Alias Smith and Jones (1971) - 118 mistakes in entire show

Plot hole: Though they often had to race off leaving everything behind, and never carried more than two small saddlebags and a thin blanket roll on their horses, Heyes and Curry somehow always had the same heavy winter coats to wear, and the same dress hats and suits to change into whenever needed. Ben Murphy called this phenomenon "our magic saddlebags."

Continuity: Harker confiscates firearms from five Devil's Hole members who are playing poker in the saloon. The sixth member is down in the tunnel, and didn't turn over his gun. Yet when the outlaws go to collect their weapons, six are given back their side-arms.

Continuity: Heyes and Curry ride out of town wearing shirts and vests. Both turn to look behind them when they hear the posse coming. As they spur their horses into a gallop, they're suddenly wearing heavy coats.

Continuity: When Miss Porter enters the office, the coffee mug on Lom's desk jumps from the blotter onto the wood surface between shots, even though no one touches it. It also reverses its orientation: the handle switches from pointing left to pointing right.

Revealing: The electric light bulb in Lom Trevors' lamp is visible. In one shot, you can even see the filament wires.

Factual error: Kyle strikes a match on the wooden floor to light the dynamite's fuse. In the early 1880s (the era in which this series is set), a portable flint-and-tinder kit was the common method of sparking a light. While "strike anywhere" matches had been invented by this time and were quite the rage in Europe (despite an alarming tendency to explode due to the volatile chemicals used), they were an unknown commodity on the American frontier until well after the turn of the century.

Continuity: When Harker rouses a sleepy Heyes and drags him to the saloon, Heyes' hair is falling over his forehead. The shot cuts, and his hair is combed back. Then he steps through the curtain to talk to Wheat, and the hair is over his forehead again.

Continuity: The Devil's Hole Gang is referred to as "seven sorry lives of crime." But there are only six of them.

Factual error: The telegram delivered to the sheriff's office is in an envelope with a machine-cut, transparent cellophane address window. This type of envelope wasn't manufactured until well into the 20th Century.

Continuity: In the saloon, Heyes and Curry are standing at the bar about four feet apart. After the deputy sheriff kicks the orchestron (a 19th C. jukebox), the camera angle reverses - and Heyes and Curry are suddenly shoulder-to-shoulder at the bar.

Continuity: Deputy Harker keeps checking his pocket watch while making his rounds. The first two times he looks at it, the watch face has Roman numerals. On his third check, it has regular numbers instead. The fourth time, the Roman numerals are back again.

Continuity: While he's working to open the safe, Heyes is wearing his coat. Then he isn't. Then he is again.

Continuity: Heyes and Curry walk into the saloon covered with trail dust from head to toe. But when they leave, Heyes' hat is spotless.

Visible crew/equipment: When Heyes and Curry leave the saloon and walk across the street, a microphone mounted on the camera rigging pops up into the shot at the bottom of the frame and follows along beside them. (This is visible in the US aired and vhs versions, but was edited out of both the BBC version and the recent dvd release.)

Plot hole: Early in the episode, the sheriff starts going through his pile of wanted posters. According to the story line, 18 days then pass. At the end, the sheriff, standing in the exact same position and wearing the same clothes, is just finishing his search through the posters.

Continuity: In his showdown match with McCreedy, Heyes deals out five cards in each row on the table. But in the next shot, there are six cards in each row.

Revealing: At Armandariz's hacienda, a power cord is peeking out from behind the large chest against the wall in the main room.

Continuity: While Heyes and Curry are guarding the gold shipment, Heyes' hat keeps changing positions on his head between takes. First it's down over his hairline, then it's pushed back, etc.

Factual error: When the train is fully boarded, the conductor waves a lamp to signal the engineer. It's supposed to be 8 pm at night, but it's suspiciously sunny on the platform - and the signal lamp is noticeably not lit.

Continuity: Heyes and Curry enter the train depot at 8 pm. It's dark outside. When they come back to the platform, it's daylight. When the train leaves, it's dark again. Midway through its 60-mile journey, there's another shot of the train in daylight, followed again by more night shots.

Continuity: When the bad guys rough up Heyes, his hair is disarrayed. But when the shot cuts, it's neatly combed again.

Continuity: Grace says she's going to Laredo. But when the stagecoach reaches its destination and she gets out, the driver says they're in El Paso.

Continuity: During the scene in the gentleman's club, Grace makes an instant costume change. When she's inside the club room, she has on a white lace dress and hat. When she and Heyes walk the drunk Sylvester out into the hall, she's wearing a bright red dress instead.

Continuity: After he's taken to the bunkhouse, Hamilton is examined and it's determined that he hit his head on the wall when he fell. But we saw him fall - through an open doorway. He never touched the wall.

Continuity: After their fight outside, Heyes and Big Jim go into the house and both pour glasses of whiskey. Heyes then places his glass on the table and surprise-punches Big Jim, who was still holding his glass. But in the next shot, Jim's glass is no longer in his hand - Heyes somehow has it and is giving it back to him.

Continuity: While the Devil's Hole Gang plays cards in the bunkhouse, Hamilton stands behind the poker table beside one of the beds. In the master shot, he's wearing a tan jacket. In every close-up, however, the jacket disappears and he's wearing a blue shirt.

Continuity: Heyes takes Clara's handbag and dumps its contents on the table. A bundled stack of bills at least an inch thick falls out. Several shots later, though, the pile of money is much thinner, about half its original size.

Visible crew/equipment: When Heyes hands Curry the money and rides away, a window behind Curry reflects several studio lights.

Continuity: Clara's long hair is a windblown mess. But when Heyes ties the blindfold at the back of her head, her hair is suddenly neatly combed. One shot later, it's unkempt again.

Continuity: At the campsite, Binford counts out 19 uncut diamonds that were "found" in the salted field. When that same stash is laid out on his desk later, there are 20 stones. And according to Heyes and Curry, there were 21.

Continuity: At the bank, we see Curry empty the jewel bag onto Binford's desk. Ten stones fall out. But in subsequent close-ups, there are twenty. Despite this, Heyes asks Binford to write a receipt for "ten little stones that sparkle and glitter a lot."

Continuity: Having borrowed the valuable uncut stones from Soapy, Heyes and Curry don't seem able to keep a very good accounting of them. Ten are sent out for evaluation, and twenty-one more are used to salt the fake diamond field. They should be returning thirty-one nuggets to Soapy at the end of the con game. Yet there are fewer than twenty diamonds on the table when Soapy empties the cloth bag.

Continuity: From one shot to the next, the six horses pulling the stagecoach change color from black to light brown and back again.

Revealing: During the stage hold-up, there are several bright white 20th Century buildings visible in the distance behind Weaver.

Continuity: The number of bad guys in Weaver's gang keeps changing. There are ten riders waiting on the ridge. All ten ride down the hill, but only five arrive at the bottom to rob the stage. Seven ride away afterward, but when they head off again to capture Heyes and Curry, there are only six. And when they surround the way station, there are again seven of them.

Continuity: Heyes is tied to a chair during the assault on the stage way station. But somehow his hair combs itself neatly back after being all over his forehead. A few shots after that, it's messy again.

Revealing: At the beginning of his trip with the TNT wagon, Curry is seen driving with a hill in the background and a road winding past rocks and green grass. Several miles into the trip, he's coaxing the team over a ridge, and when we cut to a close-up, the same road is behind him. It's the same shot, recycled from earlier in the episode.

Factual error: When Leslie, Heyes and Curry dig up the gold bars, they realistically have to use both hands to lift each one. But Heyes then fills two cloth bags with six bars each, hefts the sacks easily and slings them over his saddle. Conservatively, each of those bags would weigh 180 lbs. - he's just tossed the equivalent weight of two full-grown men over his shoulder onto the horse. For more on just how heavy gold bars are, see: http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/125Adensitygold.html

Continuity: During the stage robbery, the bandits take everyone's guns, including Heyes' and Curry's. But when they unhitch the team horses and gallop after the bad guys, Heyes and Curry have guns again.

Continuity: A wheezing Deputy Treadwell races across the street to the saloon to collect a posse. On the way, he's trying to buckle on his gun-belt, but he fumbles it and his gun falls to the ground near the hitching rail. No one picks it up, but he somehow has the gun back in his holster again when he runs out to ride away seconds later.

Continuity: Heyes and Curry have waded into the lake to recover the chest, so their pants are soaking wet up to hip level. But just a few minutes later, they're both completely dry again.

Audio problem: In the hotel room, Leslie offers her ring as a down payment to Heyes. He reaches for it and says, "May I?" But as we hear the words, his lips aren't moving.

Continuity: When they've opened the chest, Leslie pays Heyes $1500 in cash, which he's holding in his hand when the gang of robbers gallops up. In the next shot, Heyes turns and raises his hands, and the cash he was holding has disappeared.

Factual error: The dresser mirror in the saloon girl's boudoir is ringed with photos - but they're 20th Century color Polaroids.

Visible crew/equipment: Curry emerges from the pond into bright sunlight, and the distinctive shadow of the camera is visible against his white shirt.

Continuity: Heyes is shot from the right and falls from his horse, grazed on the right side of the head. When he's recovering, however, the wound has moved to the left side of his head.

Revealing: Sam, the third victim, is shot and killed while driving his wagon out of town. We see a long shot of him riding away, then we hear the rifle firing. But the camera lingers a bit too long after that - just enough for us to see the wagon continuing on its way, with a perfectly healthy Sam still at the reins.

Continuity: The rifle Curry slings to his saddle when he sets off after Jake disappears during his journey, then reappears just in time for him to use it in getting the drop on Jake.

Visible crew/equipment: When the sheriff and his deputy knock on Rachel's door and she opens it, the glass shows us a studio reflector and some of the camera crew.

Continuity: Curry kisses Michelle outside her hotel room. When the camera angle is on him, his right hand is on her shoulder. When it switches to her, his hand is instantly down at her waist.

Continuity: The part in Mr. Harlingen's hair changes sides several times while he's examining the jewels with his son.

Continuity: Curry's shaving cream is smeared over his upper lip. Then it isn't. Then it is again.

Revealing: At the end, when Christine's father enters the kitchen, the unmistakable outline of a papered-over electrical outlet is showing on the wall behind him.

Revealing: In one of the early panoramic shots of the train heading toward the mountains, there are two jet contrails in the sky at the upper right of the screen.

Factual error: For a man of the cloth, the Preacher is remarkably ignorant of one of the best-known passages of the Bible. He says that the 6th Commandment is "thou shalt not steal" and the 8th "thou shalt not kill." It's the other way around.

Continuity: Curry's string tie disappears when he and Heyes knock on Alice's hotel room door. It's back a few shots later.

Continuity: Charlie tells Alice that he buried the gold near the Mexican border. But when she looks up the location on a map, the map she's holding is of the state of Wyoming (which is nowhere near Mexico). When they go after the gold, however, they're in Joshua Tree Forest, Arizona, which is near the border.

Revealing: Alice is supposedly playing the guitar while she sings to Charlie in the jail cell. But while her fingers are moving, they aren't forming proper chords on the instrument's strings, nor does her strumming match the music we hear.

Revealing: When Heyes and Curry send the empty stagecoach off to mislead the posse, the road has several 20th Century tire tracks running across it.

Continuity: While Heyes and Curry talk to Charlie in his cell, Curry's hands change positions on the bars every time the camera angle reverses.

Factual error: Wheat refers to the hanging of real-life outlaw Black Jack Ketchum. But Ketchum was executed in 1901. Smith & Jones is set in the 1880s.

Continuity: In full shot, Curry is leaning against the courtroom wall to the right of the door. When the shot cuts to a close-up, though, he's on the left side of the door.

Continuity: When Harry tosses the cloth bag toward the well, it lands on bare ground with a few strands of straw nearby. But in long shot, it's surrounded by heaps of straw.

Continuity: Harry sets the can of red putty down on the desk in front of Heyes. When he first places it, the label is facing the camera. When the shot cuts to a wider angle, the label has rotated itself 90 degrees and is now facing Heyes.

Plot hole: Heyes convinces the deputy that they're not Heyes and Curry and rightfully pins the bank robbery on Harry, who forced him to break into the safe. But it had been previously stressed that only Heyes could have cracked that particular safe, something the governor knew. So the neatly tied-up ending doesn't really work. The governor would still know that Heyes (whose nitroglycerin method was based on a real bank robbery of the era) opened the safe.

Continuity: In the sheriff's office at the end, Heyes and Curry instantly switch positions between takes.

Revealing: The outlaws all have their hands tied behind their backs. But the one wearing glasses, apparently unaware that he's in the shot, brings both hands up to push the slipping glasses back up on his nose, then quickly puts his hands behind his back again.

Continuity: When the posse traps the bank robbers in the livery barn, the doors on both ends of the building slide shut, meeting in the middle. But in the exterior shot, as they all exit, one of the same doors that slid shut a moment before now swings open on hinges.

Continuity: All four bank robbers are herded into a cell with their hands tied behind them. When the door is locked, they're still tied. But a few shots later, without enough time for them to have untied each other, all their hands are free.

Factual error: Heyes and Curry spend months at the mine without any razors or knives. Their beards grow out - but their hair doesn't get any longer.

Audio problem: Just before Curry shoots the rattlesnake, Heyes says, "Don't anybody move." But his lips don't move when he says this.

Revealing: All the shots of the pursuing posse are "borrowed" footage, which might never have been obvious - except for the fact that one shot shows us a recognizable Heath and Nick Barkley from "The Big Valley" at the head of the pack.

Continuity: Bridget shoots ten cans off the fence with her rifle. No one goes over to put up more cans, but in the next moment, there are six more cans set up for Curry to shoot off with his revolver.

Continuity: When Heyes and Curry stop Belle's wagon, Heyes is holding his hat in his right hand. When the shot changes angles, the hat jumps instantly into his left hand.

Factual error: Heyes gives Bridget a glowing and accurate description of the Denver Palace Hotel - a landmark that wasn't built until 1892, ten years after the setting here.

Visible crew/equipment: After the street brawl, Heyes, Curry and Stokely walk away arm-in-arm and pass a man in a 20th Century short-sleeved blue shirt with a very 20th Century haircut, leaning on a piece of equipment to the right of the screen - apparently one of the film crew.

Continuity: After getting filthy in a street fight, Curry goes into the hotel and is immediately clean again.

Revealing: When Heyes rides away from the hotel in the beginning, he's passed on the street by a tall man in a white shirt riding a black horse and slouching in the saddle. When the shot cuts back to the front of the hotel, the same extra on the same horse rides by again, going in the opposite direction.

Continuity: Heyes' horse is shot out from under him by the Chiracahua, forcing him to leave it behind and ride double with Curry. But when they return to Apache Springs, Heyes is again riding the same horse that was shot earlier.

Revealing: During the saloon brawl, recycled footage causes Curry to change into his first season hat for a few shots. After the fight, he has his second season hat back on.

Continuity: In memory of their friend Seth, who died in "Smiler With a Gun," Curry grew a mustache that he kept for several months. (As a running joke, Heyes kept prodding him to get rid of it and Curry kept refusing.) Because production and air dates differed, the mustache is, without explanation, missing here. It's back in the next episode, gone again in the next, and reappears for the last time in the next, where Curry finally shaves it off.

Continuity: During the dinner, Grace is in two places at once in the background. She's at the far right end of the bar drying a glass when the camera is on Mr. Fielding. When the camera reverses angles to show Mrs. Fielding, Grace has instantly jumped to a spot at the far left end of the bar, and is still drying the same glass.

Continuity: Despite the episode title, there are only five strangers in this story. Even if you counted Caroline and Smithers, who live there and so aren't among the strangers, they'd make the total seven.

Continuity: While Curry and Heyes are panning for gold, the same shot of someone's bare arm and shoulder above the gold pan is inserted several times. But neither Heyes nor Curry is shirtless, and no one else is with them.

Continuity: Molly's hands are tied with leather straps. But when Briscoe and Sam barge into the campsite, she pulls off her blanket and stands up with her hands free. A moment later, she once again has the leather straps binding her wrists.

Factual error: Heyes burns the photo - but he shouldn't have been able to. In the 1880s, it should be printed on tin and not on paper.

Plot hole: Well within earshot of the others in the small room, Curry comments to Heyes (purely for the viewers' benefit, since Heyes already knows it) that if Lom Trevors is killed, their amnesty will go with him. This information should have blown their cover, but for some strange (and unbelievable) reason, no one wonders what he's talking about.

Continuity: Gorman's left hand is in two places at once during the card game. We see it resting on his thigh under the table. One shot later, without time for him to move, both his hands are holding his cards.

Continuity: The stage driver's hat is white when they leave town, black during the trip, and white again when they arrive at the station.

Continuity: The stagecoach station during the day and what is supposedly the same station after night are shots of two completely different buildings. The night shot is stock footage of a different set.

Continuity: Four horses pull the stagecoach. In long shots, the left lead horse has white fetlocks. A moment later, when the coach pulls into the station, the white-legged horse has moved to the leading right position.

Continuity: In the interior shot, Hayfoot walks out the door with the flag under his right arm. He then immediately emerges in the exterior shot with the flag under his left arm.

Continuity: In interior shots, the station's multi-paned window has dust and grime on all the panes. In exterior shots, as Curry talks to Lom from inside, it's apparent that there's no glass in the window at all.

Plot hole: Curry slips out of his bonds and hides in the secret cubby hole beside the fireplace, right under the four dozing outlaws' noses. But when he's found, the wooden door over the hiding place has to be pried off - very noisily. No one else was free to nail that door shut, and there's no way he could have done it from inside - at least, not without waking up the outlaws.

Continuity: When Heyes and Curry, on horseback, are arguing with Joe, the rifle in Joe's hand shifts orientation each time the camera angle reverses. It's pointing up, then down, then up again.

Continuity: Blake spies on Heyes, Curry and Louise as they sit together on the picnic blanket. But in the view through his telescopic gunsight, Louise is missing. When the shot returns to the camera's normal POV, she's sitting right between Heyes and Curry, where Blake's sight couldn't possibly have missed her.

Continuity: During the second funeral, Heyes' hair is wind-blown and disarrayed in close-ups, but neatly combed in all the full shots.

Revealing: The night scenes around the campfire are plainly shot on an indoor set and not outdoors. Phony exteriors were seldom used on this series, but L.A. had suffered a record five inches of rain that forced the crew to either shoot indoors or fall behind schedule.

Factual error: An egotistical, prissy and dishonest lawyer like Mr. Fletcher wouldn't make the mistake of allowing his name to be misspelled on his office door. It reads "Winfred Fletcher." His first name, as it's pronounced throughout the episode, is "Winford."

Continuity: Heyes and Curry are waiting at the granary at 10 p.m. at night when they hear the posse approaching. In the next two shots of the riders coming over the hill, they're under a blue sky in full daylight.

Audio problem: Final sound edits were incomplete on this episode when star Pete Duel committed suicide, so his dialogue is "looped" by another actor in several places. Though it's an excellent imitation, it is most noticeably not Duel's voice when Heyes and Curry are waiting for Harry in the opening scene, at the campfire with the Tapscotts, and when Harry tells them about the trial's outcome.

Continuity: In the opening shot, Heyes and Curry sit outside the Bannerman office pretending to read a copy of the Denver Post. In full shot, they're holding/hiding behind a single unfolded paper. When we cut to a tighter two-shot, though, each of them holds a separate newspaper.

Factual error: Heyes plays blackjack with cash instead of chips. When he bets the limit of $1000, he pushes two small stacks of coins toward the dealer. A thousand dollars in coins would have made a substantially larger stack than this. Even if they were $20 gold pieces (which they don't appear to be) the two piles would have to be comprised of 25 coins each, which they are not.

Factual error: Heyes and Curry meet Doc Holliday and Marshall Wyatt Earp in Tombstone. Wyatt, however, was never a marshall in Tombstone, though his brother Virgil was. Wyatt and Doc Holliday both left Tombstone permanently shortly after the OK Corral shootout in 1881, so wouldn't even have been there when Heyes and Curry arrived in 1883.

Continuity: When Georgette tells him she plans to become a chanteuse, Curry says he doesn't know what that is. But in an earlier episode, "Journey from San Juan," he called Michelle a chanteuse with obvious knowledge of the word's meaning.

Continuity: At the end, Heyes and Curry tie their horses to the back of the stagecoach and get aboard. In the following shot of the coach pulling away, the tied horses are no longer there.

Plot hole: In the bath house at the beginning, Heyes and Curry, who should be using their aliases, call each other by their real names several times while the proprietor, who's a stranger to them, is preparing hot water nearby. The man must not be up on "the two most successful outlaws in the history of the west," though: he doesn't race off to turn them in and collect the reward.

Factual error: A grumpy Heyes tells Georgette and Curry that he's been sleeping in a stable loft for two days without a bath or a shave. But he's completely clean-shaven: not even a hint of stubble showing.

Continuity: It's a major plot point that Big Butte's hotel has had a third floor added since the stolen diamond was hidden somewhere in its walls. But in exterior shots, the hotel has only two floors.

Factual error: The sheriff and his posse raise huge dust clouds as they gallop down the road. But the stagecoach they're chasing, with four horses and four wheels, is on the same road and isn't raising any dust at all.

Continuity: Curry takes his boots off and runs across a patch of very dusty, dirty desert. When he returns to put his boots back on, the white socks are perfectly clean with no dirt on them.

Continuity: When they meet Carlotta, Heyes steps forward to greet her wearing his hat. The shot cuts to a different camera angle, and his hat is instantly off and in his hand, without time for him to remove it.

Factual error: Clem puts the paper photo into an envelope and licks the flap to seal it. Paper photographs didn't exist in the 1880s (photos were still tin-types). Pre-cut, pre-gummed envelopes, though they'd been invented, were big-city luxuries rare-to-non-existent in the "wild" west - they were too expensive for most people (like Clem) to afford, especially in the economically depressed decades following the Civil War. You generally cut and folded your own envelopes and glued or sealing-waxed them shut.

Continuity: Due to the insertion of stock footage, Heyes and Curry ride the short distance to Clem's house on three different sets of horses.

Continuity: It's said here that Gorman took care of Heyes and Curry together when they were both 16. But in "High Lonesome Country," Heyes and Curry discuss being two years apart in age. Their wanted posters list Heyes as 29 and Curry as 27.

Continuity: Heyes and Curry both lose their hats when they jump from the riverboat into the water and swim ashore. There's no time to go back and fish the hats out, even if they could find them, but by the next episode and for the rest of the season, they somehow have the same hats back again.

Factual error: How Heyes and Curry manage to be riding the same horses they started out with after a 50-mile train ride is a mystery. The train didn't have a livestock car. Flying equines, perhaps?

Continuity: Near the end, Heyes leaves the house with his gun strapped on, but when the camera angle reverses, he's not wearing it. It's back in the next shot, though.