American Graffiti (USA, 1973)

American Graffiti (USA, 1973). Director: George Lucas, Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard...

Well, I much preferred Star Wars, but the success of this film made that film possible, I guess.

Dreyfuss’ character is basically kidnapped by members of the Pharaohs gang. They go into an arcade and he distracts the owners whilst they jimmy the locks and grab the nickels and dimes from the cashboxes.

Anyway, not much to say, except that this contains an example of pinball anachronism. The movie is set in 1962, yet every machine we see was only made 3 to 9 years later.

From left to right in the still below… Wild Wild West (Gottlieb, 1969), Royal Guard  (Gottlieb, 1968), Skyrocket  (Bally, 1971), Vampire  (Bally, 1971), Buckaroo (Gottlieb, 1965)...

In the corner is a Ball Park  (Williams, 1968) bat game (not a pinball), and on the right in the frame is a crane game and a shooting game.

Skyrocket (leftmost in the following still) is of particular significance to me, since a collector friend lent me one, and I’ve played many a game on it!

As a bonus, Ron Howard was also in the TV series Happy Days (1974–1984), which I used to watch as a kid. Another case of pinball anachronism, since the series is set from about 1955 to 1965, and they’ve got a Nip-It (Bally, 1972). Heyyyyyyy...

Game over.

[Edit 2017.12.09: added better still for Happy Days]

Convoy (USA,1978)

Convoy (USA,1978).  Director: Sam Peckinpah. Starring: Kris Kristofferson, Ali MacGraw, Ernest Borgnine, Burt Young...

Even though I was in my formative years in the 70s and too young for bars, my vision of the period is that one could walk into just about any old bar or diner and there would be a pinball table or two in the corner. Well, perhaps that’s a romantic, pinball-nostalgic notion, but it’s certainly the case in this movie.

This movie was made during the time people were nuts about C.B. radios and truckers (e.g. Smokey and the Bandit and White Line Fever). It was based on a country & western song, and mythologizes truckers as the new heroes & outlaws of the day.

Early in the film, a big fight breaks out in a diner where the hero and his trucker buddies hang out, essentially kick-starting the plot, such as it is. In the background, we can spot several machines.

Here's the hero's girl, who works at the diner, walking by a few machines. On the extreme left is a Zodiac (Williams, 1971), next to a Casanova (Williams, 1966) and the one behind the guy on the extreme right is Hayburners II...

Next to some guys hanging out at the counter there’s the Hayburners II (Williams, 1968)...

It seems pool is the preferred game of skill in these parts, despite the presence of six machines in the place...

During the fight, a couple of guys get thrown across a pool table (including one of the pool player above), and we can spot, from left to right: MIBS (Gottlieb, 1969), Spin-A-Card (Gottlieb, 1969)  and Jive Time (Williams, 1970)...

Luckily, despite all the chaos and smashing of chairs and bottles and people, it appears that no pinball machines were harmed during the brawl!

Game over.

They Drive By Night (USA, 1940)

They Drive By Night (USA, 1940). Director: Raoul Walsh. Starring: George Raft, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino...

When I first started pinballspotting, this is one movie that came to mind immediately. I’ve seen it many times since first getting into the 1930-40s black & white Warner Bros. classics back on late-night TV in the early 80s.

However, I hesitated to post it because of the two machines spotted, I can still only identify one of them despite a good view of the cabinet and part of the playfield. But this one is interesting because it’s quite an old film.

The machines spotted in this movie are flipperless; flippers only appeared in late 1947. So the player launched the ball, and tried to shake the machine just enough to influence where it would go and avoid tilting.

A minor character, played by Roscoe Karns, is seen playing pinball in two comedic scenes. Rather than shake the machine, he (and an onlooker) jerk and contort their bodies trying to influence the ball. Here’s the first scene in a truck stop diner, with the table whose cabinet appears to be a Rink (Genco Manufacturing Co., 1939) [Note: it doesn’t match the photos on ipdb, but it does in this one on photoseeum]...

There are shots of the ball moving on the playfield, which are hilarious because it moves unnaturally and is so obviously done with a magnet underneath. The playfield turns out to be from a Ricochet (Stoner Manufacturing Co., 1937), but the cabinet and backbox of that table do not match what we see in the other shots…

In the second scene, he plays a Big Six (J. H. Keeney and Company Inc., 1939)...

He’s on his last game, and will finally be able to go back to his job, but then is dismayed when he wins 58 free games and will never get out of there. In the background, we can see someone playing the Rink/Ricochet machine from the first scene...

Payout.

Heavy Traffic (USA, 1973)

Heavy Traffic (USA, 1973). Director: Ralph Bakshi. Starring: Joseph Kaufmann, Beverly Hope Atkinson, Frank DeKova...

The very first frame of this film is a shot of a quarter being dropped into a pinball machine… apparently Bakshi often played pinball, and seems to use it as a metaphor for life in a big city. Indeed the various characters bounce around the streets and off each other crazily.

A lot of the live action shots of pinball playing have been processed somehow to alter the colors (my experimental filmmaker friends could not identify the exact technique used). Here are a couple of example stills of that with a Time Tunnel (Bally, 1972) machine (but it could also be Space Time, which is the same game but with different number of players… the backglass is never shown, so there is no way to tell)...

 There is also a composite shot involving color-altered ladies panning across the score reel of a Travel Time (Williams, 1973)...

The film mixes animation and live action. Michael, the main character of the film appears in both animated and live action incarnations. In part of his off-camera narration, he repeats “Tilt City, Pinball Alley. Blinkin’ lights, shot to Hell, fuck it all!” a couple of times. He can be seen in an arcade playing a pretty beat up Foto Finish (Gottlieb, 1961)...

In a climactic scene, Michael’s frustrations mount to the point where he tilts the poor machine in a major way...

TILT.

Boy meets girl (France, 1984)

Boy meets girl (France, 1984). Director: Leos Carax,  Starring: Denis Lavant, Mireille Perrier, Carroll Brooks.

Carax’ wonderful debut film set in Paris features a couple of nice pinball scenes… the first being a group of identically-dressed Asians playing Rocky (Gottlieb, 1982) and Spectrum (Bally, 1982). Then along comes a repair guy who opens up the latter machine and the camera zooms in, leaving us to contemplate the blinking lights, which look great in black and white...

A second scene involves the main character sharing a game of a French-speaking Black Hole (Gottlieb, 1981) with a stranger. They do quite badly, and the stranger who’s surely lost many a coin in the machine is so frustrated, he lifts up the machine from the front. He remarks that he’s going home to bed, but the machine isn’t even tired. In the long shot, we can spot we can spot Xenon (Bally, 1980) behind the Black Hole...

Lastly, there is a quick montage of the main character riding a subway intercut with shots of the credit display going up with the classic replay knocking sound...

Game over.