Factual error: The firefighters arrive at the gas station and proceed to spray water on the fire. You cannot put out a gasoline fire with water; it requires firefighting foam. Water would only spread the fire even more.
The Birds (1963)
1 factual error
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Jessica Tandy, Rod Taylor, Suzanne Pleshette, Tippi Hedren
Continuity mistake: A blond boy in a light brown shirt is attacked by a crow and goes from having no blood on his neck to having a lot of blood smeared on his neck between shots. (01:14:10)
Mitch Brenner: Aren't those lovebirds?
Melanie Daniels: No, those are, uh, red birds.
Mitch Brenner: Oh, I thought they were strawberry finches.
Melanie Daniels: Oh, yes. We call them that, too.
Trivia: Although it lasts for only several minutes on screen, the scene where Tippi Hendren is attacked by the birds in the bedroom took seven days to film.
Question: When the birds attack the town a gas station attendant is hit by a bird and drops the gas hose he is using to fill a car. The gasoline flows down the street and under a car; a man drops a match and lights the gas causing an explosion. Why didn't the gas pump shut off when the man dropped it?
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Answer: The movie takes place in the 1960s, so presumably gas pumps worked a bit differently back then. This is also a small town and probably the gas station had not modernized. There may not have been automatic shut-offs, or if there was, it was faulty.
raywest ★
The automatic shut off is in the handle of the hose. When a person grips the handle they have to lift a levered switch to allow gas flow; the lever is spring loaded so that if it is released the gas will stop flowing. I have looked at older antique gas pumps and they are all the same; even the visible glass gravity flow ones. If that hose was dropped the the gas should have stopped flowing.
michael g