Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: When Officer Cybil Bennett is burned alive over a roaring bonfire, we see her clothing start to smoke and the skin of her face blacken, split open and peel away from the intense heat (all of which are added digital effects, of course). Yet her blonde hair does not burn, smoke, nor even singe as her face is roasted. Her hair should have been the first thing to burn away.

Charles Austin Miller

Question: Charles amply demonstrated that he could remotely control the mind of a Russian naval officer, causing him to act against orders. However, on the beach, when they are unable to contact the American and Soviet fleets by radio, why didn't Charles simply control the minds of the naval commanders and stop the naval attack?

Charles Austin Miller

Audio problem: During the duet "Tonight You Belong to Me" on the beach, Steve Martin is strumming the ukulele out of time with the audio, and he's not making the correct chord changes on the fingerboard. You can also see his mouth bungle the lyrics, although the overdubbed audio is fine.

Charles Austin Miller

Question: Kirk and crew deliberately disclose crucial technological secrets, extend the life of a random stranger, deliver future technology to a primitive military power, abduct a cetacean biologist, and actually contribute to the extinction of a species during their brief stay in 20th Century San Francisco. Specifically: Scotty reveals the secret of Transparent Aluminum 150 years too early; McCoy arbitrarily uses 23rd Century medicine to cure a seriously ill 20th Century woman; and Kirk chooses to remove Gillian from the 20th Century. Perhaps most importantly, Chekov leaves behind a Starfleet Communicator and a Type 2 Phaser in the hands of the U.S. Navy (who would undoubtedly dissect the devices and try to exploit the technology a couple of centuries too soon). Beyond all that, Kirk and crew abduct two breeding humpback whales, one of which is pregnant, and that certainly contributes to humpback extinction in the 21st Century. Given what we think we know about disrupting linear time continuity (many instances are cited in Star Trek canon), how did Kirk and crew return to anything even resembling their own timeline after such blatant and deliberate interference in Earth history?

Charles Austin Miller

Continuity mistake: In the alien departure scene at the very end of the film, a solitary alien exits the mothership and approaches Francois Truffaut, who extends his right hand directly towards the alien and makes the Five Tones hand gesture. The camera cuts to another angle half-way through the gesture, and we see that Truffaut is now looking sharply to his right, over his extended arm, and smiling broadly at the alien as he completes the hand gesture. Apparently, Truffaut's body and extended arm pivoted 90° away from the alien mid-way through the 2-second gesture.

Charles Austin Miller

Question: Christine needs $10,000 for a dangerous seance, so she goes to the shed to gather up some items to pawn, whereupon she again encounters Lamia (as Mrs. Ganush). Christine uses her ice skate to slash a rope that conveniently drops a 100-lb blacksmith's anvil on the demon's head. After the demon vanishes, the anvil, rope and chain are seen on the floor where they fell, so it wasn't just a fantasy sequence. Why does petite little Christine Brown (or anybody, for that matter) have a 100-lb blacksmith's anvil suspended 8 feet in the air with rope and chain out in the shed?

Charles Austin Miller

Question: How is it that Dean Corso is first on the scene of so many murders, but we never see him interacting with authorities? Corso is the first to find his murdered friend Bernie, he's the first to find the body of Fargas, and he's the first to find the Baroness strangled. Did he actually flee every murder scene without contacting the police (at least to clear his name)? Or did Roman Polanski deliberately omit police investigation scenes that might derail the plot with troublesome side-tangents?

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: A young and arrogant Richard Dreyfuss thought the movie "Jaws" was going to be a flop. So, weeks before "Jaws" ever opened in theatres, Dreyfuss did television and magazine interviews in which he criticized the film and apologized in advance for his performance in it.

Charles Austin Miller

Continuity mistake: During the wedding scene, we see Mutt taking photos with a 1950s Kodak Brownie box camera. When wind blows Indy's fedora off the hat rack and up the aisle, Mutt stoops to pick up the hat, with the camera no longer in his hands. Indy snatches the hat away from Mutt as he passes, and the shot then cuts to a full view of all the wedding guests leaving the church, with Mutt in the center of the shot, still standing in the aisle the whole time. He takes out a comb and passes it through his hair, then picks up his jacket from the pew before he leaves, but the boxy Brownie camera is still nowhere to be seen. It's not in his pockets, and it's not in his jacket (the angular bulge would be more than noticeable).

Charles Austin Miller

Continuity mistake: Bryan is cornered in an Istanbul alley and engages in fierce hand-to-hand combat with Albanian gangsters. Bryan takes one of the gangsters hostage, holds a gun to the gangster's face and threatens to kill him. Another gangster doesn't even hesitate to shoot Bryan's hostage in the back multiple times, and the guy drops down dead at Bryan's feet. Bryan is frozen on the spot. Camera cuts to another Albanian gangster entering the alley, holding Lenore hostage. Camera cuts to close up of Bryan, who quickly calls his daughter Kim to warn her. Camera cuts back to a full view of the alley, and the dead guy at Bryan's feet has completely vanished.

Charles Austin Miller

Continuity mistake: Early in the movie, when the Drapes are chasing and then pass Mrs. Vernon Williams' car, they repeatedly drive past the same trees on the roadside, about six times.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: In real life, the K-19 was never nick-named "The Widowmaker," and its cursed history was entirely fictional, fabricated for the film. After the fact of the nuclear meltdown, the Soviet military actually nick-named the K-19 "Hiroshima," alluding to the first city ever destroyed by a nuclear weapon.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: There was never a mutiny aboard the real "K-19" as depicted in the film. In real life, the captain ordered all firearms to be thrown overboard, to avoid a mutiny.

Charles Austin Miller

Continuity mistake: Near the end, when Frank Langella performs the (flawed) satanic ritual, he pours a ring of gasoline and ignites it, then kneels down to pass his hands through the fire. They digitally inserted the reflection of the fire ring in his eyeglasses for about 10 seconds. Thereafter, his glasses do not reflect the flames, even after he douses himself with gasoline and self-immolates.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: While "Galaxy Quest" has, over the years, achieved cult status, and some commentators have even claimed it is better than Star Trek, the story idea for GQ seems to have originated in Star Trek fan fiction of the mid-1970s. In an anthology of fan fiction commercially released as "Star Trek: The New Voyages" (edited by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath), there is one short story titled "Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited" by Ruth Berman in which the principle actors of the original Star Trek series (William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelly) are somehow, inexplicably, transported from the film studio to the REAL starship Enterprise, where they pretend to be real Federation officers and must deal with a Klingon incursion. It's the identical main story of "Galaxy Quest," except Star Trek fans invented it more than 20 years earlier. Http://members.optusnet.com.au/virgothomas/space/trek/weirdplanet.html.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: Jerry digs up a natural gas pipeline in the backyard and jerks it so hard that a pipe coupling in Charlie's house breaks, venting natural gas into the house for about 4 seconds. Then Jerry uses a cigarette lighter to send a flame through the pipeline, exploding Charlie's house like a fire bomb, catching virtually every room in the house on fire. In reality, it would take an hour or more for vented natural gas to accumulate sufficiently to blow up a house, for one thing. For another thing, Jerry broke the gas pipeline in the backyard in order to ignite it; so, while the broken pipeline leading to Charlie's house had no gas pressure, the pressurized side of the pipeline was still in the backyard with Jerry. Meaning, Jerry himself should have been engulfed in fire as soon as he sparked a flame.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: Early in the film, Chris foils a casino shooter, steals a car, and leads police on a high-speed chase through Las Vegas. He has a psychic vision of himself being smashed into oblivion at a railroad crossing, so he knows he must accelerate to 120 mph to beat the train. The camera cuts to a head-on view of the train, and this time Chris goes flying over the crossing, just barely missing the train. Oddly, there are no barricade arms with warning lights at the railroad crossing, even though this train is screaming through an urban area. Additionally, the car is already levitated about 3 or 4 feet in the air long before it ever reaches the railroad crossing, as if it hit an invisible launch ramp. Thus, Chris makes his escape as the train blocks any further police pursuit. We then see two angles of the fleeing vehicle suddenly make a hard left turn down a side street about a block past the railroad crossing. Which is physically impossible. Given that he air-jumped the railroad crossing at 120 mph, Chris could never have slowed down enough to make a hard left turn within one block. It would require more like 10 blocks to slow down to a manageable turning speed, if he could regain control of the car.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: When the gigantic mother ship appears and sweeps over the rendezvous base at Devil's Tower, the camera cuts to look straight up at the advancing craft as it blocks out the starry night sky. Watch carefully to see some stars passing right through the leading edge of the mother ship, revealing a flaw in the traveling matte effect.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: While "The Mothman Prophecies" is a work of sensational fiction only loosely based on a few unrelated facts, it is odd that the film makers chose to actually reduce the number of people killed in the Silver Bridge collapse. In real life, 46 people lost their lives in the Ohio River that night, while only 36 were killed in the movie.

Charles Austin Miller

Other mistake: John explains to his friend Ed that, within the last two weeks since the accident, Mary has undergone brain surgery to remove the tumor in her right temporal lobe and that she is undergoing chemotherapy. This surgery alone would necessitate shaving at least half of Mary's head, and the chemotherapy would prevent her hair from growing out again for months. But, in the immediate next scene, we see John at Mary's side as she recovers in the hospital, and her red hair with natural hairline is as full and lush as in the beginning of the film.

Charles Austin Miller