Duel
Name of movie with all the locomotive action.Let rails know
rails@nbnet.nb.ca
The car in the movie was definitely a Plymouth Valiant, but I thought the truck was a White. Haven’t seen it in many years, so could be wrong. If the Valiant had a Slant Six with an automatic transmission, it would have had a hard time outrunning the truck (as a former owner of a Duster with a Slant Six, I should know).
The train in wise guys was a Southrn Pacific Daylight . Don’t remember the class of steam engine. The model cars that were used for the crash scene were of models of type like the live steamers you can ride on . The passenger coachs came up on E-Bay awhile back last i saw bid was up to 7k and reserve was not met.
That was SP 4449. The engineer in the film was none other than Doyle McCormack.
The Train scenes were good, but that old Peterbilt was carrying the “Mail” in some of those shots.
I had a Plymouth Valiant, slant six, auto and you are right - that car ran forever just not super fast! (My Roadrunner ran fast but not well!) Since that movie was before all the slasher movies and gore and mayhem in movies since then, it was by far the scariest movie I had seen up to then. Kind of like a recurring nightmare all in the same night!
Great movie, I have the collector’s edition on DVD.
Did anyone ever notice that on the front of the truck, they use a chunk of railroad rail for the front bumper? And yes, it was a late 50’s vintage Pete, the director took one look at the truck and picked it right away, it just looked so evil to him.
Randy
I don’t believe it was mentioned yet but, Steven Spielberg directed The Duel.
I have never seen Duel. I did get a copy of the movie, Silver Streak, with Gene Wilder. It has some terrific train scenes.
Miles
Yep, first saw “Duel” on ABC’s “Tuesday Night at the Movies” that summer or the next, can’t really remember the exact year it came on network TV. We were impressionable kids then, and after we all saw that movie, we would get on our bikes in the following days and play “dual” ourselves. We had one neighborhood kid who was our own “Kenny” (except he didn’t die every time!) who had an old 1950’s era Schwinn bike that was black, so we made him play the truck driver trying to run over us on our Stingrays. We would always end up at rather deep irrigation wasteway ditch parallel to the Norther Pacific’s Yakima Valley branch, and we would make “Kenny” re-inact that famous last scene where the truck goes over the cliff. Whoever was playing the Dennis Weaver character at the time would ride head on toward “Kenny” coming at us on his bike, and then of course jump off just as “Kenny” ran into our bike, and then the prerequisite “truck” bike would jump off into the abyss of the ditch. Sometimes “Kenny” would ride on over the “cliff” if we egged him on enough, but most often he would jump off before the old bike went over, claiming that the truck driver in the movie did the same. We would argue that point endlessly, and always watched the reshowing of the movie to see if indeed the driver did bail before cliff-fall. We finally conceded that, yes indeed, the driver bailed because you can see the driverside door flung open as the truck goes over the cliff.
Anyhow, what really would make a late summer day complete after a game of “dual” would be an NP train coming by just as we finished our re-inactment! Good times growing up in the Yakima Valley.
Yeah, there is just something about this movie that makes you want to watch it over and over. Oh yeah, the train!, duhh! Actually it’s a lot more than that. It’s a combination of a lot of different things I guess. It’s hard to explain. Anyway, I think the truck driver jumped out just before it went over the cliff.
Steven Spielberg directed The Duel, it was his first movie that he directed. He got off to a great start IMHO
In regard to Wise Guys, the locomotive was the SP Daylight . The crash was a model, but the real locomotive was piloted (engineered) by the famous Doyle McCormack, who is seen breifly during the in-cab shots.
The movie is Tough Guys and it was filmed in 84’. The train scenes were filmed at Taylor yard and on the Eagle Mt. Mine RR.
Driver never bailed in Duel. Final shots show his arm with blood dripping ont eh gear shift. Thats the scariest part of the who done it cause you never get to know who done it!
Does anyone know where the diner is / was? I am familiar with the area where the movie was filmed but the location of the diner remains a mystrey. I figgure it’s long gone.
Back around the time the movie was made, there was a story in TRAINS about the filming. One of the pictures showed the mockup that was used in the “after-crash” shots.
Hello from England. Duel is an absolute classic and my favourite film. I bought it on video a good few years ago and then found it on limited edition dvd in New York. With Espee SD’s a Peterbuilt and a Plymouth Vailiant, what more does anyone need?!! It was Spielbergs first ever film too. Mike…
Yeah in the movie he probably didn’t bail out but I think everyone is talking about the stuntman (Cary Loftin) bailing out at the end which is why the truck door is open when it goes over the cliff.
I found a website that talks about the truck: http://www.tenfourmagazine.com/feature/2004/5.html