pinballspotting: pinball repair

29 Dec 2016

The Hunter (USA, 1980)

The Hunter (USA, 1980). Director: Buzz Kulik. Stars: Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, Kathryn Harrold, LeVar Burton...

McQueen’s final movie. He plays Ralph ‘Papa’ Thorson, a real-life bounty hunter who wrote the book the movie was based upon. It’s got some humor in it... McQueen plays a terrible driver, going against his famous car driving skills.

Anyway, he walks into a bar looking for a bail jumper and we can spot a couple of pinball machines... a Toledo (Williams, 1975) on the left and a Royal Flush (Gottlieb, 1976) on the right:

McQueen’s walking into the bar apparently was enough of an event to warrant the man on the left’s interrupting of his game of Toledo...

The bartendress goes to warn the bail jumper (LeVar Burton), who is repairing a Gottlieb wedgehead in a back room... a Strange World (Gottlieb, 1978):

Or shall we say, attempts to repair... it becomes a running joke in the movie when LeVar’s always starting repairs of stuff... a TV, a toaster oven, etc... but never finishes them.

L'attentat (France, 1966)

L'attentat (France, 1966). Director: Jean-François Davy. Starring: Roger Sweig, Marie-Hélène Broca, Dominique Erlanger...

Thanks for Mark Loeser for mentioning this film to me whilst I was trying to amateurishly fix a bug with his pinball machine....

It’s a French “New Wave” film about a disillusioned pinball repair man who can barely make ends meet and is frustrated with society.

Wanting to get things happening with the Leftist movement, he eventually plants a bomb in a train station and rigs up a pinball machine to trigger it from a distance when it scores 500 points.

First up on his rounds, a Ship-Mates (Gottlieb, 1964)...

A pinball player says to him whilst he’s repairing a machine, “That must be a cool job”, but he replies “Yeah, it seems so in the beginning.” Then he goes on to say that “Pinball is like politics. You need reflexes and to be alert.”...

When he makes his rounds, a bartender calls him “Mr. Gottlieb”, yet at this other place, there are a couple of Williams machines... Big Chief (Williams, 1965) and a Merry Widow (Williams, 1963)...