Friday, April 17, 2020

Terror Island's train stunt


One of the standout moments in Terror Island is the when Houdini's car races in front of moving train, clearing it by seeming inches. It's a breathtaking stunt. Now here's an item in the May 4, 1921 Boston Globe that confirms it was done for real.


For your breathtaking pleasure, here's that train stunt from Terror Island (from the Kino release).



To mark the 100th anniversary of Terror Island's wide release tomorrow, I will be joining Julie Perlin Lee at the Catalina Island Museum for a LIVE Stream chat on their Instagram at 11:30 am PDT.

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4 comments:

  1. Wow! Thanks for the post! Nowadays it would be CGI. It was all mostly real back then, except a double replaced the star. Pointless and risky to use the star in those long shots. Even Douglas Fairbanks used a stunt double in long shots for his films.

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  2. Isn’t that a great movie fact. In fact, the train stunt is reported as the best thriller in the movie.

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  3. Does anyone know what car that was in the train scene? A Bugatti possibly. But hard to tell, some similar looking cars were made.

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  4. Brilliant clip! Incredibly impressive stunt.

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