Sun 17 Oct 2021
My brother asked me this question, and while I remembered the scene, I couldn’t tell him in what movie or TV show it appears in. (I may even have reviewed it, which would be embarrassing, but what can you do.)
At least one of the murders in the movie, which is my recollection of where I saw it, is that a giant mirror is placed crosswise across a narrow, isolated stretch of road, so that the driver of an oncoming car would see his own headlights reflected back at him. Trying to avoid an accident, the driver of said car would swerve the only way he could, and straight down into a ravine, the bottom of which is hundreds of feet down.
Remember that one?
October 17th, 2021 at 7:37 pm
Steve,
There is a scene like this in the silent film THE MONSTER (Roland West, 1925). This film stars horror legend Lon Chaney. It’s a good movie. I don’t remember if the car goes into a ravine, though.
This film is an early “old dark house” mystery.
A similar episode is in a comic book tale, starring Black Canary. It’s “The Huntress of the Highway” (Flash Comics #92, February 1948).
Also: you might have seen a re-use of the same gimmick, in a later film. If so, I have no idea what it was!
October 17th, 2021 at 7:49 pm
I also remember that scene, but I can’t think of the movie! They used it to good effect in the James Bond movie “Goldfinger”, where Connery drove his Astin Martin into the factory brick wall.
October 18th, 2021 at 7:08 am
SECRETS OF THE FRENCH POLICE (RKO, 1932) also uses this device.
October 18th, 2021 at 10:24 am
Mike and Dan, Thanks for the suggestions. Both are worth tracking down, but I’m sure that the movie my brother and I are trying to remember isn’t anywhere nearly as old as either one. My sense is, and that’s all it is, is that ours is a black-and-white movie from the late 40s, the kind that Robert Lowery used to star in, for example.
October 18th, 2021 at 10:26 am
Paul, I’ll have to watch GOLDFINGER again. It’s been a long time. I remember lots of scenes from that movie, but not that one!
October 18th, 2021 at 4:26 pm
‘Goldfinger’ my first thought as well (though this doesn’t answer the quiz).
He’s in the legendary Aston Martin with all the gadgets, exploring one of Auric’s factories (bizarrely guarded by a little old lady with a Thompson). Bond is eluding all his pursuers, but yes a mirror is laid against the far wall of the warehouse he’s whizzing through. He’s toast. Oddjob smirks when he figures out what happened.
One of the most controversial Bond films; some fans really bristle at the way Bond ‘bumbles’ through the first half of the flick; committing error after error.
Beg pardon, just indulging myself in a little reminiscence. Those were fun movies.
October 18th, 2021 at 4:54 pm
Fireball 500 (1966), considerably less popular than Goldfinger, but this mirror sends them into a ravine.
October 19th, 2021 at 8:17 pm
A buddy of mine’s been trying to figure out a similar riddle. He repeatedly comes across a phrase in older mystery novels:
“Remote-control”.
It’s invariably used in a ‘knowing’ manner or cultural ‘in-joke’ whenever he trips over it. But it’s never explained.
His suspicion is that this phrase was associated with some play or film in the 1930s.
Then perhaps the phrase became commonplace enough to use as a droll joke in a 1940s detective novel; while the entertainment which originally introduced it faded from public memory …except as referred to in these works he’s happened to have read.
Any ideas? He’d be thrilled to have the answer.