29 Dec 2016

The Midnight Man (USA, 1974)

The Midnight Man (USA, 1974). Directors: Roland Kibbee & Burt Lancaster. Stars: Burt Lancaster, Susan Clark, Cameron Mitchell, Ed Lauter...

Updated June 4th, 2023 with higher-quality images, plus a new spotting.

It’s a mystery why this mystery/thriller is not better known, or considered a minor classic of the 70s. The support cast features a lot of faces I vaguely remember from various movies and TV shows of the era. Sure, it’s nothing really original, and feels a bit made-for-TV except for the profanity and weird stuff, but it’s a complicated mystery and entertaining.

There’s a scene in some dive bar with Catherine Bach in her debut role (she would later stop traffic as Daisy Duke in the Dukes of Hazzard TV show). She selects a tune in the juke box next to a Loop the Loop (Bally, 1966) pinball machine...
[When I first made this post, it had taken me quite some time to identify this machine, but with higher-quality images, one can simply read the title off the backglass!]


When she turns around, with the newer wider-screen image, one can now see a bit of another machine, which is a Ship-Mates (Gottlieb, 1964)...


The jukebox looks like a model UPC-100 made by United between 1960-1961.




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