The Last Run (Fuga Sin Fin) – 1971 film

1971, it was a very good year…for films: Fiddler on the Roof, Play Misty for Me, Diamonds Are Forever and, of course, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. But like any year, there were flops including The Last Run (you’ve never heard of it, right?). We have to come clean and say we hadn’t either. However, we’re happy to have now snogged in the back row and popped some corn just to see the scene of Órgiva’s landmark Seven Eye Bridge. Many people cross the late-1890s construction before arriving in the area, probably unaware of its cinematic glory.

It made its way onto celluloid as part of this film featuring George C Scott and perhaps could have been much better had he not had frequent bust-ups with director John Huston, leading the latter to exit the film and be replaced by another director.

There are two clips online (see below) – mainly featuring car chases. With another classic film of 1971 containing a legendary car sequence – The French Connection – it was always going to be hard to match it.

In short, George C Scott plays a retired Chicago gangster hiding in a Portuguese village and tempted out of retirement to transport a very naughty man and his girlfriend across the border into Spain and onto France. But, seeing as this isn’t a film blog, we won’t bother anymore with the plot suffice to say that the New York Times in 1971 thought the film ‘somehow needs the Marx Brothers’ which is all you need to know about how good – or bad – it was.

For car buffs out there the car featured is a rare 1956 BMW 503 convertible of which fewer than 140 were made – making this perhaps the only one to appear in a film. Apparently they were sluggish which comes as no surprise judging its snail-like appearance in the film. (They now sell for well over £100,000.)

If anyone can help with the location(s) from these clips that would be great. One of them is along the coast, so could be, say, near Nerja. It kinda looks familiar but we can’t quite place our finger on where.

The first clip below features the Seven Eye Bridge with George C Scott’s car located by the bar (Venta el Puente) on the Órgiva side of it. It’s changed a little bit – for example, the steep road on the right that the fugitive scrambles up from the river is, here, a rough track. And was the bar there in 1971?

We’ve included a second clip because it looks a bit like a car chase (but hardly James Bond). It’s clearly higher up because of the snow.

Related posts:

1967: anatomy of a film – Jerez, Andalucia (part 1)

Gerald Brenan: a return to Yegen (1974 documentary)

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