Someone on the Turner Classic Movies Fan Site (FB) asked:
Many years ago, I saw a movie that featured multiple accidents on a deserted road, that occurred as a result of headlights from oncoming trucks. The authorities could not figure out why this kept happening until the plot revealed that a large mirror was placed in the road, which caused an unsuspecting truck driver to assume that a head on collision was imminent but he was observing the reflection of his own headlights.
Does anyone know what this movie is from? I have absolutely no idea!
I thought I’d help him out, so I googled and found this clip:
I remember a movie that had that plot point; don’t know if it’s the one that the clip is from, or what the name is.
I think it’s from a Roy Rogers or Gene Autry movie. Roy (or Gene) is tagged by the local sheriff, or DA, or maybe a governor, to go undercover and try to break up a criminal gang of some sort. The fact that he’s really an undercover agent is a closely held secret; only the DA/sheriff/governor knows it.
Roy (or Gene) is working with the gang and gets arrested at one point and charged, because the local cops don’t know he’s an undercover agent. He’s in jail, but knows he’ll get out when the DA/sheriff/governor arrives.
The bad guys are targeting the DA/Sheriff/governor. They don’t know that Roy (or Gene) is an undercover agent, but they know that the DA/sheriff/governor is trying to break up their gang.
So they set up the mirror on a road that they know the DA/sheriff/governor will be driving on, and the accident happens.
Roy (or Gene) is in the cells in the morning when the jailer brings his breakfast, and the local paper, with the death of the DA/Governor/sheriff on the front page, and Roy (or Gene) realises he’s in big trouble.
That’s all I remember. Saturday afternoon B&W movies on our local tv station when I was a kid. The reason I think it was Roy Rogers or Gene Autry is because the local station played them all one summer.
Not a cliff but this is how the bad guys cause James Bond to crash his car in Goldfinger during a chase, he plays chicken with incoming headlights until he’s forced to swerve and crash at the last second and then it’s revealed the bad guys had put a giant mirror in the middle of an alleyway.
Roy uncovers proof that Dave and Maurice are members of the gang, but decides to make no arrests until he learns the identity of the gang leader. Maurice kills Dave and frames Roy for the crime . The Governor has been injured in a car wreck and is unable to verify Roy’s story.
I think this was also used in the old Superman radio series, in a storyline called “The Ghost Car.” Cars were mysteriously crashing because they were run off the road by another car, but no one could find tire tracks or any other trace of a second vehicle. Turns out the “ghost car” was really a big mirror reflecting the car’s headlights.
The born in Canada “Yank” Bert Levy, in his 1942 manual “Guerrilla Warfare,” suggested “An ingenious wrecking ambush to be used at night” could be made by wiring one or two car headlights to a battery and setting them so they would shine “directly into the windshield of a car or lorry coming along the road” when turned on by the guerrilla while “under cover.” He advised that “This trap must be rigged just in front of a sharp turning, a steep embankment or a bridge.”
The manual was written to aid the British in the event of a successful German invasion and hundreds of thousands of copies were produced. Levy himself was a socialist who fought in the Spanish Civil War and several other conflicts.