Big Jake

Jacob McCandles rescues his grandson from the bad guys, and then they run and hide behind a bale of hay to shield them from handgun and shotgun fire. A lot of protection that would give!

As in most movies, the REO Speedwagon that goes over the cliff explodes from a gunshot to the gas tank or whatever, which is, of course, not going to happen.

Jake tells his son James, "You'll be all alone down there tonight." James replies, "No sweat."......1970's slang, in a movie set in 1909.

The duke and his two sons, along with an old Indian, are carrying a strongbox which is purported to contain ONE MILLION DOLLARS inside, for days on end, from Texas to Mexico, and the only trouble they encounter is from three thugs in Escandaro, Mexico!

When Jake's younger son Michael decides to show daddy his expertise with a rifle, he picks his target as "that tall tree over there, the edge of the small broken branch", and the Duke says, "Son, that's over 500 yards!" Michael says, "Nearer 600." There's no way the Duke could have seen that branch at 600 yards, because they clearly showed earlier in the movie that his eyesight was really bad.

After the gunfight in the hotel room where the bad guys try to steal the strongbox, the Duke returns to the room and the box is now open, revealing the contents. Sam Sharpnose says, "Shotgun blast broke the lock, Jacob." But the bad guys didn't have shotguns, they had revolvers. Michael had a shotgun, but the lock was facing away from him.

The Duke's 8-year old grandson tells the Duke that he has never fired a gun before, but when the Duke gives him the derringer, the kid cocks and fires both barrels like an old pro.

When the Duke is in the shower at the barber shop, and he shoots his shotgun through the shower door to kill the bad guy, it blows the door apart, but the bad guy doesn't even have a little blood on the front of his body after he is killed by the mighty blast.

When Michael kills the sharpshooter in the bell-tower, the man is clearly dead when he falls out of the tower, but we can hear him scream on the way down to the ground.

When "Dog" is chewing on one of the men on horseback's arms, after he lets go, the blood on the guy's arm couldn't look any more phoney.

The Duke asks his estranged wife Martha for a piece of clothing the kidnapped grandson had worn recently (for his dog to get a scent of, presumably). However, the dog wasn't used at all for tracking. Sam Sharpnose tracked the gang.

When Big Jake falls in the mud early in the movie (I think he's fighting one of his sons), his clothes are clean and dry immediately afterwards.

Whenever 'Dog' gets wet (like fording a river) his makeup runs and you can see that he is really 'Lassie'.

The scene where Jon Wayne's Son is shooting the deer at 600 yrds, he swings his rifle about 20-25 inches in about 2 seconds - by my calculations the deer must have been traveling around 250 mph.

Updated 29/5/98 by JWES