A hard but mediocre cop is assigned to escort a prostitute into custody from Las Vegas to Phoenix, so that she can testify in a mob trial. But a lot of people are literally betting that they won't make it into town alive.
The Gauntlet (1977) Online
In Phoenix, the alcoholic and mediocre detective Ben Shockley is assigned by the Chief Commissary Blakelock to bring the witness Gus Mally from Las Vegas for a minor trial. Shockley travels to Vegas and finds that Gus Mally is an aggressive and intelligent prostitute with a college degree and she tells him that the odds are against her showing up in court. Shockley learns that she will actually testify against a powerful mobster and the mafia is chasing them trying to kill them both. He calls Blakelock and request a police escort from Phoenix to protect them. But soon he discovers that someone is betraying him in the police department. Now, Shockley and Malley hijack a bus and Shockley welds thick steel plates and transforms the cabin in an armored bus trying to reach the Forum. But they will need to drive through a gauntlet of police officers armed with heavy weapons.
| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
 | Clint Eastwood | - | Ben Shockley |
| Sondra Locke | - | Gus Mally | |
 | Pat Hingle | - | Josephson |
 | William Prince | - | Blakelock |
 | Bill McKinney | - | Constable |
 | Michael Cavanaugh | - | Feyderspiel |
 | Carole Cook | - | Waitress |
 | Mara Corday | - | Jail Matron |
 | Doug McGrath | - | Bookie (as Douglas McGrath) |
 | Jeff Morris | - | Desk Sergeant |
| Samantha Doane | - | Biker |
 | Roy Jenson | - | Biker |
 | Dan Vadis | - | Biker |
| Carver Barnes | - | Bus Driver |
| Robert Barrett | - | Paramedic |
More than 8,000 rounds were used for the climactic shootout scene.
Steve McQueen and Barbra Streisand were tentatively cast in the lead roles, but the two did not get along due to a clash of egos.
According to a Warner Bros. executive at the time, when the movie was shown in test screenings and it reached the climax, most of the audience shouted out "Shoot at the bus tires, you idiots!"
According to the book "Clint Eastwood: Hollywood's Loner" (1992) by Michael Munn, the desert hideaway house that got shot-up cost 250,000 dollars to construct, and featured seven thousand drilled holes that were used to house explosive squibs which would be set off to simulate gunfire. A team of fifteen men worked eight hour days for a month rigging the dwelling with the squibs for a shoot-out sequence that would result in the demolition and collapses of the building. Special effects co-ordinator Chuck Gaspar said, "Needless to say, we only had once chance to film the take!". And Clint Eastwood said of the sequence that he wanted "not just an ordinary explosion...I wanted the house to collapse to the ground as though it was being eaten away by a gigantic mass of termites".
The movie's special effects team had a crew of thirty-five people and a budget of one million dollars. Special effects expert Chuck Gaspar said, at the time that the movie was made and released, that the picture involved the most challenging special effects tasks he had ever been given to that time.
Sam Peckinpah wanted to direct with Kris Kristofferson as the male lead. Walter Hill was also interested, and he too approached Kristofferson. Peckinpah and Kristofferson instead made Конвой (1978) with Ali MacGraw, whom Peckinpah considered for the female lead in The Gauntlet.
The illustration on the film's original theatrical release poster was by Frank Frazetta.
The police officers shooting at the bus in Downtown Phoenix were actual Active and Reserve Phoenix Police Officers.
The yellow passenger jet at McCarran Airport is from the now-defunct airline Hughes Airwest, a.k.a. "The Flying Banana".
The film was originally set to star Marlon Brando and Barbra Streisand. Brando subsequently withdrew and was replaced by Steve McQueen, who later dropped out.
This was the first ever "cop movie" directed by Clint Eastwood. Eastwood would go on to direct the cop movies Кровавая работа (2002), The Rookie (1990), and Sudden Impact (1983).
According to ClintEastwood.net, "At 5.5 million dollars, this was the most expensive Malpaso film to date. The special effects made up a fifth of this cost, the exploding helicopter and bullet-ridden house accounting for 250,000 dollars each".
According to 'Halliwells', "this was the first film to give a credit for first aid".
Before the film came out, Clint Eastwood predicted Sondra Locke would win an Academy Award for her performance. Locke wasn't even nominated.
The engine of the chopper in the motorcycle-helicopter chase sequence was built without an engine for the crash sequence. The scene where the helicopter gets entangled in some cables and crashes into a high-tension tower in the canyons about twenty-five miles outside Las Vegas cost 250,000 dollars. The sequence required about two dozen people to construct a 75-85 foot tower which ended up being exploded by the special effects crew.
This is the only Eastwood film in which Sondra Locke receives above-the-title billing.
Second of three cinema movies that actor Pat Hingle has made with Clint Eastwood. The other two pictures are Hang 'Em High (1968), and Sudden Impact (1983). Each picture was made in a different decade, one in the 60s, one in the 70s and one in the 80s. The pair also collaborated on an episode of Rawhide (1959) [See: Rawhide: The Book (1965)].
The entrance to the Phoenix Police Department seen twice in the first few minutes of the film is actually Phoenix Symphony Hall. The word, "Hall" can even be seen above the front doors.
One of seven collaborations of Bill McKinney and Clint Eastwood.
The rest of The Bikers were actually played by real life members of a Motorcycle Club called The Noblemen. They were from both Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. And Clint Eastwood wanted them for some of the roles of our Antagonists in the movie itself. However, they were one of the few in the Las Vegas area. Some of the real life Bikers by the names of Bear and the McHaney Brothers are still some of the original members and are still hanging about.
Except Roy Jenson, Dan Vadis, Samantha Doane (who played Wanda, one of our Antagonists in The Enforcer (1976)), Michael L. Cooley (who played a Police Detective in Stuart Rosenberg and John Huston's "Love & Bullets" (1979) and a Police Detective in Mel Damski's "The Child Stealer" (TV Movie) (1979)), Mike Mangiaruca and the beautiful Singer-Musician Marneen Fields were not any of the members of The Noblemen. They were just Actors and Actresses who played the roles of Bikers and Biker Chicks.
Shooting in the Nevada desert, Clint Eastwood happened to spot a lethal-looking but harmless King snake and tried to share his discovery with Sondra Locke, but she balked at first. "I did the typical thing of squealing and running," Sondra recalled, "but Clint said: 'Sondra, look how beautiful it is!' So I looked and it had GORGEOUS markings. Before I knew it, it was climbing all over me . . . and it seemed perfectly natural." Clint returned the King to the desert.
Despite playing the action hero, Eastwood doesn't kill anyone.
One of only three cop films made during the "Dirty Harry" era of the 1970s and 1980s in which Clint Eastwood played a police detective character who was not Inspector Harry Callahan. The other two films are Tightrope (1984) and City Heat (1984).
The building they crash in front of is not Phoenix City Hall, or a court building. It's the Phoenix Symphony Hall.
Apparently, Barbra Streisand first brought the project to the attention of Clint Eastwood. For a time, the picture was considered to be a vehicle for both of them to star team incorporating some musical numbers in it. Reportedly, according to the Feb/March edition of 'Movie News' (Australia),"the deal did not work out". Then, according to ClintEastwood.net, Eastwood bought the script off Streisand.
The movie is well known for its massive shooting firepower on a bus finale. But the film actually featured three major action set pieces involving massive amounts of gunfire fired upon three entities which were first a house, then a car, and third and finally, a coach (bus).
At one point in the film, a biker says to Clint Eastwood, "This is my bike Charlie!", to which Eastwood replies, "This is my gun Clyde!". Eastwood's next movie would be Every Which Way but Loose (1978), in which he would co-star with an orangutan character called Clyde. Clint and Clyde then re-teamed a couple of years later for Any Which Way You Can (1980).
The second of six movies made by former real-life couple Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke.
Late one night when the cast and crew were filming in downtown Phoenix, some locals were watching. Among them was a tiny man about 3 feet tall, who obviously had severe birth defects. Sondra Locke looked at him scrambling with difficulty trying to get a good view of them as they set up a shot. Sondra felt enormous compassion and said to Clint Eastwood, "Did you see that little man over there? Do you think we could give him a job, make him an extra or something? I bet he'd be so excited." "Don't look at him" came Clint's reply, "don't make eye contact."
The movie was made and released after there had been three 'Dirty Harry' pictures, the third, The Enforcer (1976), released the previous year before this film. The picture is considered an inversion of Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" screen persona where Eastwood is instead a cop who is on the receiving end of the violence. This is so most of the screen violence in the picture is directed at Eastwood instead of him being the deliverer of it. 'Allmovie' has said that the picture "sends up his Dirty Harry-ness in this 1977 cop film-action movie-romantic comedy" and Eastwood's "Ben Shockley is the opposite of Eastwood's ultra-capable loner Harry Callahan from the Dirty Harry series, allowing Eastwood to poke fun at his image...the exaggerated action set pieces also parody the Eastwood cop hero's usual invincibility".
Toward the end of the movie, the protagonists fantasize about their future and plan on starting a family. In real life, Sondra Locke and Clint Eastwood did not want kids. She had two abortions for him, and although Eastwood has sired at least eight children in various affairs over the decades, only one of those children (the daughter he fathered at age 66 with his second wife) actually lived with him.
The make and model of the coach that got shot up at the end of movie was a Kässbohrer 1962 Eagle Model 01 single-deck bus.
Bronk: The Gauntlet (1975) had a very similar scheme to the one in the film, as well as the same title. This episode was aired two years before the film was shot.
Sondra Locke's first movie to come out the same year it was made. Her two other 1977 releases, Death Game (1977) and The Shadow of Chikara (1977), were filmed in 1974 and 1976, respectively. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) was shot in 1975, The Second Coming of Suzanne (1974) in 1972, A Reflection of Fear (1972) in 1971, Willard (1971) in 1970, Cover Me Babe (1970) in 1969 and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968) in 1967.
The cave that Sondra Locke and Clint Eastwood spend overnight in is a real life landmark which is part of a group of scenic rock formations. It is known as "Hole in the Rock" and is situated in Arizona in Papago Park, Phoenix. According to Wikipedia, it "is a series of openings (tafoni) eroded in a small hill composed of bare red arkosic conglomerate sandstone. The sandstone was first formed some 6-15 million years ago, theorized to have been the accumulation of materials sliding off a much higher mountain, which, made of different materials, has long since eroded away, leaving what looks like petrified mud cakes. The tafoni are thought to have been eroded by water".
The make and model of the motor-bike that Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke ride on was an American Harley-Davidson Knucklehead.
Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke stayed at the Jockey Club during filming. The doors to the closets in their room were typical lowered slide-and-fold doors, and Clint's closet door made the mistake of sticking and all hell broke loose. He let go with language Sondra had never heard before and in the blink of an eye he had punched his entire fist right through the door, then looked sheepishly at her and began to snicker. Later at dinner someone who could read palms insisted on reading Clint's. The reader looked deeply into Clint's palm and said, "You are a very tranquil man." Clint and Sondra glanced at each other; the back of his hand was still bleeding.
Clint Eastwood's fifth film for Warner Brothers.
The sixth feature film directed by Clint Eastwood.
The nickname of Augustina Mally (Sondra Locke) was "Gus". The character is billed in the credits as Gus Malley.
In the scene where the Constable is murdered by the Arizona State Police, one of the troopers is armed with an Iver Johnson Enforcer pistol - a variant of the M1 Carbine.
Although Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke had already been living together for two years, it wasn't until after the movie came out that public rumors of an offscreen romance began. Both were married to other people for façade purposes: Eastwood since 1953 to Margaret Neville, who he reportedly was never in love with or even attracted to; Locke since 1967 to Gordon Anderson, who would later testify in court that the marriage was never consummated. Prior to their becoming an item, and during their respective marriages, Eastwood and Locke had been in several long-term but unpublicized relationships. In Eastwood's case, some of those relationships included children that have never been acknowledged in the press.
When Sondra Locke's husband Gordon Anderson and his then-boyfriend John came to visit her and Clint Eastwood in Phoenix during production, Eastwood told them how to find some local gay bar there - although Anderson had never had any interest in them.
First feature film depicting the militarization of law enforcement.
The travel route of the cross-country trip that cop Eastwood escorted witness Locke went from Las Vegas, Nevada to Phoenix, Arizona.
Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke and Pat Hingle would later appear together in Sudden Impact (1983), also directed by Eastwood.
Clint Eastwood reteamed with Sondra Locke and Bill McKinney a year after The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). The three of them would also collaborate, after this movie, on Every Which Way but Loose (1978), Any Which Way You Can (1980), and Bronco Billy (1980).
Of the cop movies Clint Eastwood made in the 1970s, this is the only one that isn't a Dirty Harry movie.
Mara Corday starred in Clint's first movie, Tarantula (though he wasn't credited because his role was so small). Then went on to do 3 more including Pink Cadillac, Sudden Impact and The Gaunlet.
Second consecutive back-to-back cop movie for Clint Eastwood, whose previous picture was The Enforcer (1976).
The nickname of Augustina Mally (Sondra Locke) was "Gus".
The "Shockley" surname of Clint Eastwood's character, Ben Shockley, had a rhyme similarity with the "Locke" last name of his co-star and former real-life partner Sondra Locke. Moreover, the "Blakelock" surname of another character in the film, Commissioner Blakelock (William Prince, also had a rhyme similarity with the "Locke" last name.
The movie featured chases, escapes and action sequences involving a variety of vehicles. These includes a car, a van, a bus, a train and a motorcycle.
Fritz Manes: Clint Eastwood's regular producing partner as a helicopter gunman. The appearance was one of seven that Manes has made in Eastwood's movies.
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