Goofs for
On the Beach (1959) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: Mary points out to Peter that if he needs to get into Melbourne by 11:00 for his appointment with Admiral Bridie, he'd better hurry. By the clock on Admiral Bridie's office wall, Peter clearly arrives for his 11:00 appointment at 10:05.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the submarine is in San Diego it is broad daylight. Someone says that the time in Melbourne is 15:00. (3 PM). Since San Diego time is either five or seven hours later (depending on the time of year and allowing for daylight saving), it should already be dark in San Diego.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the Sawfish is in San Francisco, the periscope camera focuses in on the Ferry Building, showing 'Port of San Francisco' and clock. The clock says approx 8:10 am. That it is morning is true because the sun is shining on the ferry building and clock - both face east. However Capt. Dwight Towers says that it will be dark in an hour. That cannot be true if it is 8 am.
  
  

• Continuity: (1:15:00) The submarine shown cruising under the Golden Gate Bridge is not the same vessel used in the rest of the film; the sail is different and hull shorter.
  
  
• Continuity: Party for Dwight in Frankston. Mary returns to the room with a plate of snacks. Being upset by the discussion about the war, in the close up she is focused on something to the left of her. The following wide shot of the room is presenting her in an attitude towards the middle to right side of her position. Her hair seems to be flatter or even moister.
  
  
• Factual errors: Farm in Harkaway. Dwight returns to Moira, Julian rolls in in the Monza. Being August in Victoria the sun is too steep. Must have been filmed on a summer day.
  
  
• Continuity: Phillip Island Grand Prix. The crash of car no. 31 (Roadster). He spins sidewards, the front wheels clearly point to the left. The set-up for the stunt crash presents the car with front wheels pointing to the right, the driver (dummy) slumped to the left, while the left side is already on fire. Possibly a cable to trigger an explosive device is covered over with a very dark, therefore clearly visible, strip of asphalt.
  
  
• Factual errors: The Sawfish is supposed to be a nuclear submarine, but as there were actually very few actual nuclear submarines in service at the time of filming, a 'Tench' class submarine was used in filming, and in several scenes you can see the exhaust from the diesel engines.
  
  
• Plot holes: When the film begins, it is, according to the calendar on the Holmes's wall, January 1964, and later that day, when Peter asks Admiral Bridie how long they have until the radiation arrives in Melbourne, the Admiral replies "about five months" - which would mean sometime in June. Yet later, when Julian tells Moira he's going to enter the auto race, he says it'll be held on "the 6th of August" - by which time, according to what was said at the start of the film , they would have all been dead for two months.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the very last shot of Dwight, upon the bridge of his submarine just before he disappears below, it is clear the sub is not moving under power but is instead just drifting in the bay, as no wake is visible and the vessel is making no forward movement.
  
  
• Continuity: When the sub visits San Francisco, the trees are still in full foliage, even though all human life had been extinguished by nuclear radiation over the previous months. By that time, the trees should have already been denuded from the effects of the radiation.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The periscope views of San Francisco show several sea gulls flying overhead when presumably all life is gone, and inadvertently shows a police squad car blocking a side road with its flashers on undoubtedly to keep side street traffic off the main street in the shot. In a close-up periscope view now only the top of the car can be seen, the flashers out of view behind the rise in the intervening hill.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the initial scenes in the film, Gregory Peck gives the order: "Open Main Induction". Sine the boat was still submerged at the time and no order to "raise the snorkel mast" was given, this action would have resulted in a serious flooding situation.
  
  
• Plot holes: At the very beginning of the film, a radio announcer is heard reporting that no life survives anywhere but Australia. Later Admiral Bridie suggests that it might be possible for life to continue in Antarctica, indicating that that continent is also not yet affected by radiation. In any event, the basic premise - that Australia would still harbor life while every other site on the globe has been destroyed or rendered lifeless - including, among other places, New Zealand, farther south and much less of a target than Australia would be - is illogical and physically a virtual impossibility. (By contrast, in the novel the entire Southern Hemisphere is untouched by the atomic war itself, though the radioactivity gradually drifts southward.)
  
  
• Plot holes: The time line in the film concerning the shortage of oil is contradictory and makes no sense. The Melbourne street scene near the beginning shows an apparently long-abandoned car, with everyone else riding horses or horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles or the electric tram - a scene that only makes sense had the oil shortage been of long-standing, since most people could not obtain horses so quickly. But according to the radio report heard a short time earlier the atomic war had just ended, so there should still be much normal traffic on the roads before oil and gasoline supplies disappeared. On the other hand, as Peter enters the Naval building Admiral Bridie is telling Osgood that he has just seen the report stating that all oil comes from the Northern Hemisphere. It makes no sense that Bridie would only then be reading such a report if oil had by then become so unavailable that all automobile traffic had already ceased.
  
  
• Continuity: As has been pointed out in another "Goof", Peter's appointment with Admiral Bridie is for 11:00, yet when he enters Bridie's office the clock on the wall reads 10:04. In addition to this error, throughout Peter's meeting with the Admiral, followed by the Admiral's subsequent exchange with Osgood, the time on the clock never changes from 10:04, though several minutes have elapsed.
  
  
• Continuity: When Moira picks up Dwight at the railroad station, she refers to her horse as a "mare". But as Dwight backs the horse up, he calls it "boy".
  
  
• Factual errors: Dwight tells Peter that he has to bunk him with a fellow (Julian Osborne) from "the C.S.I.R." The correct initials of the group Dwight is referring to are "C.S.I.R.O." - "Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation". "C.S.I.R." is inaccurate.
  
  
• Plot holes: All gasoline (petrol) supplies have disappeared except for official use. Where then does Moira get the gas to run her car near the end? And where do the race drivers get their fuel?
  
  
• Plot holes: At the Holmes' party, Dwight asks Moira about Julian, saying, "I take it that he's English and that he's here on some kind of scientific job", and later on, during the sub's cruise, Julian tells Peter he'd been in San Francisco "once on the way down", presumably from England. All this makes it appear that Julian has not been in Australia long and had not intended to stay before the war broke out. But why then does he appear to be friends of long standing with so many people (such as the party guests), not to mention his having had an apparently long-ended love affair with Moira?
  
  
• Plot holes: In the film, only Australia is said to still support human life after the atomic war: a nearly impossible scenario, but very definitely stated. Yet when Peter, at the beach, asks the doctor for help in getting the suicide pills, he mentions that they already have them at "Moresby and Darwin". Port Moresby is in New Guinea; therefore, if life exists only in Australia, the issue of suicide pills should never have arisen in that town.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Osborne announces Homes to the Admiral, she calls him Lieutenant Holmes using the American pronunciation, instead of the Australian "Leftenant".
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: When Fred Astaire's character is committing suicide in the garage with his racing car, suffocation would not have been possible with all the gaps between the boards and the bottom of the door even though he tried to fill it with a tarp.
  
  
• Plot holes: SPOILER: If the radio signals coming from San Diego had "started the day before yesterday", as Admiral Bridie tells Commander Towers, what had caused the Coke bottle - later discovered tugging on the window shade and resting atop the Morse key, hitting it and sending out random signals - to suddenly tip over and get caught in the window shade's pull string? The set-up is so improbable that it could only have occurred by a human hand, which would have meant that the signals should have been being transmitted for months, since the end of the war - not merely for only two days.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: The Coca-Cola in the bottle at the San Diego refinery surely would have evaporated a long time before the sub crew member found it.
  
  

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