Corrected entry: When Roy starts collecting supplies to start his sculpture, he throws things through the kitchen window, breaking it. After he's done, he uses a ladder to climb through the same window, which he then slam shut behind him. It went from closed and broken to fixed and opened within a matter of frames.
JC Fernandez
16th Dec 2011
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
27th Oct 2009
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Corrected entry: At the beginning of the movie, Barry is going down the stairs to look for the aliens. He is holding a flashlight, but in the next shot his hands are empty.
Correction: You may be mistaking the lightbeams on the walls and floor as coming from Barry, but it's the aliens. In fact, it's the appearance of the lights on the walls of the stairwell that prompts Barry to investigate downstairs. At no point do you see Barry carrying a flashlight.
29th Sep 2008
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Corrected entry: When Ronnie hastily backs the car out of her driveway it smashes a Big Wheel to the opposite curb, where it comes to rest right next to the neighbor's driveway entrance. In the following shot, showing Roy getting up off the ground, the Big Wheel is a good 10-12 feet away from the driveway entrance. (01:14:25 - 01:14:55)
Correction: We never see the opposite curb when Ronnie backs out of the driveway, so there's no way to determine where the Big Wheel landed. It happens offscreen. Also, the Big Wheel is about a Big Wheel's width from the edge of the neighbor's driveway (*maybe* two feet), not 10-12 feet.
28th Sep 2008
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Corrected entry: In the scene where Roy is building the tower in his house, the TV shows Days of Our Lives, then an ABC News break. Days of Our Lives was an NBC soap.
Correction: There's a subtle time cut when the shot switches from Roy back to the TV. You can see Roy's cleaned up the beer can and casserole dish from the top of the television. If you listen carefully to the Budweiser jingle, you can hear where two different audio tracks were spliced together. So we're hearing the first part of the Budweiser ad during "Days of Our Lives"; and then the second part of the same ad, but airing on ABC.
27th Aug 2001
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Corrected entry: In the scene where the abducted Earthlings are released from the alien mothership, the pilots of the TBF/TBM Avenger torpedo bombers all give their ranks as "captain." However, a Navy captain is equivalent to an Army/Marine Corps/Air Force colonel and the pilots are way, way too young to have attained this rank. Based on the insignia on their uniforms, they were really Navy lieutenants. (02:02:45)
Correction: Actually, only one returnee (Harry Ward Craig) identifies himself as a captain and he is notably older than the others.
27th Aug 2001
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Corrected entry: When Richard Dreyfuss and his family are having breakfast, there is a milk carton from "Giant Food" on the table. "Giant Food" is a regional Washington D.C. area chain. The milk would have had to been shipped in to appear on the table. (01:01:15)
Correction: And so it was shipped. While Giant Foods is a regional mid-Atlantic grocery chain, it's also a dairy supplier to a wider area.
18th Apr 2004
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Corrected entry: When the little boy is sleeping and he gets awakened by the strong wind, his toy monkey turns on, and then his toy record player turns on and then his remote control cars turn on. If his house was hit by an electromagnetic disturbance, wouldn't ALL of his electronic toys turn on at once, instead of one toy turning on right after another?
Correction: Since the phenomenon is never explained, it can happen any way the filmmakers decide. And it's consistent throughout the movie - Roy in the car: flashlight, car and radio don't turn off/on at once; Jillian and Barry in the house: lights, vacuum, mixer, stove don't all operate at once.
1st Nov 2003
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Corrected entry: When Barry is being kidnapped by the aliens, the persons who pulls him outside the house by the dog's entrance in the door is his real mother. You can see her hands - not very alien-like.
Correction: Even by freeze framing, you can't see any hands pulling the boy, human or alien.
27th Aug 2001
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Corrected entry: In the desert at the landing site, I noticed that when the big alien ship comes and everyone screams and runs for cover, you can hear a bunch of women's voices shrieking and screaming. But there are no women there - except the one that came to get her little son, and SHE doesn't scream at all.
Correction: Only one person runs for cover and there is no screaming or shrieking (female or otherwise) when the mothership appears.
5th Oct 2004
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Corrected entry: In the scene where Roy joins the rest of the potential travelers, they all wear jumpsuit uniforms. Each suit has an American flag displayed on the right shoulder sleeve with the stars on the left upper quadrant of the flag. By tradition, this is the way the flag is displayed on the left shoulder sleeve; on the right sleeve the stars should be in the right upper quadrant to represent the way the flag would appear if the wearer was moving forward, not retreating.
Correction: There are no uniform traditions for interstellar travelers, American or otherwise.
27th Aug 2001
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Corrected entry: Only the pilots reported in and Avenger bombers also had two enlisted men as crew members: the radio operator and the ball-turret gunner.
Correction: There were at least dozens of people coming off the ship. We didn't witness everyone reporting in.
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Correction: This has already been submitted and corrected. The window over the sink is already open when Roy starts throwing shrubbery inside. It is a vase sitting by the window that falls and shatters.
JC Fernandez