The roads of Las Vegas were closed for 5 nights to do the street shots and the crash scenes on the parking lot. Golden Nugget, Pioneer, Fremont - famous hotel and casino names were chosen as the background at downtown Las Vegas strip.
Today the side road of Fremonts is covered by a large pedestrian rooftop, the Fremont Experience. A pity for movie enthusiasts, yet certainly safer for the typical visitor. 25 years ago the area looked not really nice...requiring a new concept, which made this part from LV more attractive.
The Mach 1 entered the backlot for the alley stunt from the Golden Nugget Fremont street side.
The Alley stunt was however actually filmed in the Universal Studios in May 1971 inLos Angeles.
But Cubby Broccoli needed the car to exit the alley back into Las Vegas, so scenes were again taken in Las Vegas. The american stunt team could not do the scenes, so a french stunt team was called in, that failed. The stunt had to be filmed another time - again. Apparently for the initial stunt filming there were some errors in the shooting , as the car exits on its right 2 wheels as well versa the Golden Nugget casino.
Later it was corrected and it exits on its left 2 wheels versa the Pioneer hotel. Still it is not quite corresponding to the real locations.
On the 5th. of April the first scenes of the movie were filmed outside of Las Vegas in the desert, where Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint have that famous scorpion scene.
One week later Sean and the Mustang appeared in the first scenes in Las Vegas downtown. The filming draw some attention of the local press, especially the scene at the gas station. The News Bureau of LV sent us these nice shots and permitted its usage for ponysite.de. Thank you, Sam.
