[Pedro13]

I'm not sure when this movie was made but the image was kind of grainy and the actors wore late 70's early 80's clothes, so I suspect it is from that time.

The movie was put simply a rally paper, a competition in which several teams kept searching for and solving clues from place to place in a city, in order to get to the end before everyone else.

Unfortunately, I remember only a handful of scenes and I'll try to explain all of them the best I can.
The "bad guys" in the movie kept cheating their way to the end. They had some kind of machine in their van that would be given the clues and would give them the answers. The machine, at some point during the movie, stops working (from what I remember due to one of the members of the team that filled it with cream, but I'm not sure what he broke it with).

The same incompetent member who broke the machine is also central to another scene:
When every member of every team is in a big room just waiting for the next clue to come up, some guy starts playing a song at the piano which that guy recognises being the song of a beer commercial and just mumbles the name of the beer for everyone to hear. Everyone rushes out of the place and the next scene is at the beer factory.

Finally, the final part of the competition take place in a hotel (I'm not sure it was a hotel, it may have been just an apartment building). All teams get to one of the various public phones in the building and everyone listens to the clue at the same time: the final clue is hidden in the huge terrace (I'm not sure of the english translation but I'll describe what I mean: being a tall building, there was a large outdoors space in the first floor). It turns out the clue was the disposition of the chairs in the terrace: the "good guys" team figures it out and decides to take the lift in order to "see" the clue - the way the chairs are placed spell the number of the room in the building, the end of the competition. The "bad guys" team understands the other team may be on to something and decides to thwart their last push.
They do not succeed and the "good guys" enter the room first and win the competition.

And that's it. I saw this movie only once in my life, more than 10, perhaps even 15 years ago. I've been asking people for years whether they know it, but as you can guess, nobody knows it... So, thanks in advance for any ideas on which movie it is.

[Quinn F]

Midnight Madness (1980) ?

[Pedro13]

Midnight Madness (1980) ?

That's the one! :) Thank you so much, it was driving me crazy!

[Quinn F]

You're very welcome.