The longest shot ever.

October 24, 2009 4:31 PM

OK, something that been bugging me for a long time: Can someone identify a foreign film/tv show from the 80's given some memories of production details?

The reason I'm thinking this is a longshot is that my entire memory of the details is from the production end, as that part of it was shot at the railroad museum where I worked for a while. I'm thinking that there might be clips somewhere that I would appear in. Here's the details of the scenes that I remember:

Our "hero", wearing ridiculous clown shoes, runs along the top of a moving train jumping from car to car. If I appear, I would be running the locomotive. The consist of cars for the train was patently ridiculous: A boxcar, gondola car, streamlined passenger car, wooden caboose, and a locomotive with the number "167" on the side.

A scene or two of gangsters with Tommy guns shooting up a wooden boxcar with a modern Norfolk and Western logo on it (The locomotive on the rght in the linked picture has it). The 'boxcar' was a fake structure built on top of a real flat car, gaffed with squibs and rigged to slowly "collapse" after absorbing enough gunfire to sink a battleship.

At least one scene of 'mobsters' lined up firing guns at the faux boxcar, and one of them discovering a trap door that the hero must have escaped through in the wreckage.

This was done for an Italian production company, there was a lot of joking about "spaghetti railroading" etc, while we were working on the project: I had the impression that it might have been a series of some kind, or a childrens (!) show over there. Time frame, early 1980's.

I'm pretty damn certain that this never showed up on the air in the US, still, with the worldwide audience here at Ask, there's just the chance that this will fire a neuron somewhere in the hive mind.

I was in a number of productions while I was at the museum, to include a few print ads and one Burt Reynolds movie, but I remember this one for the sheer amount of fun we had while doing it. I never even learned the name of the movie/show, and have been kicking myself for a long time because of that.

posted by pjern to media & arts (5 comments total)

An equally long shot, from going through IMDB -- is it this?

Can you call the museum?
posted by Madamina at 6:10 PM on October 24

Wasn't James Bond chased around a train in a clown suit in Octopussy? That came out in 1983, and you could have been watching 2nd unit shooting. And don't forget, they could have lied to you about the name of the movie so they didn't get crowds... See Blue Harvest/Return of the Jedi. A list of shooting locations for Octopussy are here.
posted by CarlRossi at 8:10 PM on October 24

Definitely *NOT* a Bond film- I got the impression that it was fairly low budget. And IIRC it wasn't a complete clown suit, just the shoes.

The museum has no records from that era- incompetent management. The annual report mentions a film shoot for an Italian company, but no one can find paper records 25 years on.

From what I can read of Madamina's link it seems close, and there may/may not have been a drug trafficking angle, since we weren't given many plot details and the dialog was in Italian.
posted by pjern at 8:19 PM on October 24

The entirety of the movie Madamina suggested is on YouTube, and while the hero does start the movie dressed as a clown (sans makeup), he doesn't have clown shoes on in later scenes. Thumbing through the videos, I'm pretty sure there are no trains in the movie.
posted by ErWenn at 8:01 PM on October 25

Wow, that's taking one for the team, ErWenn!
posted by pjern at 6:30 AM on October 26