Question: How exactly did they make the whole underwater fight scene work?
Top Secret! (1984)
2 questions
Directed by: David Zucker, Jim Abrahams
Starring: Val Kilmer, Peter Cushing, Jeremy Kemp, Lucy Gutteridge
Revealing mistake: When Chocolate Mousse throws the anchor with the rope attached into the air, if you watch the ground when they run away, you can see that there's suddenly a lot more rope there, revealing that it was filmed in two takes and the anchor wasn't really thrown directly above their heads. (01:11:20)
Hillary Flammond: I know a little German. He's sitting over there.
Trivia: Just in case some people don't know, most of the "German" in this movie is total gibberish. Some sentences are perfectly correct and properly spoken, as with the welcoming speech, the German soldiers and platform announces at the station, the "Ich liebe dich, mein Schatz", etc. But the learning tape, the conversations at the Culture Hall during dinner and the East Germany Anthem are just a bunch of "German-dutch sounding noises." Of course, it's even funnier to know that there are subtitles for all these with content that has nothing to do with 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.
Chosen answer: The actors were weighted down with lead plates. Oxygen tanks were kept just out of picture, and the actors used them to breathe between takes. The takes were short enough to allow the actors to hold their breath through them. The short takes were then cut together to appear as one long fight. Sound effects were added post-production.