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Poster for Mystery Train
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Released
1989 · FILM

Mystery Train

When an eccentric night clerk at Memphis’s rundown Arcade Hotel watches a hopeful Japanese couple, a grieving Italian widow, and a hapless Englishman with his oddball companions navigate love, loss, and mischief over one chaotic night, their intersecting quests reveal the city’s hidden rhythm.

Directed by
Jim Jarmusch
Written by
Jim Jarmusch
Runtime
106 min
ComedyCrimeDrama
Streaming on
  • The Criterion Channel

Synopsis

In Memphis, Tennessee, over the course of a single night, the Arcade Hotel—managed by an eccentric night clerk and a clueless bellboy—becomes the unlikely meeting place for a diverse cast of characters. A young Japanese couple travels there in search of the roots of rock music, while an Italian woman in mourning encounters a fleeing charlatan girl. Also present are a comical trio of accidental thieves seeking a place to hide.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 16

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Melody LondonShot by Robby MullerScored by John LurieDesigned by Dan Bishop

Box Office

1989 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.6× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$1.5M

Budget$2.8M
Worldwide gross$1.5M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Mystery Trainde

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