Car Movies

In a rare instance of a SNL skit translating WELL to big-screen (the only other exception being Wayne’s World), John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd produced a hilarious high-speed wild-ride of non-stop laughs.

Completely throwing all known laws of physics out the window (witness the car jumps, surviving a transient hotel bombing, stealing an air-raid-siren et al), the Dynamic Duo of The Blues embarks on a do-or-die Mission From God to reunite their beloved band and save the orphanage that provided them a home growing up against all odds and obstacles? The odds and obstacles? Try the entire Chicago and Illinois state police forces, The Army, a local Neo-Nazi chapter, a hell-bent-on-violent-revenge former fiancee’(Carrie Fisher), a touring band that plays BOTH types of music (Country AND Western!)and a skeptical concert promoter (Steve Lawrence).

Some great guest appearances from Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Cab Colloway, John Lee Hooker and James Brown hold your interest as well as coutless police car pileups, hilarious encounters at Holiday Inns, and snooty French restaurants finding their old bandmates, disastrous gigs at redneck bars, Ackroyd’s low-tech resourcefulness and a devastatingly hilarious mall chase that has to be seen to be believed! All throughout, you really get the feeling the two main characters LIVED the blues and not just played them.

Robert Wuhl is the BEST in this funny, funny film (his first film role)! It’s Halloween 1965 and the local teen hangout is about to be shut down and demolished by the town council, who can’t wait to get rid of the kids (mainly the Hollywood Knights gang) who loiter there. There’s lots of great tunes from the era by the Beach Boys, Byrds, Sam the Sham, Motown artists and more.

The scene where Wuhl farts the song “Volare’” in the gym is maybe only 30 seconds long but it’s so funny, I had to rewind to see it over and over again! What else does he (as Newbomb Turk) do? Oh, not much…he and some Knights pee in the party punch, tapes some girls in the bathroom, causes a cop’s toilet to overflow and “attempts” a sexcapade with Fran Drescher in the back seat.

By the way, Drescher is so incredibly sexy in this film (maybe accidently?), you’ll forget all the other stuff she was in (her voice isn’t as annoying as it would be in “The Nanny”). She’s young and gorgeous with a taut, toned body that you’ll be dreamin’ about!

My other favorite scenes are with Gailard Sartain as the cop/archenemy of the Knights and Stuart Pankin as the nerdly bandmember/magician/honor student, Dudley. These two character actors add a HUGE part to this movie!

The only disappointing factor in this film is the inclusion of the relationship between Tony Danza and Michelle Pfeiffer. Yeah, Michelle’s very pretty and Tony may cause a few female hearts to flutter but their scenes drag the film down…WAY down! Just as you’re on an incredible high from Wuhl’s hilarious antics, they cut to the completely unfunny seriousness of Tony and Michelle’s fragile relationship. What a drag! It’s supposed to be a funny film but their scenes veer sharply into soap opera territory…blech! Funny thing is, Tony NEVER, EVER appears with Wuhl or any of the other mischief makers in the film – he’s not even listed in the closing credits, which leads me to believe his inclusion in the movie was an afterthought, maybe for some star-power thanks to his co-starring stint on “Taxi.”

Aside from those EXTREMELY unfunny scenes, I gave it five stars anyway, because there are many, many funny vignettes with Sartain, Pankin, Leigh French, Dick Schaal and many of the others. This is Robert Wuhl at his best! DON’T MISS IT!!!

`Mad Max’, an Australian flick and one of the very first movies to feature Mel Gibson has probably been seen by most people after they saw the two sequels, `The Road Warrior’ and `Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome’. This circumstance has probably lead to a lot of misunderstandings about the circumstances of the original `Mad Max’ plot.

Basicly, the story is about the failure of an organized system of justice, leading to a downward spiral of individual, outlaw revenge and retribution. Unlike the relatively new post-apocalyptic genres exemplified by the latter two movies, the issues of revenge are as old as the classic Greek playwrights, all the way up through Eugene O’Neill’s take on the old Greek story of revenge in `Mourning Becomes Electra’.

There is but one little clue that this is a post nuclear war scenario. This is when we see a rusty and delapidated sign warning of a `Forbidden Area’. The only corroboration is the relatively poor condition of the sign over the entrance to the police station. Balanced against these minor visual clues is the spanking new sign over the door to the service station indicating that this is a licensed auto mechanic and the very clean and efficient looking hospital room and building.

So, if there is any failure of civilization, it is largely metaphorical and seen in the failure of the constraints of lawful behavior to prevent a series of events based on unbridled libido and revenge.

Of the `Mad Max’ trilogy, the second, `The Road Warrior’ is probably the best for many reasons, and it’s connection to our current subject is loose at best and it’s production values are far superior, but our original has an odd rawness about it which should not be confused with poor quality. TV stations would not be running this flick regularly if it did not have something special to offer.

By far the most valuable currency offered up by `Mad Max’ is the anxiety created for Max’s wife and child in the last third of the movie. The fear is about as raw as it comes, with an odd similarity, based on the crude cinematic technique all the way around, with the terror of the original `Texas Chain Saw Massacre’. The horror movie is much less artfully done and draws a lot of it’s impact from pure quantity of gore, but there is a strong sense that both movies gain from a lack of polish.

Oddly, I think most of the juice in this movie comes less from Gibson’s performance as that of the heavies. Unlike Harrison Ford’s early appearances in `Star Wars’, for example, I see little of the promise which Gibson shows in the second and third films in this series.

I will go out of my way to watch the second and third movies, but the first, this `Mad Max’ is really something of a guilty pleasure which survives rewatching and grows in stature as time goes by.

There are a lot of loud, whining engines in THE ROAD WARRIOR. There are people being killed, maimed and immolated. Of the characters who survive this tale, very few come through without scars.

It’s a post-apocalyptic nightmare where hope fights despair. The irony of Max’s character is that even though he’s one of the good guys, he’s probably the most desperate of the lot. This is the tale of Max’s pain and how he rose above it to become a legend.

This is not the same Max we saw in MAD MAX. This Max has been poisoned by tragedy and loss, and the anger of the past has refined into a tiny hard ball of self-involvement. It seems fitting that civilization fell so soon after Max suffered his losses–almost as though when Max lost his place in the world, the world changed to find a new place for him.

THE ROAD WARRIOR touches on one aspect of the end-of-the-world scenario that has always fascinated me: if the world ends, how many of the survivors will know how and why it happened?

These people don’t have time to contemplate that–the once-civilized world has become an enormous hunting ground where the prize is the precious little bit of gasoline that remains. With the world in shambles, the only things left for most people to do are eat, make love, drive really fast, and die. In the midst of all these lost souls, one small group has manufactured hope by restarting a refinery and producing enough gasoline to allow them to escape to a better place.

THE ROAD WARRIOR is so far removed from the fallen civilized world it replaced that we don’t even get a sense that any of these people even remember what the world was like before. We haven’t got a clue what any of them did prior to the fall. (Yes, we know Max was a policeman, but we know that from MAD MAX–it’s never really touched upon, here.) In THE ROAD WARRIOR, the conflict has been distilled to an abstraction, with the good guys as desperate in their Hope as the bad guys are desperate in their Despair.

It catches you up from the beginning, rocking your screen and your sensibilities with high-speed stuff that, for once, isn’t mindless. How long can you survive in a world where people are willing to kill you for whatever gasoline remains in the tank of your car? You bet you’d run, and run fast and hard. It’s a horribly Darwinistic world where the desire to hold on to some small facet of the past drives people to lives so pointless they don’t even bother to ask why they’re living this way. Heaven help you if you actually want to take the tools of the past and use them to build a real future.

To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) is a American thriller film directed by William Friedkin and based on the novel written by former Secret Service agent Gerald Petievich, who co-wrote the screenplay with Friedkin. The drama features William L. Petersen, Willem Dafoe, John Turturro, John Pankow, among others. Wang Chung composed and performed the original music soundtrack. The film tells the story of the lengths to which two Secret Service agents go to arrest a counterfeiter.

Plot

Richard Chance (Petersen) is a Secret Service agent for the U.S. Treasury with a reputation in the department for reckless behavior. His partner, Jimmy Hart (Michael Greene) is days away from retirement, but takes on one last mission to investigate counterfeiter Rick Masters (Dafoe). After Hart is killed by Masters’ bodyguard, Chance is outraged and seeks revenge. Chance explains his outlook to his new partner, John Vukovich (Pankow) this way:

Let me tell you something, amigo. I’m gonna bag Masters, and I don’t give a shit how I do it.

The two T-men try to track down Masters, to no avail. Chance and Vukovich finally engage Masters by posing as potential counterfeiting clients interested in Masters’ services.

Chance and Vukovich eventually break the law in their relentless pursuit of Masters. In order to get enough money to convince Masters that they are “real” clients, they kidnap and steal the money from a man who, unbeknownst to them, is an undercover F.B.I. agent. In a wild chase through the streets and freeways of Los Angeles, the F.B.I. agent is accidentally shot to death by his own men.

Later, Chance once again meets with Masters, and pays him the “front money” that Masters has requested. The two agents go through with the transaction, even when Masters implies that he knows they stole the money from the F.B.I. undercover agent. During a set-up transaction, Chance tries to arrest Masters and his bodyguard, but the bodyguard pulls a shotgun from a locker and shoots Chance in the face, at the same time Chance shoots the bodyguard in the chest. They both die.

Masters briefly gets away, but Vukovich gives chase, eventually locating Masters at a warehouse Masters uses to produce his counterfeit money. At the time of Vukovich’s arrival, Masters has already set fire to the contents of the warehouse. Vukovich confronts Masters and during a brief struggle, Vukovich is knocked unconscious. Masters covers Vukovich with shredded paper and just before Masters lights Vukovich on fire, Vukovich recovers and shoots Masters, who then drops his lighter and lights himself ablaze in the process. Vukovich survives and Masters perishes in the blaze.

After Masters’ death, Masters’ attorney gives his estate to his girlfriend, Bianca. Without showing much remorse, she rides away in Masters’ black Ferrari with her new companion, a woman named Serena given to her as a present by Masters.

In the last scene, Vukovich pays Chance’s informant, Ruth, a visit just as she’s packing up to leave L.A. for good. He mentions Chance’s death, that she had known that the man they stole the advance money from was FBI, and that Chance had left her with the leftover front money that his agency now wants back. All this leads to a surprise for Ruth: “You’re working for me now”. And with that, Chance lives on through Vukovich.

Against All Odds is a neo-noir 1984 film, a remake of Out of the Past. The movie was directed by Taylor Hackford and features Rachel Ward in a variation (with a different name) of Jane Greer’s original role, Jeff Bridges filling in for Robert Mitchum, and James Woods in a version of Kirk Douglas’s part. Supporting players include Alex Karras, Jane Greer (portraying the mother of her original character), Richard Widmark, and Dorian Harewood.

The movie’s soundtrack, nominated for a Grammy Award, featured songs from Big Country, Kid Creole & the Coconuts, Stevie Nicks, and Genesis breakout stars Mike Rutherford, Peter Gabriel, and Phil Collins. Collins sang the title song, which was also nominated for an Academy Award and was one of the top-selling singles of 1984.

Plot

Terry Brogan (Bridges), ex-professional football player is cut from his team ‘The L.A. Outlaws’. Aging, broke, and in need of money, Terry takes a job from an old acquaintance – shady nightclub owner Jake Wise (Woods) – to track down Jake’s girlfriend, Jessie Wyler (Ward) somewhere in Mexico. “Here’s $10,000 right now – and when you find her I’ll give you another Twenty…I just want you to find her Terry…,” says Jake Wise.

The search takes Terry to the clear blue skies and white sands of Cozumel. Terry and Jessie eventually meet on the tiny island, animal instinct overcomes the two as they unexpectedly fall in love. Terry tells Jake in phone calls that he hasn’t found her.

When Jake dispatches L.A. Outlaws trainer Sully (Karras) to the island to look for the two…”Sully? What the f— are you doing here? – Jake sent him here – What am I doing here? What are we doing here?…” Sully is immediately killed in a chaotic scene with Jessie being the shooter. In panic, Jessie flees the island leaving Terry and dead Sully behind. “Jessie it’s an accident…Go to the Mexican police with a body and a gun? – Are you crazy???, says Jessie

Looking for answers, Terry returns to L.A. to find that Jake’s hold on Jessie is something larger and more ominous involving various politicians, lawyers and environmentalists who seem to be converging on some sort of land deal.

Terry has more unfinished business with Jake, “I have another job for you…its a little dirty but not so dirty you wont be able to sleep at night…”

The job has Terry breaking into Kirsch’s office to get incriminating records involving Terry (betting on games), Kirsch (Terry’s agent) and others…

Christine is a horror novel by Stephen King, published in 1983. It tells the story of a vintage automobile apparently possessed by supernatural forces.

In 1983, the movie version of Christine directed by John Carpenter, and starring Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, and Harry Dean Stanton was released to theaters.

Plot summary

The story revolves around teenage nerd Arnie Cunningham and his 1958 red and white Plymouth Fury, dubbed “Christine” by the previous owner. The story is set in Libertyville (supposedly a suburb of Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania between the summer of 1978 and the spring of 1979. The novel is divided into three parts, the first and third of which are written in first person, from the point of view of Dennis Guilder, Arnie’s best (and only) friend. The middle part of the book is written in the omniscient third person style (while Guilder is in the hospital, and thus removed from the action).

While driving home one evening from a summer job on a building site, Dennis Guilder and Arnie Cunningham drive past Christine, sitting on the dilapidated lawn of a small house on a suburban street. Arnie makes Dennis stop his car, and sets about examining the red 1958 Fury. Dennis initially thinks Arnie is joking with him, but soon realizes that he is deadly serious. The car’s owner, Roland D. LeBay, an elderly gentleman in a back support, comes out onto the lawn, and offers the car to Arnie for $250. Unable to pay the full amount, he settles on a $25 deposit (in which Arnie has $9 borrowed from Dennis) and agrees to come back the next day with the rest of the money.

Arnie and Dennis return the following day, and LeBay invites Arnie into his house to sign over the car. While waiting for Arnie, Dennis decides to sit inside Christine, now parked in LeBay’s garage, and as he does so, he has a vision of the car and the surroundings as they would be in 1957 when the car was brand new. Frightened, Dennis gets out of Christine, and decides then and there that he does not like Arnie’s new car.

Arnie takes the car to Darnell’s, a local do-it-yourself auto repair facility. As he restores the automobile, he becomes withdrawn, yet more confident and self-assured. He becomes humorless and cynical. Dennis is scared of these changes, and of Christine’s changes. The car is repaired haphazardly (quote from the film: “Look how cock-eyed he works! He’s got… brand new windshield wipers for a busted windshield.”), and not all of the repairs seem to be done by Arnie. Also, Arnie’s appearance (e.g. his normally poor complexion) improves in tandem with Christine’s. When Roland LeBay dies, Dennis meets his younger brother, George, who relates to him Roland’s past destructive and violent behavior. He is also told that Roland’s young daughter choked to death on a hamburger in the back of the car, and then his wife, traumatized by this death, apparently committed suicide in the car by carbon monoxide poisoning. Dennis’s further investigations with others around town who had known Roland confirm to him that Arnie’s new personality is in alignment with that of his car’s former owner.

When Arnie is almost finished restoring Christine, Leigh Cabot transfers to his high school. Leigh is instantly popular and regarded as the most beautiful girl in school. It is a surprise to everyone when she decides to go out with Arnie. While on a date with Arnie, Leigh almost chokes to death on a hamburger. Leigh is certain that Christine was behind it when Arnie attempts to save her by hitting her on the back to try and save her and while she is choking she notices that the dashboard light on Christine seem to have turned into glaring green eyes. Leigh is only saved from death by a hitchhiker that Arnie picked up, who pulls her from the car and administers the Heimlich Maneuver. Despite Arnie’s protestations, Leigh continues to feel as though she is competing with Christine for Arnie’s affection. “Cars are girls”, she says.

Arnie brings Christine home from Darnell’s, but his mother, who has hated the car from day one, tells him that he cannot park it at the house. A severe argument ensues and Arnie storms out of the house. Arnie’s father, Michael, takes a drive with his son & treats him to a 30-day parking pass at the local airport, thinking Arnie will only use his car when absolutely necessary. Exiting Christine, Michael experiences a feeling of extreme dread.

Soon after Arnie begins parking at the airport Buddy Repperton, a vicious bully who Arnie and Dennis got expelled earlier in the story, visits Christine with his gang of thugs and severely vandalizes the car. Seeing Christine destroyed completely infuriates Arnie, resulting in the severance of his relationship with Leigh. Arnie dedicates all his free time to repair the car: Leigh grows closer to Dennis.

Mysterious murders occur in Libertyville. One by one, members of Buddy’s gang are killed by Christine. Others who were hostile to Arnie or Christine also turn up dead. The police investigate the murders and become suspicious of Arnie. However, Arnie has an airtight alibi for each of the murders, since the car apparently acts on its own.

Dennis and Leigh become suspicious not of Arnie, but of Christine. They try to find out as much as they can about the car and its previous owner. As their suspicions grow, they try to destroy the supernatural forces that appear to be in control of Christine and Arnie.

It is never quite clear as to whether Christine is evil or if it’s Roland LeBay possessing her. On one hand it is clear that Roland’s ghost is driving her during her climatic battle with Dennis and Leigh, and also during the climatic crash involving Buddy Repperton. But while Dennis is talking with Roland’s brother, there are hints to Christine’s past that indicate how the car’s supernatural abilities came to be: both his wife and daughter died in the car, and it is strongly hinted that their deaths were, in truth, a sacrifice to obtain immortality for both Roland D. LeBay and the car itself. George LeBay also makes clear, in a later conversation with Dennis, that Roland himself was violent and destructive from his early childhood. Pertaining to this Christine can fix herself without human help after denting and scratching herself in the murders of the bullies.

The novel ends on an ambiguous note. Arnie’s father is found dead in Christine, apparently from the exhaust fumes. Arnie and his mother die in an auto accident: witnesses to the accident saw three people in the car before the crash, but only two bodies were found. In the mean time, Dennis and Leigh manage to destroy Christine in Darnell’s using a huge, pink-coloured septic tanker truck, named Petunia, and Dennis is informed by a police detective that the remains were fed into the crusher in the back of the garage by two police officers, adding that one received a bad cut that needed stitches, and said “it bit him”. Dennis ends the story proper with a salutation to his friend:

“Rest in peace, Arnie.

I love you, man.”

In the epilogue, set about four years later, Dennis reports that he and Leigh attended college together, consummated their relationship (“very satisfactorily”), but ultimately went their separate ways. Dennis is a teacher in New Jersey, Leigh a housewife in New Mexico. The last page details that, in Los Angeles, Sandy Galton (one of Buddy’s gang, who let them into the parking garage to trash Christine) has died a mysterious death when an unknown car burst through the wall of the theater where he was working, instantly killing him; the final words of the book convey Dennis’ horror as he contemplates the possibility of Christine having finally repaired herself and starting a campaign of revenge and ultimately coming for him.

Cobra is a 1986 action movie directed by George Pan Cosmatos, starring Sylvester Stallone, Reni Santoni and Brigitte Nielsen.

The movie was loosely based on the novel Fair Game by Paula Gosling, which was also filmed under that title in 1995; it also arose out of Stallone’s original ideas for the film Beverly Hills Cop. He had wanted to make a less comedic, more action-oriented film. When he left that project, Eddie Murphy was brought in to play the lead role.

Plot

Marion Cobretti, a rough Police officer with a reputation for doing “the dirty work” is called in to a hostage situation at a grocery store when negotiations fail. Cobretti kills the gunman himself after infiltrating the building, but before his death the criminal mumbles of a “New Order” in the world: a group of supremacists who believe in killing the weak and leaving only the strongest and themselves to live and rule the world.

The event at the supermarket is connected to a string of recent and seemingly unconnected acts of violence that have broken loose in Los Angeles. Unbeknownst to the general public, these murders are the work of the same supremacist group that the supermarket gunman spoke of.

After witnessing several individuals including the “Night Slasher”(the order’s leader) at the scene of one of the murders late at night, Nielsen’s character becomes the target of the group, and the only witness to their crimes. She is placed under the protective custody of Cobretti and his partner. After several attempts are made on their lives, it is decided that it would be safest that they relocate from the city.

Shortly after venturing out into the countryside, and Cobretti becoming romantically involved with the witness, one of the Order’s leaders (who is a police officer traveling alongside the Cobretti) reveals the location of Cobretti, the witness, and Cobretti’s partner. Despite Cobretti’s suspicions he does nothing. The Order moves in at dawn and besieges the small town that the three were staying in. With barely enough time to react the attackers storm the motel room Cobretti is in with the witness. Killing several but with more swarming into the town Cobretti and the witness escape in a Dodge Ram pick-up truck assuming his partner is dead. After the truck becomes severely damaged, the two bail out into a lemon grove and escape into a nearby factory. Most of the Order has been killed or disabled by Cobretti at this point, and only a few follow them. After eliminating every member aside from the night slasher himself, a huge muscle bound type played by Brian Thompson, Cobretti and the leader engage in a deadly hand-to-hand duel inside the steel mill, ending with the Order’s leader being impaled in the back by a large roaming hook and burned alive by Cobretti.

In the aftermath, Cobretti’s department has arrived and begun clean-up of the town, the Order is all but eliminated, and the ending credits begin with Stallone and Nielsen climbing onto one of the many motorcycles left by the Order and riding away.

The Cannonball Run (1981, Twentieth Century Fox) is a campy, slapstick comedy movie released in 1981 that starred Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, Dom DeLuise and Farrah Fawcett. Hal Needham was the director and had an uncredited role as an emergency medical technician. The premise is very similar to the earlier Cannonball and The Gumball Rally (both 1976). It also has two sequels, 1984′s Cannonball Run II and 1989′s Speed Zone! The latter was also known as Cannonball Fever and is sometimes overlooked as being part of the series.

Used Cars is a 1980 comedy satire film. It stars Kurt Russell, Jack Warden (in a dual role), Deborah Harmon, and Gerrit Graham.

Kurt Russell portrays a devious car salesman who goes to work for affable but monumentally unsuccessful used car dealer Jack Warden. Warden’s principal rival is his more prosperous twin brother, also played by Warden, who schemes to take over the “good” brother’s lot.

The supporting cast includes Frank McRae, David L. Lander, Michael McKean, Al Lewis, Dub Taylor, Dick Miller, and Sarah Wills.

The movie was directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Zemeckis and his long-time writing partner Bob Gale with Steven Spielberg and John Milius as executive producers. The original music score was composed by Patrick Williams.

Filmed primarily in Mesa, Arizona, the movie was released on July 11, 1980. Although not a box-office success at the time, it has since developed cult film status due to its dark, cynical humor and the Zemeckis style. It is also marketed with the tagline “Like new, great looking and fully loaded with laughs.”

The film is rated R for violence, brief nudity, adult language and adult situations and humor.

Synopsis

When Luke Fuchs (Jack Warden), owner of the struggling New Deal Used Car lot dies of a heart attack, hot-shot salesman (and aspiring senator) Rudy Russo decides to save the property from falling into the hands of the owner’s ruthless twin brother and used-car rival Roy L. Fuchs (also played by Warden), whose own used car lot is under threat of demolition to facilitate the construction of a proposed new freeway exit. An all-out war breaks out between the competing car lots with Russo resorting to extremely outrageous customer-getting schemes in order to save Luke’s lot, complicated even more with the arrival of Luke’s daughter Barbara Jane Fuchs.