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Silver Streak

 
Movies:

Silver Streak

  • Director: Arthur Hiller
  • AMG Rating: starstarstar
  • Genre: Action
  • Movie Type: Odd Couple Film, Comedy Thriller
  • Themes: Train Rides, Witnessing a Crime, Race Relations
  • Main Cast: Gene Wilder, Jill Clayburgh, Richard Pryor, Patrick McGoohan, Ned Beatty
  • Release Year: 1976
  • Country: US
  • Run Time: 113 minutes
  • MPAA Rating: PG

Plot

While taking a train trip from L.A. to Chicago, mild-mannered George Caldwell (Gene Wilder) makes the acquaintance of Hilly Burns (Jill Clayburgh). As they indulge in a brief bit of spooning, Hilly tells George that her boss is on the verge of exposing a group of vicious art forgers. Later that evening, George sees the body of Hilly's boss being thrown off of the train. Detective Sweet (Ned Beatty) agrees to investigate, but he too is bumped off. The instigator of these outrages is master forger Roger Devereau (Patrick McGoohan), who, with his crony Mr. Whiney (Ray Walston) is planning a particularly diabolical crime. Worse still, they take Hilly prisoner so she can't tip off the cops. When George is also targeted for elimination, he manages in slapstick fashion to elude the killers. Falling off the train, he ends up being arrested on some trumped-up charge or other by a local sheriff. He makes his escape in the company of petty thief Grover Muldoon (Richard Pryor) -- and that's only the beginning. A box-office smash, Silver Streak paved the way for the equally successful 1980 Wilder-Pryor vehicle Stir Crazy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Review

Arthur Hiller's comedy-mystery-romance starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor puts enough of a twist on Alfred Hitchcock's classic North by Northwest to provide a pleasurable two hours. The melodramatic farce sends businessman Wilder on a cross-country train trip, during which a tryst with Jill Clayburgh draws him into the proverbial web of murder and intrigue surrounding villain Patrick MacGoohan. Before long, Richard Pryor is added to the mix as a thief, and the film really takes off. The various genres are well meshed in this broadly conceived comedy, the best of the Pryor/Wilder collaborations. Two of the most brilliant comic figures in film history, both were at their peak during this period. Probably their most famous scene together, too politically incorrect for the present, is that in which Pryor tries to teach Wilder, the whitest of white men, how to act black. The cast, which also includes such talented veterans as Ned Beatty, Ray Walston, and Clifton James, is almost uniformly excellent, and the sometimes mediocre Hiller gives the film the brisk pace of a classic farce. Silver Streak's enormous success resulted in a re-teaming for Stir Crazy (1980). ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide

Cast

Clifton James - Sheriff Chauncey; Ray Walston - Mr. Whiney; Len Birman - Chief; Valerie Curtin - Plain Jane; Lucille Benson - Rita Babtree; Scatman Crothers - Ralston; Fred Willard - Jerry Jarvis; Delos V. Smith - Burt; Harvey Atkin - Conventioneer; Henry Beckman - Conventioneer; John Day - Engineer; Stefan Gierasch - Johnson/Prof. Schreiner; Raymond Guth - Night Watchman; Bill Henderson - Red Cap; Gordon Hurst - Moose; Richard Kiel - Reace/Goldtooth; Lee Mc Laughlin - Fat Man #2; Jack O'Leary - Fat Man #1; Nick Stewart [Nicodemus] - Shoe Shiner; Ed McNamara - Benny; Lloyd White - Porter; Matilda Calnan - Blue-Haired Lady; Thomas Erhart - Cab Driver; Jack Mather - Conductor

Credit

Lynn Stalmaster - Casting, Phyllis Garr - Costume Designer, Michael J. Harte - Costume Designer, Jack Roe - First Assistant Director, Arthur Hiller - Director, David Bretherton - Editor, Henry Mancini - Composer (Music Score), Henry Mancini - Musical Direction/Supervision, William J. Tuttle - Makeup, Alfred Sweeney - Production Designer, David M. Walsh - Cinematographer, Ralph A. Woolsey - Cinematographer, Peter V. Herald - Production Manager, Jack B. Bernstein - Production Manager, Edward K. Milkis - Producer, Martin Ransohoff - Producer, Frank Yablans - Producer, Thomas L. Miller - Producer, Marvin March - Set Designer, Fred Cramer - Special Effects, Hal Etherington - Sound/Sound Designer, Don Mitchell - Sound/Sound Designer, Mickey Gilbert - Stunts Coordinator, Colin Higgins - Screenwriter

Similar Movies

Amos & Andrew; Blazing Saddles; Doctor Detroit; Foul Play; High Anxiety; Midnight Run; North by Northwest; Stir Crazy; Twentieth Century; Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?; Nothing to Lose; Double Take; The Lady Vanishes; Hopscotch; Keeping Track
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Silver Streak

DVD cover for Silver Streak
Directed by Arthur Hiller
Produced by Edward K. Milkis
Written by Colin Higgins
Starring Gene Wilder
Jill Clayburgh
Richard Pryor
Patrick McGoohan
Ned Beatty
Music by Henry Mancini
Cinematography David M. Walsh
Editing by David Bretherton
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date(s) December 8, 1976
Running time 114 min
Language English

Silver Streak is a 1976 comedy, action and mystery film about murder on a Los Angeles-to-Chicago train journey. It stars Gene Wilder, Jill Clayburgh, Richard Pryor, Patrick McGoohan and Ned Beatty and is directed by Arthur Hiller. The film score is by Henry Mancini. This film marked the first pairing of Wilder and Pryor, who would become a well-known comedy duo. The climax of the film includes footage of an out-of-control train crashing through the wall of Union Station in Chicago.

Contents

Synopsis

Saying he "just wanted to be bored," book editor George Caldwell (Gene Wilder) travels from Los Angeles to Chicago aboard a train called the Silver Streak. As the trip begins, George meets a man who calls himself Bob Sweet (Ned Beatty) and has dinner with a woman named Hilly Burns (Jill Clayburgh) who works for Professor Schreiner, an art historian who is publicizing his new book on Rembrandt. After dinner, George and Hilly go to Hilly's room.

Meanwhile, three men kill Schreiner. A few minutes later, George momentarily sees Schreiner's body outside Hilly's window. In the morning, he sees Schreiner's photograph on the cover of his book, which Hilly has with her, and recognizes him as the dead man. George also finds an envelope inside the book.

The men who killed Schreiner are Johnson, a small man named Whiney, and a large man named Reace. When George goes to Schreiner's room, Whiney answers the door and Rease throws George off the train, but George meets an old lady who flies him to the train's next stopping point in a biplane. Back on the train, he sees Hilly dining with art dealer Roger Devereau (Patrick McGoohan). He begins to suspect her when Devereau, Whiney, and Rease enter her room with Johnson impersonating Schreiner. They apologize to him and mention "the Rembrandt letters".

Later, Sweet tells George that he is a federal agent named Stevens and that Devereau is a criminal. Whiney, Rease, and Johnson are Devereau's henchmen. According to Schreiner's book, two paintings authenticated by Devereau are forgeries. George remembers the envelope he saw inside Schreiner's book, and the two men go to Hilly's room, where they find the envelope containing letters written by Rembrandt, proving Devereau's guilt.

After this discovery, Stevens is killed and George is carried off the train by an overhanging pole after shooting Rease on the roof with a speargun. George tries to notify the local sheriff, but is forced to steal a patrol car, in which he meets small-time thief Grover T. Muldoon (Richard Pryor). Working as a team, George and Grover make their way to Kansas City to meet the train. Police are looking for George, so Grover disguises him as a flamboyant black man. Once they are on the train, Whiney knocks George unconscious and takes him and Hilly to Devereau's room. Devereau plans to kill George and Hilly, but Grover enters the room and holds Devereau at gunpoint. After a shootout, George and Grover jump off the train and are arrested and taken to the police station, where federal agent Donaldson explains that the police were trying to protect George. Donaldson orders his men to prepare for an attack on the train.

Meanwhile, Devereau burns the Rembrandt letters, and he and his henchmen prepare to escape. Once the train has stopped and the passengers have disembarked, a shootout ensues. George and Grover jump onto the train as Devereau orders an engineer to start it moving again. An agent shoots Whiney, George shoots Johnson, and Devereau shoots the engineer and places a toolbox on the accelerator pedal. Devereau is then shot by an agent and decapitated by an oncoming train.

With Devereau and his men gone, George and Grover stop the train while federal agents evacuate people from a nearby shopping mall. Following instructions from the porter, George disconnects the cars, leaving the engine to smash into the mall as people flee. Grover steals a sportscar and drives away, and George and Hilly kiss.

Featured cast

Actor Role
Gene Wilder George Caldwell
Jill Clayburgh Hilly Burns
Richard Pryor Grover Muldoon
Patrick McGoohan Roger Devereau
Ned Beatty Bob Sweet/Stevens
Ray Walston Edgar Whiney
Scatman Crothers Conductor Ralston
Clifton James Sheriff Oliver Chauncey
Richard Kiel Reace
Fred Willard Jerry Jarvis
Stefan Gierasch Professor Schreiner/Johnson
Lucille Benson Rita Babtree

Two actors from the James Bond franchise appear in this film. Clifton James appears as Sheriff Oliver Chauncey; he previously played a similar character, Sheriff J.W. Pepper, in Live and Let Die and a year later in The Man With the Golden Gun. Seven-foot-two actor Richard Kiel appears as a murderous henchman with strange-looking teeth; he would play a very similar character, Jaws, a year later in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me and two years after that in Moonraker.

Reception

  • The film grossed over $51,000,000 at the box office during its run and was well received by critics. Roger Ebert had also given the film a positive review. The film was the first collaboration between Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. Pryor was a writer on, and the original choice for "Black Bart," in the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles, which also starred Wilder. The two would later go on to make more films together: Stir Crazy, See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Another You.

Awards and honors

American Film Institute recognition

Production

Although set in the United States and on the fictional railroad "AMRoad" (loosely based on Amtrak trains), Silver Streak was shot primarily in Canada (with the exception of Union Station in Los Angeles). All exterior train shots were filmed on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in Alberta and Toronto; Amtrak reportedly backed out of the project due to disapproval of the scenes in which Caldwell accidentally bursts into Burns' bedroom while she is dressing, and the film's ending with the out-of-control train crashing through the terminal wall in Chicago.

Scenes of Midwestern U.S. landscapes appear behind train layouts and many action shots (as the protagonist and allies battle the villains on and off the train, and get thrown off or jump on and off the moving trains) to add narrative integrity to the fictional location. Most of the interior station scenes set both in Kansas City and Chicago actually show Toronto's Union Station, except for a brief sequence immediately prior to the crash where the train is rapidly approaching a bumper at the end of the line. That sequence was filmed from a Hi-Rail truck, entering the Chicago and North Western Railway's downtown Chicago terminal.

The train set was so lightly disguised as the fictional "AMRoad" that the locomotives and cars still carried their original names and numbers, along with the easily-identifiable CPR red-striped paint scheme. At the start of the climactic shootout, a CPR GM switcher is seen calmly moving cars in the background. Most of the cars are still in revenue service on VIA Rail Canada. CP 4070, the lead locomotive, is in Québec, but the second unit, CP 4067, has been scrapped.

Score and soundtrack

Even though the film dates to 1976, Henry Mancini's score was never officially released as a soundtrack before his death in 1994. When Intrada Records released a compilation in 2002, 26 years after the film's release, it became one of the Top Special Releases of 2002.

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