The best Las Vegas movie scenes

I mentioned this one in another thread but if ever there was a Las Vegas movie scene you would want to be a part of, it would be in this movie: X The Man With The X Ray Eyes. The Las Vegas scenes begin at about 58 minutes after the start of the movie. Watch it on YouTube below.

If you're under 40 you probably don't realize how great this movie was back in its day, and it still is.

I love the shots of travelling to LV along the I-15. The very same road sign with the mileage to Vegas and Salt Lake City is there (Im sure they updated the sign) and you can see the long stretch down the hill to Stateline Primm without seeing the casinos at Primm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJXj8...eature=related

A couple of notes about the casino: I was about 11 years old when this movie was made but I did see it in the theater when it was released. Only now, thanks to "stop action" and having been in casinos can I appreciate some of the scenes. Ray Milland applied the eye drops next to 5-cent slots. He won when playing $1 slots and those were US silver dollars of the "Peace Type" design that came out of the machine. He used the Peace Dollars (minted from 1921 to 1935) on the BJ table. Back in 1962-early 63 silver was still used in US coins and Silver Dollars were available in banks and US silver dollars were used in casino and casinos had not yet started to make their own dollar coins. Casino gaming coins came about in 1964-65 after the big run up in silver prices that led to the great "melt" of silver dollars.

I don't know if the gaming scenes were shot in an actual casino. I presume it was done in a Hollywood studio much like the show Vegas was shot in a studio made to look like a casino that sits in Culver City near LAX. By the way, the slot machines in the Culver City studio do not make any sounds. So the background noise of casino slots is dubbed in. Those actors talking in the background are only mouthing words with no actual voice used.

edited to add: I did expand the video as much as I could and even used a magnifier. It is possible that they used "slugs" of the Peace Dollar to shoot the scene but if they used slugs they were slugs of the actual Peace Dollars. So I think slugs would be unlikely.

Usually "cash" is stage money except in a controlled shoot. What you see in this movie was definitely stage money. Not only does it use a stage money design but it appears to me to be a bit larger than actual currency for a "theatrical effect."

When Ironman was shot at Caears at the craps table those were real chips.

And in the movie I just love the line "this is not gambling" when they are at the slot machine. That is exactly what I suspect Advantage Players to say, and in this movie Ray Milland is the ultimate Advantage Player!!

Man, what a creepy ending to that movie! Those slot machines look so simplistic and primitive compared to today's slots. Slots look like comic books with wild colors today. For some reason it seems that making wild, splashy colors like a scintillating kaleidoscope is all the rage in casino and lottery ticket marketing. Ever notice how colorful your casino mailers are compared to the normal bills and checks you receive? Or those scratch off lottery tickets at gas station counters and how colorful they are? (X-Ray vision would work for those too!)

About a decade ago, I owned several of those mechanical slot machines. I had to learn how to tinker with them because the gears and pulleys would always get jammed from abuse from neighborhood kids. My second wife's son brought his friends into the house to "play casino" and I had to open the machines every night to return their quarters and to unjam them. Finally decided to sell them. The novelty wore off. My favorite was a "Golden Nugget" which was black with the two golden nudes. One of the classics.

Alan: Were you ever a coin collector? I remember visiting Mandalay Bay on the south Strip about 10 years ago and they had a fabulous coin and currency collection in their vault back then. Don't know if it's still there, but I had to pay $7 to walk into this vault and there was a $40 million coin collection all around me. Highlights included two $100,000 bills on loan from the American Numismatic Association with Woodrow Wilson on the bills, a $3 million 1913 V-Nickel, and the King of Siam proof set.

I can safely say I am one of the relatively few who've seen $100,000 bills. Wild stuff. They had an orange-colored reverse.

I've been to a lot of coin shows in years past but that collection was the by far the most amazing I'd ever seen, bar none.

Yes, I did collect coins. And I once had the #1 set of Silver proof Washington quarters in the PCGS Registry. But I gave up collecting about 12 years ago and never got back into it. I covered the story about six years ago when the King of Siam set was sold to a collector here in Los Angeles. I went to the press conference and I actually held a few of the coins... but they were in PCGS "slabs" -- the plastic protective containers. What was most amazing, though, was that the deal also included the original presentation box. I guess it wouldn't be the King of Siam set without the box. LOL

There is a coin dealer in Studio City who has the ONLY "sample set" of US Currency. Its a $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500, $1000 bills all with the serial numbers 000000000. He offered to sell it to me for $25,000 about five years ago, and I regret not buying it. He had to fight the Secret Service to keep it because the government said it was illegal for him to have it, but he had documentation showing how it was released which allowed him to purchase it.

What is one of the rudest things you can say to another player in a casino?

Answer: "Are you nearly finished with this machine?"

Ray Milland says it in the movie just before we hear the other great line mouthed by every advantage player "this is not gambling!"

Other memorable casino one-liners were made at the blackjack table:

"Can't win them all darling."
To dealer: "You don't seem very worried." Dealer responds: "It's the houses money, ain't mine win or lose."
"Blackjack pays one and a half times." (Now you understand that this movie had to be made in 1963.)
"They can't stop me from winning. I'll show you how to win." (What everyone says who drinks too much, with or without xray eyes.)