Roller Coaster! movie

[DBru]

In the 1977 film Roller Coaster!, in the opening scene, the bomber blow up a section of track on the park's wooden roller coaster. As the train maneuvered this it fell from the tracks, squishing riders on the coaster. My questions are:

 

How did they do this?

 

Was anyone injured during the making of the movie?

 

Could this actually happen?

 

 

It all just creeps me out to think about it........

[texcoaster]

re: How did they do this?

 

Look carefully, and you'll see that all of the "bodies" in the crash scene are dummies. The second or two of footage that shows the car toppling over and crushing the riders was actually cut from the re-release and from the VHS version.

When the film was shown at PKD for ACE's convention, the original version was used. During the crash, when the car crushed the riders, lots of cheers went up. I had to quickly explain to some horrified first-time viewers that they were cheering for the park getting the original version, NOT for the idea that people were killed on a coaster!

 

Re: Was anyone injured?

 

I think I remember hearing that a few people were injured, but I believe they were on the ground in that scene and were hit by flying stuff.

 

Re: Could this really happen?

 

VERY unlikely. In the film, the Young Man places the explosive device under the lip of the track, where it would never stick due to the grease on the track AND the train's upstops would've knocked it off on the first test run of the morning.

 

Even if someone were able to blow up a rail on the track, it's highly unlikely that the cars would fling themselves spectacularly off into the air like that. They would be much more likely to grind to a halt with much damage to the train's chassis and perhaps a loss of some wheels.

 

Still, that scene gives me the heebie-jeebies every time I see it.

[Wes]

Everything you see in movies is 100% real.

[Goliath513]

^ Nice one Wes. That means the Final Destination 3 crash also happened.

[DBru]

Hey, that is TOTALLY different............well, to me it is anyway.

[Axman]

The crash scene from Rollercoaster scared the crap out of me. No wonder Ocean View shut down.

[Simon Baynham]

Hi TPR Members

 

I have a copy of 'American Cinematographer' magazine from 1977 that covers the making of RollerCoaster in length.

 

Despite extensive planning, during the Ocean View 'Rocket' scene when the coaster car collides with a balsa-wood structure, two stunt persons (men) overshot the carefully-prepared safety area resulting in one of them suffering a broken pelvis.

 

Simon

[haiderodes]

^ Nice one Wes. That means the Final Destination 3 crash also happened.

 

Dude....my roommate is conviced Manhattan Express is the Final Destination roller coaster, you know life immitating art. It lost a tension rod a couple nights ago, they closed a portion of the strip and had a lift out in front of the hotel fixing it.

 

Not that its the first time its happened, when it first opened, it was popping those every other week!

[WillMontu]

Coaster trains/cars never come off the track...unless it's a Morgan ride, though there was a TOGO Death Machine in Japan that lived up to its name earlier this year.

[DBru]

When did a Morgan coaster come off the tracks? Or were you being sarcastic.....? lol.

 

But back to the topic.... did they actually have the train come off of the track?