Goofs for
The Ninth Gate (1999) More at IMDbPro »

• Crew or equipment visible: In the fight between Boris Balkan and Liana Telfer on the altar, as they are wrestling, right before they fall over you can clearly see a wire pulling the brazier down. It runs from the bottom left corner of the screen to the top of the brazier.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Dean and the woman are driving, and the sign that says St. Martin is reflected on the windshield, it is obvious that a computer generated reflection was superimposed over the windshield, because when the car turns, the reflection is jerky and unsynchronized with the car movement.
  
  
• Factual errors: Front license plates in Switzerland don't have flags on them.
  
  

• Audio/visual unsynchronized: The footsteps when Corso is walking up the stairs to meet the old woman are off by about 1/2 second. It comes back in sync shortly after he presses the buzzer.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the first quarter of the movie, when Corso is in the library, he turns to his left and you can see the mic cord beneath his shirt.
  
  
• Continuity: When Corso and the girl arrive at the castle where the convention takes place, night is falling. As Corso leaves again, chasing Balkan, only a short time afterward, there is bright sunlight.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Dean Corso meets Boris Balkin for the first time, a crewmember is reflected in the library window.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Liana Telfer smashes up a bottle on Corso's head, the sound of glass breaking comes before the bottle actually makes contact.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Obvious stunt double when Balkas knocks Corso through the floorboards of the castle (near the end of the movie).
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Obvious stunt double when Corso crosses Bleeker street en route to the rare bookstore in Manhattan.
  
  
• Errors in geography: As Corso asks the cab driver to wait while he goes to the bookstore, we see a motorcycle drive down Bleeker street. The license plate on the motorcycle are French, but Corso is in New York.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the film, the book "The Nine Gates" displays an inverted pentagram on its cover to represent it's Satanic content. However, the inverted pentagram only became associated with Satanism and evil in the late 19th century due largely to a work by the French occultist Eliphas Levi. As the books were said to be in their original 17th century Venetian bindings, the appearance of the inverted pentagram is an anachronism.
  
  
• Continuity: When Corso and Balkan are talking in the castle, the pieces of paper continuously change position between shots after Balkan has laid out the engravings on the table.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Corso is in the cab he asks the driver to stop at the payphone. The cab driver says, "No problem, sir" but his mouth is visible in the mirror and is clearly not speaking.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Fargas is comparing both books for Corso, he supposedly opens both books to the same page to point out an error in printing. However, in the wide shot, it is clear the books are not both open to the same page. The book on the left has a very evident gap in one of the lines that the book on the right does not.
  
  
• Continuity: When Corso and the Girl step into the lift at the hotel where Liana Telfer is staying, the Girl's hair is in a messy ponytail. When they get off the lift it's much neater, in the next shot it's messy again.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Corso goes to the New York City Library for research, he pulls a copy of Books in Print from the shelf. All major libraries have used CDs of this reference guide for years. Also, he finds an illustration from the book he is researching. Books in Print never printed an illustration.
  
  
• Factual errors: While showing off his collection to Corso, Fargas presents a "Dictionaire Infernal" by Jacques Collin de Plancy, which he says is a first edition from 1844. The first edition of this influential encyclopedia on superstition appeared in 1818, but its sixth edition, published in 1863, is prized for its illustrations, including 72 drawings of demons. The copy Fargas holds has a title page that is from the 1863 edition.
  
  
• Continuity: Inconsistency regarding the engravings that Corso claims to be genuine (signed LCF) and forged (signed AT). In an early scene he discovers the LCF signatures on 1) an engraving of an old man holding keys in his right hand and 2) a maze that has no exit. But in a later scene he says the genuine engravings show the keys in the left hand and that the maze has an open exit.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Any time The Girl floats down to save the day, the wires supporting her are very visible in the shots.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Corso and The Girl drive off in their "borrowed" red sports car, they are stuck behind a truck for a moment, and the car's brake lights are lit; however, the sound of the car accelerating and upshifting can be heard throughout the shot.
  
  
• Continuity: When Balkin and Corso enter the collection area early on in the film we see a building outside the many windows in the collection room. In the building outside the lights start going out one-by-one on one of the floors. But a moment later in the next shot, we see the lights back on.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: After Boris Balkan's death in the castle, Dean Corso returns to Balkan's Land Rover to leave. As Corso opens the door of the Land Rover, a crew member is visible in the rear view mirror on the door.
  
  
• Continuity: When Corso and the girl leave Paris to drive to St Martin they are driving on a french motorway. When they exit the motorway they are confronted by a red, British, stop sign with a green,British signpost in the background complete with a sign to the M1. The next shot is of a french village road sign.
  
  
• Continuity: Johnny Depp's hair changes color. In some scenes he has gray on the sides and at other times it is brown.
  
  
• Factual errors: The Sintra railway station depicted is very romantic but makes no resemblance to the real one.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Real collectors and dealers wouldn't handle books worth $1,000,000 without gloves, and they surely wouldn't smoke or drink wine directly over them (so ash and wine can fall down on the pages). And the way Corso keeps chucking such a rare and expensive book into his bag without any protection seems highly unlikely to happen in the real world.
  
  

Related Links