REVIEW: Silver Streak (1976)

SILVER STREAK (1976)

Publisher George (Gene Wilder) plans to take a train, the “Silver Streak”, from Los Angeles to Chicago for his sister’s wedding, and “just to be bored”. He meets a man named Sweet (Ned Beatty) who seems to only have sex on his mind. Then he meets his “neighbor”, secretary Hilly (Jill Clayburgh), and romance ensues. But when George witnesses a murder while in Hilly’s room, things change. 

Hilly’s boss, Professor Schreiner, has just written a book about Rembrandt and is travelling with her on a publicity tour. He has something that someone else on the train wants. That someone is Roger Devereau (Patrick McGoohan), a man big in the art world of Chicago. George thinks he had his thugs kill the professor, and when he goes to check his room to be sure, one of the thugs tosses George off the train. 

From this point on, things get too complicated to really go into here. 

Basically, Sweet turns out to be Stephens, a federal agent, and he tells George that Devereau and his henchmen are looking for the professor’s “Rembrandt papers/letters”, which prove that two paintings authenticated by Devereau for an art institute are in fact forgeries. He wants the proof destroyed and will kill anyone who gets in his way.  He's already caused an airliner crash to prevent other damaging information to get out about him, so killing a few more people is no big deal.

From here on, George ends up off the train a couple more times, and gets in all sorts of scrapes while trying to catch back up with it. He meets nutty women, nutty cops, and a nutty Grover (Richard Pryor), who somewhat famously tries to pass Gene Wilder off as black to get him past police at a train station. 

One by one, characters get bumped off, and a big shootout ensues on and around the train, which ultimately results in Devereau suffering the indignity of not only being shot, but hit by an oncoming train as well. 

The heroes then have a runaway train on their hands. They manage to uncouple some of the passenger cars from the locomotives.  The ending is a well known train crash scene, and the good guys live happily ever after… one assumes. 

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While working my way through currently available Patrick McGoohan films, I recently watched "Silver Streak" for the first time. And I was rather disappointed.

In short, this is a movie that many people love.  But I, as usual, feel differently.

Once we get the initial sexual innuendos and love scenes out of the way, the action (should) begin. And this story has too much romance in the first 1/4 or so, which just makes the plot move too slowly.  While it was nice to see Wilder did a lot of his own stunts, the whole getting on and off the train thing got tired quickly, and sort of ruined the flow of the story.   The train station bathroom bit with Pryor is embarrassing, even for the 1970s. The idea that Devereau would go through so much trouble to save his good name seems a bit much, too.  And does he usually travel with a full arsenal of weaponry?

There were very few real good laugh-out-loud moments (like Wilder's reaction to seeing his driver’s license photo on the front page of the newspapers). And Pryor doesn’t provide as many laughs as I expected, either.  Though his character is likable, he plays it rather straight.  He does have a pretty good exit scene...

Jill Clayburgh didn’t impress me at all. Ned Beatty and Clifton James fit their characters, Scatman Crothers could have had more to do, and Richard Kiel seems like an afterthought. Then there’s the rather odd casting of Ray Walston as a heavy. 

Gene Wilder is an actor I sometimes like, sometimes don't. He was great in "Young Frankenstein", but to me he just wasn’t right for romantic roles. He had nice blue eyes, but wasn't a Cary Grant, that's for sure.  I also think his lack of any remorse when killing other characters (at least after killing Kiel) is a bit of a turn-off. Sure, he’s killing bad guys, but seemingly having no issues with taking another life makes him a lot like the guys he’s killing! 

Speaking of killing, it was strange to see Patrick McGoohan, as Devereau, so violent, given his famous aversion to pointless killing in “Danger Man/Secret Agent”, even in “The Prisoner”. But McGoohan had a knack for playing certain types of bad guys, and he pulls off being a classy, understated, but sadistic meanie.  Being a fan of his, I felt bad that his character not only gets shot twice, which probably would have resulted in his death anyway, but he had to suffer the indignity of getting hit by a train as well!  He seems to have done quite a few, if not all, of the train-cab scenes himself, which, given that he was about 48 and supposedly drinking heavily at the time, is impressive.  Oddly enough, the bits that made me chuckle most were his, even though he was the dead-pan bad guy!  His reaction to Pryor pulling a gun on him after calling him an "n*****" is one of the best scenes.

As usual, though Henry Mancini put together a good theme song, which has that "railroady" tempo.

Interestingly, there were at least two other films called "Silver Streak", one from 1934 and a short from 1945.

If you'd prefer not to watch this film as a lowish quality online copy, it was available on DVD at one time, and copies can be found used.  It is also on television from time to time.

The two locomotives were Canadian Pacific GMD FP7 #4070 & 4067

Hilly about to sit with George for lunch on the train

This can't be good... not what you want during a romantic encounter, THAT'S for sure!

Ray Walston(??) as one of Devereau's thugs, searching the professor's room

George trying to meet up with the train after being thrown off the first time

"How do you do?"... George meets Devereau while in Hilly's room

Looking at the "Rembrandt Papers" with Stephens

Criminal George meets accused criminal Grover, and they agree to help each other out

"That's my driver's license picture... I hate that picture!"

Not very convincing cover...

"Please sit down... make yourself comfortable..."

The tables turn on Devereau... for now... McGoohan's reaction is classic!

The train has been stopped by the police and everyone is told to get off so they can search it

... but Devereau and his cohorts won't go down without a fight, and the shooting starts!  The "F" on the nose of the locomotive does indeed mean "FRONT", though with an F-unit, that's pretty obvious!

The train begins to move, George and Grover hop on to save Hilly

All he needs is "one clear shot" to take out Devereau in the lead locomotive cab

Devereau has been shot twice, which is bad enough, but this is what he sees as he hangs out of the locomotive cab...

... and he isn't too happy about it!

There's no one driving the train!

Speeding out of control toward the station...

Uncoupling the cars from the engines... (which also means disconnecting the air line)

THAT famous scene... made with mock-up locomotives

"... it looks as though it's grinning!"

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AMRoad... the Railroad That Wasn't

Now, I have to confess, I am also a railfan. It was nice to see some EMD/GMD power (aka: Canadian Pacific FP7 diesel locomotives #4070 & 4067) on the move and in color. But “AMRoad”? Come on now… Supposedly Amtrak thought the movie would bring bad publicity to railroads and refused to cooperate with the production. So the film was (at least partly) shot in Canada.  I have, though, seen one contemporary reference to Amtrak owning "trains" but not track, therefore having a passenger train in the right scenic locations would have been difficult.

The actual "Silver Streak" train was really called the "Pioneer Zephyr".  It was a revolutionary Budd trainset on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad.

Younger viewers may not be aware that Scatman Crothers is playing a classic, but rather late, "porter".  Porters were basically "servants" or "butlers" on long distance passenger trains.  They made up your sleeping compartment, got you a drink, opened stuck windows, you name it.  And YES, they were traditionally black men.  I honestly do not know if that was indeed a requirement in the beginning, or if whites also were porters later on.  But it can be argued that Crothers was playing a rather stereotyped character.  Regardless, if this film was indeed a homage to Alfred Hitchcock, you need a "Pullman porter" to fill out the cast.

Some train-related info can be found at the IMDb page:
  

There are a few sources of information online regarding the rail-aspect of this movie:
https://cinetrains.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/is-this-new-mexico-or-canada-canadian-pacific-in-silver-streak/
YouTube channel with three clips of behind the scenes photos...
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYx85uMDb_CqT9Rv4nGxkUg
Multiple then/now pages at...
https://www.bigdoer.com/9481/then-and-now/silver-streak-movie-then-and-now-walking-the-tracks/
https://www.bigdoer.com/7494/then-and-now/silver-streak-movie-behind-the-scenes/
https://www.bigdoer.com/7220/then-and-now/silver-streak-movie-then-and-now-paper-burning-scene/

Car #261

Door of car #4169

Car #259

Car #279 (notice bathroom door at right)

Car #161

End of one coach

Horns from one of the locomotives

General view of 4070's cab (while the crew is [barely] still alive)

Right side of the cab with full control stand... notice his clothes are GRAY here...

Right side of the cab (with engine room door)

Left side of the cab... is this a dual control loco?  Or just simple, limited controls for some sort of switching duty?

The "Dead Man's Pedal" and the metal toolbox Devereau puts on it after killing the crew.  It is located on the left side of the cab.

Side of 4070's cab... note what appears to be an engineer in reddish-brown clothes, instead of the gray ones seen on the actor(?) before... and seemingly with his leg up!

Nose of 4070