Goofs
Anachronisms
When Reese and Friday are meeting with the drug dealers, a few of the buildings in the background were not around in the '70s, especially the Library Tower which wasn't completed until the 1990s.Share this
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Anachronisms (11) |
Audio/visual unsynchronised (3) |
Character error (4) |
Continuity (20) |
Crew or equipment visible (1) |
Factual errors (2) |
Plot holes (1) |
Revealing mistakes (8)
Anachronisms
In several shots at the beginning of the film, a building with the California Bank & Trust logo is prominent in the foreground. California Bank & Trust was established in 1998.
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A modern UPS delivery truck is visible in an alley near the beginning of the movie.
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In the disco, the DJ/Announcer uses a Shure Beta58 microphone, distinguished by the blue band around the windscreen and the grey color of the body. The Beta58 was first introduced in 1989.
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When visiting the injured boy in the hospital, one of the characters is reading a The Transformers comic book, which was first available in the 1980's.
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When Starsky and Hutch meet Huggie Bear in the alley, a cellular phone tower can be seen in the distance. Cellular phone towers did not exist in the 1970s. The FCC authorized commercial cellular service for the USA in 1982.
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When Starsky visits Willis in the hospital, the boy is watching The Jeffersons on TV in the daytime. The movie is set in 1975 according to its own internal evidence (Huggy Bear has an advance model of a 1976 car that's due to go on the market "next year"), the same year the series began its run; it couldn't have been on in the afternoons at that point in time.
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In the golf course chase scene near the end, a 1978 Mustang is seen on the road. The film is set in 1975.
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Hutch's motorcycle has a front disk brake, not available in the mid '70s.
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The Kleenex box in the hospital had a plastic liner to keep the tissue up no matter what. In the 70s, there was no plastic, and you sometimes had to dig for the next tissue.
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The singer for the band is using a 1980s Shure Beta 58 Mic.
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When Hutch wakes up in bed with the girl, he walks out past a very nice fish tank, with several fish - including a Blood Parrot Cichlid, a hybrid fish bred specifically for its color and distinctive, unusual (and unhealthy for the fish) shape, in 1986.
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Audio/visual unsynchronised
When Starsky and Hutch (and the Torino) get shot at by the Korean gunman, you can hear the cartridges from Starsky's semi-automatic pistol hit the ground as they are ejected. When Hutch fires his revolver you hear the same sound. A revolver retains cartridges in its cylinder when fired.
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When Hutch is playing the guitar, the sound coming from the guitar doesn't match the strokes made by his right hand.
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When Reese and his girlfriend are speeding away in their car as Starsky and Hutch are shooting at them, you hear her say, "What's going on?", but her mouth is not moving.
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Character error
During his speech, Reese Feldman attributes "To err is human, to forgive divine" to William Shakespeare. Huggy Bear credits the same line to God (presumably meaning the Bible). In fact, this line was written by Alexander Pope, in his "An Essay on Criticism" in the early 1700s.
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In reference to his daughter's bat mitzvah, Reese mistakenly says "bar mitzvah" a few times. A bar mitzvah is for boys.
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After Starsky drinks the coffee with cocaine in it, he then keeps sniffing and rubbing his nose after, as if he had snorted the cocaine, not taken it orally.
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"Chau" is a Chinese name, not a Korean name.
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Continuity
Also, in close-up shots of the box, the box is turned the other way, so that a generic informational panel is facing the camera. In the next shot, the nutrition facts are visible again.
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While dressed in pantomime, the eyebrows painted on Starsky's face change thickness.
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When Starsky and Hutch (and the Torino) get shot at by the Korean gunman, Hutch frantically grabs the radio mike and calls in the license plate number of the gunman's car, then hurriedly throws the mike into the Torino and pursues the gunman. Moments later, after the gunman escapes, the dispatcher radios back with the license info and we see the radio with the mike neatly hung up on the clip.
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When fighting Manetti in the locker-room, Hutch gets shaving-foam on his shoulder. Moments later, the foam has disappeared.
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When Reese's boat is leaving Starsky and Hutch in its wake near the end of the movie, the rear entrance is on the left rear side. On the next shot with him and Kitty the entrance has moved to the right rear side.
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When Starsky and Hutch are talking in the office, Hutch is drinking a cup of coffee and the cup is alternately up/down between shots.
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During a brief shot, the knife thrown by the Korean boy which gets stuck in Hutch's arm disappears, then is back again in the next shot.
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When Hutch tackles Starsky at the end of the disco dance-off, Starsky's wallet is lying on the ground over his left shoulder. When Hutch picks up the wallet, he picks it up over Starsky's right shoulder. After he tells the crowd that he is a cop, he is still holding Starky's wallet in his hand. In the next shot, the wallet is lying on the ground, over Starsky's left shoulder.
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When Huggy Bear is being caddie for Feldman, and Starsky and Hutch are in Hutch's camper/pick-up truck, Hutch's earphones disappear between shots.
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When they are in the bar, Starsky and Hutch mistake Jeff for Big Earl. Jeff then shows them his shirt, which has his name Jeff sewed into it. When Starsky grabs the shirt, in the close up he grabs it with his left hand, but in the next shot he has the shirt in his right hand.
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When Reese and Kevin are sitting on chairs near the pool, there is a blue towel behind Reese's head when Kitty sits down on him. In the next shot, the blue towel is gone.
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When Hutch takes the money out of the "Floater's" wallet, it is completely soaked. A short time later, Starsky & Hutch are examining other paper items out of the wallet, yet they are completely dry, and appear as though they have never been wet.
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When Starsky & Hutch start out of the marina parking lot before they attempt to land the Torino on the boat, you see a couple of big, black dirty areas behind the front and rear tires on the fender and quarter panel. In the shot immediately following, the black is gone and the Torino is now completely clean.
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When Starsky starts crying in the hospital, he grabs a tissue. Before he starts to cry the tissue is a different length, then it's the same again.
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In the beginning shots, when Starsky is chasing the purse snatcher, he is wearing blue and white shoes. When he jumps onto the Cadillac's convertible top, his stunt double is wearing brown or black shoes.
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After Starsky shoots the iguana, you can briefly see the case for the blank he shot is lodged in the action. In the next shot it is gone.
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While being shot at by the Korean, Hutch calls in the plate on the radio while outside the passenger door then throws the mic into the car on the seat. Then when receiving information on the radio the mic is hanging by the bracket aside the radio.
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When Starsky is running on the beach he falls and his headphones fall from his head. The batteries fly out of the headphones and land on the sand, yet they still work when Starsky puts the headphones back on.
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In the locker room, when Hutch pulls Starsky off of Manetti, his hands are on top of Starsky's shoulders. While Manetti is talking the shot changes angle, and Hutch's hands are suddenly down by Starsky's elbows.
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During the chase scenes Starsky drifts the Torino around the island of the parking lot but is stopped by the ice cream truck. The camera on the passenger side of the truck shows the car sliding right with the wheels pointed to the right, a second later you see the same as the Torino nose dives to a stop from another camera angle. But the next shot the Torino nose dives with the wheels pointed to the left.
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Crew or equipment visible
When Starsky crashes his car into the marina while trying to catch Reese, you can see when the boat is getting away that the marina is just a background, and they are swimming in a small pool.
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Factual errors
Sniffer dogs detect trace amounts of drugs that get into the air and stick to objects that have been near or in contact with drugs. If cocaine was chemically altered to "smell" differently in order to avoid sniffer dog detection, the drug would no longer be cocaine.
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Plot holes
Kevin tells the coke dealers that the German Shepherd can "detect smells that even the most advanced technology in the world cannot." With that in mind, we see the fat coke dealer smoking a cigarette who is sitting closer to the dog than the man with the "old coke" (the one that the dog attacks) thus, the dog should have caught the man with the cigarette first.
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Revealing mistakes
When the German Shepherd is attacking a man because of the "old" cocaine, you can clearly see the protective covering on the man's arm.
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In the opening of the film, Starsky is chasing the perp in his Torino with the magnetic police light attached to the roof. The light is attached over the passenger side of the car, far out of Starsky's reach since he was driving alone.
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When Starsky falls into the hallway after being hit with knives thrown by the Korean boy, the knife sticking out of his calf falls off of his leg. The blade is only an inch long.
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During the car chase on the golf course, tire tracks from previous shots can be seen.
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When Starsky gets a call saying that a body has been found in the marina he spins the car round in the other lane to head that way. You can see the original stunt practice skid marks on the road.
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In a scene where we see a gun scope aimed at one of the leads, the bullet is fired while aimed towards the drivers window of the car, with the windscreen also in the path of the bullet. But only the side window gets broken.
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(at around 1h 30 mins) When the Torino lands you can see the white paint stripe reveal just how much the front of the car is deformed in these jumps. The owner would never do this for fun as it would ruin the car each time.
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During the closing scene with the original Starsky and Hutch actors, Starsky is told about popping the clutch and jumping from 2nd to 4th gear. But, during the jump onto the boat you can clearly see that the Gran Torino has an automatic gear box due to the fact it has no clutch pedal. Just a gas pedal and large brake pedal.
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