Silver Streak

Not at work today. My insides have been all jumbled up, my IBS is really bad (I feel like someone has opened me up and sewn in a large safe) and I've been dizzy. Fortunately that seems to have been purely down to having 4 hours sleep last night, so getting a bunch more hours after phoning in sick has been extremely beneficial. Anyway, I've taken lying on the sofa as an opportunity to watch a film I haven't seen for ages, Silver Streak.

I'd been waiting for this to come out on DVD for years, and finally I noticed a Region 1 DVD release in December last year. I picked it up, but it turned up just before Christmas so it got sidelined. At last, with my innards desperately trying to burst from my skin, I watched it today, and by God, it's still good. As well as Wilder and Pryor, Patrick McGoohan puts in a fantastic performance as the bad guy, the story is still great and the quality of the effects is top notch, given that it's 28 years old!

I remember, when much younger (the film a mere 8 years old at that point) watching it in Belgium with both French and Flemish subtitles, and loving it... I think it's one of those films that hung around in my childhood, almost certainly because of my dad's taste in films, and I've probably seen it a good ten or so times on TV, but it's not on nearly as often as it used to be. Best of all for me, it's a very nicely remastered picture, on a far better TV than we had when I was growing up, so I could appreciate the scenery much more this time, and it's ace.

I'd forgotten as well that a couple of bits of the film were pinched for the Lee Majors vehicle, The Fall Guy... but not as obviously as the episode of MacGyver that ripped off The Italian Job completely.