Silver Streak (1976)

On a long-distance train trip, a man finds romance but also finds himself in danger of being killed, or at least pushed off the train.

Director:

Arthur Hiller

Writer:

Colin Higgins

Stars:

Gene Wilder, Jill Clayburgh, Richard Pryor

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 1 win & 2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Gene Wilder	...	George
Jill Clayburgh	...	Hilly
Richard Pryor	...	Grover
Patrick McGoohan	...	Roger Devereau / Devereau
Ned Beatty	...	Sweet
Clifton James	...	Sheriff Chauncey
Ray Walston	...	Mr. Whiney
Stefan Gierasch	...	Professor Schreiner & Johnson
Len Birman	...	Chief
Valerie Curtin	...	Plain Jane
Lucille Benson	...	Rita Babtree
Scatman Crothers	...	Ralston
Richard Kiel	...	Reace
Fred Willard	...	Jerry Jarvis
Delos V. Smith Jr.	...	Burt (as Delos V. Smith)

Storyline

A somewhat daffy book editor on a rail trip from Los Angeles to Chicago thinks that he sees a murdered man thrown from the train. When he can find no one who will believe him, he starts doing some investigating of his own. But all that accomplishes is to get the killer after him.

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Plot Keywords:

train | love | murder | book | police | 

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Taglines:

By plane, by train, by the edge of your seat, it's the most hilarious suspense ride of your life!

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Genres:

Action | Comedy | Crime | Romance | Thriller

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Certificate:

PG

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

3 December 1976 (USA)

Also Known As:

El expreso de Chicago

Filming Locations:

Brea, California, USA

Box Office

Gross:

SEK 13,792,885 (Sweden)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Frank Yablans Presentations, Miller-Milkis Productions, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Technical Specs

Runtime:

114 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

First of two consecutive comedy thrillers written by Colin Higgins. The second released two years later was Foul Play. Higgins conceived "Silver Streak" in mid 1974 when he was traveling by train from LA to Chicago.

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Goofs

This movie is presented as being set in the United States. Towards the end of the movie, the train is about to crash into the fictional "Central Station" in Chicago. When the assistant controller, Jerry Jarvis, is running through the station looking for his boss, he stops to ask a janitor who is polishing a piece of marble clearly marked "GO Transit". GO Transit is Ontario, Canada's interregional public transit system.

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Quotes

Hilly Burns: I don't know about you, but next time I'm going to take the bus.

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Connections

Referenced in Kiss Daddy Goodnight (1987)

User Reviews

Masculinity in 1976

I saw this film in the cinema as a teenager when it came out. It was sold, I think, as a Hitchcock parody and I thought parodies were great. Gene Wilder was the star, that was one more reason for me to see it, as I had greatly enjoyed his performance in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. Stuff like that attracted me much more than movies with Robert Redford or Charles Bronson who then were the big male heroes of the screen.

Now, a good 30 years later, I watched Silver Streak a second time. It is an unusual mixture of comedy, action thriller and disaster movie. Characters like the ones played by Wilder, Clayburgh or Pryor seem to have become extinct – in the movies, I mean. They just seem to be so ... ordinary and normal and also kind hearted. Everything about Silver Streak is so unpretentious, seeing it today that really was a kind of a revelation to me.

A lot of the movie deals with masculinity and the assertion of it. It all happens in a very relaxed manner. Nothing and nobody is taken too seriously, conquests are made without effort, failure is accepted with grace. In a strange way, this movie really represents a better, unattainable world. I doubt if someone like Gene Wilder wold make it as a movie star today – the public, it seems, needs the grimaces of Jim Carrey to be amused. Pity.

Come to think of it, in France they had a movie comedian who looked very similar to Wilder. His name was Pierre Richard and his fame reached its zenith at about the same time as Wilder's before fizzling out somewhere in the eighties, when the Stallones and Schwarzeneggers took over.

Silver Streak is an entertaining and – in a positive way - forgettable movie. It has a pleasant musical score by Henry Mancini, this great eclecticist of the 20th century. The older I'm getting the more I enjoy his music and respect his enormous body of work.