Midnight Express

Midnight Express (1978)

7 mistakes - chronological order

(9 votes)

Visible crew/equipment: When Billy's girlfriend, Susan, visits him at the insane asylum section of the prison, just before Susan enters there is a reflection of a crew member on the left side of the screen giving the shot a ghostlike image. (01:35:15)

monimuni

Visible crew/equipment: Billy is going crazy, kicking a guy on the ground. The camera follows the action. In one scene the shadow of the operator is blatant on the left side. (01:37:00)

manthabeat

Visible crew/equipment: Towards the end of the film when Billy runs at the top of the screen towards the exit of the jail, you can see the film crew at the bottom of the screen.

Visible crew/equipment: When Billy bribes the main guard, who then drags him up to his office, the camera pulls back dramatically to reveal a crew member tracking them with a boom mic.

Continuity mistake: When Billy is taken up to that area by the guard that tries to rape him, when the door opens to go in, there is another guard on the inside that closes the door. But after Billy kills the guard, somehow that other guard is nowhere to be found - does Billy kill both guards?

Visible crew/equipment: Billy runs into a bus, narrowly missing a door closing. He looks out the window and smiles. The head of a crew member is visible reflected in the glass.

manthabeat

Revealing mistake: Watch carefully during the fight scene between Billy and Rifki, you can see the stuntmen a few times.

Tex: How much did you pay this joker? This cab driver?
Billy Hayes: Two hundred dollars. It was my last two hundred.
Tex: How much did you figure to make?
Billy Hayes: I was only gonna sell some of it to my friends. I'm not a pusher. Honest.
Tex: It beats workin'. Do you get a family back home?
Billy Hayes: Yeah, a mother, father, brother, sister in Babylon, Long Island.
Tex: It'll be tough on 'em.

More quotes from Midnight Express

Question: When Billy is walking down the steps towards the door he escapes through, the prison guard throws him the keys for the door. What would Billy have done if the prison guard didn't throw him the keys? What was his plan, or did he even have one?

dan coakley..

Chosen answer: Billy's plan was to bribe a guard to help him escape, using the money his girlfriend had smuggled to him. That plan failed, and he was almost raped by a sadistic guard. When Billy accidentally killed him, he used that as an unexpected opportunity to disguise himself in a guard uniform and walked out the front door. If he had been caught, he did not have an alternate plan and would have been severely punished, probably even executed.

raywest

Answer: Wasn't there a shelf near the door with keys on it?

Answer: He had a gun on him.

He also had most of the money in his shoe - he only offered one $100 bill to the guard and he hadn't undressed him yet.

Answer: In the book Billy escapes in a completely different way. If memory serves me he was on a work detail and escaped using heavy rain as a cover.

Actually, there was an episode of "Locked Up Abroad" where the real William Hayes told his story, and what he really did was swim off the island prison. He got to a boat, then snuck into the boat and sailed about 17 miles to shore. Then he took his shoes off to throw off any scent that the dogs would have picked up and made it across another river to Greece, and it was within a few hundred feet of the guards on the bridge separating the two countries.

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