Goofs

At the beginning credits, Shockley gets into his car and drives off past a Penney's department store. He then gets on a freeway and drives around town. After he stops and breaks the bottle of whiskey, the same Penney's store can be seen behind him.

He was driving aimlessly around town drinking his breakfast.

Between the time Shockley leaves Gus and the time he arrives at city hall, the amount of blood on his forehead varies considerably.

The helicopter used in the chase sequence is a Sud Aviation 341G Gazelle. But in one shot, the shadow on the ground is that of a Bell JetRanger - the camera aircraft.

When the bus approaches Josephson, his car is in the middle of the right lane. When they leave him, the car is almost over the line dividing the lanes.

In the house shootout, after the cease fire order has been given, the shooting stops. One of the officers has a handgun with the slide in the forward position. Then, without firing, in the next shot it is in the backward position.

Even though the road between Wickenburg, where the bus was stolen, and Phoenix is the US 60, the scene when Shockley is driving the bus shows them driving westbound on US 60 in Tempe which is east of downtown Phoenix. Wickenburg is northwest of Phoenix. It is not the part of US 60 one would take to get from Wickenburg to Phoenix.

If one were attempting to elude interception, one might take an alternate route. He didn't want to get stopped before he got to the courthouse to deliver his witness.

Shockley uses an oxy-acetylene cutting torch, when he should be using a welding torch (which is connected only to the acetylene tank).

He used what he had to hand. It's perfectly possible to weld with an oxy-acetylene cutting torch as long as he doesn't hit the oxy cutting lever.

In Las Vegas, the odds for a horse called "Mally No Show" keep increasing. It is revealed that there is no such horse and it is a gambling device to show that the mob is betting that Shockley will fail to get the witness to court. However, horse racing uses pari-mutuel betting. Therefore, one cannot bet that a horse will lose. In pari-mutuel betting, the odds of one horse go up because more money is bet on other horses to win.

Mally No Show is not in a horse race and the mob doesn't care about pari-mutuel betting. Exchange wagering: To lay a proposition is to place a bet predicting that an event will not happen.

Even though the route Shockley and Gus was supposedly cleared of all traffic and pedestrians, people can be seen in parking lots along the route and vehicles can be seen crossing intersections just behind them.

There were no civilians on the streets after the cops passed the bus through the first roadblock. There was traffic blocks away from the bus route due to all the cops lined up to shoot the bus and not enough left to maintain an effective perimeter cordon.

When Shockley and Gus leave on the motorcycle they go up a slight rise in terrain before turning, but the motorcycle gang had just gone the same way and the terrain was all downhill.

The bikers didn't go the same way. They went downhill. Shockley went uphill, to the right, probably because he didn't want to meet the gang. The overhead shot showed the trails converging further along.

Shockley never calls for anyone in Phoenix to come up and get him, despite that taking overall less time than his sojourn around the desert would have. And this is even after he's shown calling Phoenix several times for assistance.

One of the main points of this movie is that Ben wanted to prove he can get the job done.

At the beginning of the chase with the helicopter, there is an error with its shadow. The model chasing Ben and Gus on their motorbike is a Gazelle with a bubble canopy. In some shots, it is clear see that the shadow is from another helicopter, a Bell Jet Ranger, which likely is the one used to film this sequence.

From the outside, the windshield on the driver's side is riddled with bullets but from the inside only one hole is visible although the metal sheeting extends almost the width of that windshield.

When the constable's car swerves wildly and almost goes out of control, the sunglasses case and citation book on the dashboard never move.

When the bus stops on the steps of the courthouse, someone is visible in the right front part of the bus, hiding below the window that has just fallen out. This is the unprotected side of the front of the bus, where nobody could have survived the onslaught.

Even after the police stop firing at the bus, it still gets hit several times.

When the blue car explodes, with many separate detonations, the ambulance Eastwood and Locke are in suffers no visible damage whatsoever.

When Josephson is talking to Shockley on the phone, the audio and video are slightly out of sync.

When the helicopter crashes into the power lines, the copter is obviously a shell. The lack of an engine, and the mechanism where it is tied to the power lines is clearly visible.

The engine of the chopper in the motorcycle-helicopter chase sequence was built without an engine for the crash sequence. Trivia entry that also mentions that the scene cost a quarter million dollars.

When two officers are discussing why Shockley would give them his route, they are in a police car riding past shop windows. The camera and mount are visible in the window reflections.

Even today (like it was 1977) there are only a few roads leading from Nevada into Arizona that don't cross the Colorado River. And none of them are in the direction of Phoenix. The scenes that take at "the border" between the two states could have happened in the manner shown.

When Gus Mally fires the gun towards the officers none of them move. In reality they all should have dove for cover.

Upon learning that Shockley has hijacked a bus in Wickenburg Arizona and is en route, Blakelock announces that it will be three hours before the bus arrives in Phoenix, 150 miles away. Actually, the two cities are only 66 miles apart - a distance that can easily be traveled in an hour or so.

When Shockley tells the remaining bikers to leave a motorcycle for him, he points his revolver at the bikers, but the chambers are obviously empty.

When Mally is giving directions to her house, she says, "Six blocks up, turn left, its the second house on the right." But it clearly shows them turning RIGHT and going to the FIRST house on LEFT.