcetera.
Fun movie.
~Pete
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Great slapstick! Saw it at a Sneak Preview at the Colony Theater in Toledo, Ohio. IIRC, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum is from the same era. Another great slapstick!
Reply to
Lobby Dosser
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BTW, some of the usual suspects from Mad World were in Forum. Phil Silvers anyway ...
Reply to
Lobby Dosser
CONTAINS SPOILERS! IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN DUEL YET, HOLD OFF READING.
Amazing you have a dinosaur in the same scene as the Duel car and truck, because I have a theory about the movie and Spielberg's take on it. I believe Duel is his first dinosaur movie because he made the truck a big hulking brown dinosaur chasing down a little rodent. Dennis Weaver looks and acts like a rodent, especially after he vanquishes the truck he jumps up and down like an excited rat. The movie is symbolic of the small mammals surviving the dinosaur era due to superior intellect, and the stupid dinosaur brutes couldn't adapt and survive. You can even hear the truck roaring like a dinosaur when it goes over the cliff, tricked by a little mammal using its wits (rigging the gas pedal with his briefcase and sending his car into the truck). I think Spielberg also had the truck crash through the reptile exhibit to drive home his point.
Reply to
rindsight
Over-analyzation is easy in retrospect, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
I don't play with trains for the symbolic thrill of watching a fast passenger train breach a tunnel; I just like trains.
Reply to
Twibil
On 3/9/2011 12:50 PM Twibil spake thus:
That sounds a lot like the (very suggestive) image at the end of "North by Northwest" ...
Reply to
David Nebenzahl

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