Best thriller movie plot holes of 1987

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The Living Daylights picture

Plot hole: Necros had absolutely no way of knowing that Bond and Saunders had arranged to meet at the café when they did and wouldn't have had anywhere near enough time to track them down and set up his elaborate booby trap. Saunders only suggested the meeting place and time a few hours earlier, and it was kept strictly between him and Bond. The scene in Tangier, where Whittaker tells Necros to kill another British agent, takes place on the same day Bond arrived in Vienna; meaning that Necros got from Tangier to Vienna (a 5-hour plus flight), tracked down Saunders, acquired the materials to booby trap the café doors (or had planned this ahead of time - unlikely), and set the trap up well in advance of him and Bond getting to the fairground. There was nowhere near enough time for all of that to happen without Necros having psychic knowledge of Saunders' movements.

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The Fourth Protocol picture

Plot hole: Explosions are very predicable and leave very clear traces after detonation, and the precise epicentre of a small nuclear explosion could be established within a few meters. Experts from the United States military could show that the nuclear explosion originated outside the airbase, and the evidence they could show (aerial photographs, etc) would be irrefutable. They could even invite their counterparts in the Russian military to see for themselves. The only way Petrofsky's plan could have worked would be if he could somehow get the bomb inside the perimeter of the airbase - not a terribly likely proposition.

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Suggested correction: The plan was to claim that a USAF fighter bomber carrying an unstable nuclear warhead had crashed while on approach to the airbase, causing the explosion.

What plan? This plot twist is not mentioned anywhere in the film or the book. The posting is absolutely correct.

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The Running Man picture

Plot hole: In the unedited video footage of the helicopter incident shown to the crowd, the last shot of Arnie getting knocked out is seen from his perspective and as such could never have been filmed by any camera.

Gavin Jackson

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Beverly Hills Cop II picture

Plot hole: Cain's hitman asks for a match to lit his cigar. Cain gives him the matchbook. When Axel later tests the matchbook for fingerprints, there is only one on it - Cain's. The hitman's fingerprint ought to be on it too.

Jacob La Cour

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Lethal Weapon picture

Plot hole: One of the children is a witness that saw the man that planted the bomb in Dixie's house. He is said by a policeman to have been playing 'under the porch' and was close enough to make-out the Special Forces tatoo on the bomber's arm. Problem is, Dixie's house had no porch of any kind, and any other home's porch would've placed him too far to see such a small tatoo so confidently. (00:57:40)

johnrosa

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Suggested correction: The rear of Dixie's house is never shown. The house could conceivably have a back porch the kid could have been playing under and the killer could have used the back door.

BaconIsMyBFF

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A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors picture

Plot hole: The TV-watching girl is killed when Freddy shoves her face first into a TV set. (one of the more creative movie deaths.) But the thing is, all the other deaths have been set up to look like suicides if not accidents - this one was obviously foul play, since there's no way she could have launched herself into the glass of a TV screen hard enough to break it. We see that her body is found this way, but they make no inquiry.

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Suggested correction: Not all of the deaths were meant to be suicidal; Phillip and Kirsten were the only exceptions. When Will and Taryn were killed, it was in the dream when they wanted to help Kirsten but nobody was there to witness it and it was much later in the film. Also when Joey was caught by Freddy, he was only passed out but still alive. The one kid that cut his eyelids off was not only never shown but his death happened by his own doings out of fear for Freddy.

It doesn't matter if Jennifer's death wasn't intended to look like a suicide - she is in a locked ward and was the victim of a homicide. Yet there's no investigation.

Why would there be an investigation? Especially when she was the only one in the room - apart from Freddy - or maybe there were cameras there?

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Angel Heart picture

Plot hole: When Angel comes back to the doctor's home with food, he opens the bedroom door and turns on the light in that room. The lights are already on outside this room when we see him turn the doorknob. When Angel leaves, he leaves the light on in the bedroom and heads downstairs. Just before leaving out the front door, he turns off the light switch nearby. The shots changes to show the doc's body and the room going dark- as if Angel is still in the bedroom and turned off that light. (00:23:10)

johnrosa

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The Princess Bride picture

Plot hole: In the scene where Westley is tortured to extremity, he screams, and upon hearing him scream, Inigo is instantly able to identify Westley and that he is in love with someone about to marry. You could say Fezzik told him, but how did Fezzik know? For all they knew, he was just a pirate after a prize.

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Jaws 4 picture

Plot hole: Why does the shark EXPLODE when it gets stabbed by the boat in the end? It had a transmitter of electromagnetic energy designed to shock it rammed down its throat, nothing that would explode like that.

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Robocop picture

Plot hole: When Murphy is in the changeroom at the station, he learns that an officer has just died and that his funeral (according to the captain) would be the next day. There's simply no way a funeral can take place one day after someone's death. All the planning, prep work and getting the body released to the funeral home would take about a week...plus many other things. Simply cannot be done.

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Fatal Attraction picture

Plot hole: In the kitchen, when Michael Douglas is preparing the hot water for the tea just before the final bathroom fight, there is a shot of him looking up at the ceiling and noticing the leaking water (obviously from the overflowing bathtub). But, he turns back toward the stove and continues to prepare the tea, instead of having an immediate reaction that something is wrong. It is not until the teapot whistles, and his wife screams, that he realizes something is wrong. He should have run up stairs as soon as he noticed the water leaking from the ceiling.

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House of Games picture

Plot hole: After Margaret kills Mike at the end, she leaves through the door that is right next to his corpse, leaving her fingerprints on it, since she is not wearing any gloves. Under these circumstances, the police surely would have done some forensic investigation and dusted the doorknob for prints, which would lead back to her. Considering Margaret moved up from being a psychiatrist to a lively con criminal, you'd think it would occur to her to clean up a little bit, but she gets a happy ending.

Movielover1996

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Suggested correction: As she tells Mike, she's out of control. I don't think she planned to kill him, but he goads her into it by telling her she really hadn't learned anything and he played her. THAT was the point she learned the lesson. She took the risk and killed him. The doorknob fingerprints were a risk, but not much of one since a lot of people probably used that door before the police got there.

As for many people using the door after the murder, probably only one person might have used it if they opened it from the hallway side, only touching the hall side knob. That person would have immediately seen the body and called the police. Anyone on the baggage handling side wouldn't have touched the doorknob. Still, Margaret is not in much peril from fingerprints, since we are led to believe she has always been a "good person" who would probably never have had her fingerprints taken.

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Predator picture

Plot hole: After Blaine gets killed and the group hose down the forest, Poncho goes and checks for the enemy. He comes back and says he didn't find tracks or blood "We hit NOTHINGGG." Now, while he would be looking for red blood, he certainly should have noticed at least the glowing Predator blood (made from glow stick fluid - widely used by the military and public alike at the time) easily visible on the large leaf, and deduced that came from something - perhaps the enemy soldier had a glow stick.

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StageFright picture

Plot hole: There's no way Irving Wallace could've snuck out of the asylum without somebody noticing him.

Rob245

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Assassination picture

Plot hole: Senator Bunsen is introduced in the film as the President's Chief of Staff. As such, he would no longer be a sitting senator, and although he might be addressed as such, the newspaper lamenting his death would display his current title, not "Senator".

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R.O.T.O.R. picture

Plot hole: Considering everything seen in the film is supposed to be told as a flashback through the narration of the Coldyron it's never explained how the conversation between the couple could even be in the film, since Coldyron wasn't a witness to it.

jbrbbt

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