SILVER STREAKED

SILVER STREAK (1976)
dir: Arthur Hiller

SILVER STREAKED
Cracked #143, August 1977
a: Niveres (John Severin)

Sort of Hitchcock type murder mystery with George Caldwell (Gene Wilder), a book editor boarding the Silver Streak from Los Angeles to Chicago for a wedding. Also boarding is art collector Roger Deveraux (Patrick McGoohan). The first person George meets is Bob Sweet (Ned Beatty) a hedonistic but affable vitamin salesman. As he's settling in to his compartment he meets Hilly Burns (Jill Clayburgh), personal secretary to Professor Schreiner (Stefan Gierasch), an expert on Rembrandt who has just finished a book about him. During a romantic evening between George and Hilly, he sees the dead body of the professor hanging out the window, and she assures him he's just seeing things.

The next morning George still suspects something might be wrong with the professor, so he checks up on him, only to find goons Whiney and Reace (Ray Walston, Richard Kiel) rifling through the professor's papers, and they throw him off the train. George wanders around and finally finds help. Instead of letting him use her phone, she takes him in to town, on a biplane. He's able to get to one of the Silver Streak's stops and reboard. He sees Hilly again and she's with Deveraux, who apologizes for throwing him off, and tells him it was all a misunderstanding. The professor is right there. George runs into Bob Sweet again. Bob Sweet is really an FBI agent and the situation is that the Rembrandts that Deveraux owns are forgeries, Schreiner possesses the papers that would prove it, and Deveraux and his goons are trying to get those papers. Bob needs George's help and is shot while going through a tunnel, with George caught holding a gun when the train comes back out.

George kills Reace in self-defense (he's not thrown off a second time like in this parody) and jumps off. He finds a town, tries to to the story to a sheriff, but they already know who he is and he's been framed for murder, so he steals their car and escapes. A thief named Grover (Richard Pryor) happens to be in the car, heard the whole story, and will help George in exchange for being set free. The first thing they do is ditch the cop car and steal another car to elude the police block.

George tries to get back on the Silver Streak at the next stop, but authorities are waiting for him at the station and all the newspapers have his picture. To get past them, Grover help him disguise himself as a black man (internet scolds would not be invented for another 30 years or so). He's gets back on and finds Hilly tied up, she's been going along with Deveraux under duress all along, and now he's about to kill them both. Grover shows up again pretending to be a waiter to help save them. Grover makes George jump off yet again.

George has been found by the F.B.I., who want to use him to catch Deveraux, since they've been pursuing him for years. Deveraux has now hijacked the train. The driver escapes, but Deveraux keeps the train going by keeping the pedal weighted down. He's been shot by the FBI, falls out and gets decapitated, and since he cut all emergency brakes and any way to enter the car, it's now a runaway train. George, Grover, and Hilly manage to separate the front car from the passenger cars so only the front does and it destroys Chicago's Central Station.