Car Movies

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.

“Le Mans” is Steve McQueen’s homage to the famous French 24 hour auto endurance race. The storyline features McQueen in a nicely understated performance as a racer returning to competition at Le Mans one year after a nearly fatal accident, one in which a close friend was killed. The movie follows his intense competition with an old rival on the track, and his slowly blossoming relationship off the track with the widow of his close friend.

Much of the movie is given over to an almost loving examination of all the sights and sounds of Le Mans and of the racers and the fans it attracts. Michel LeGrand’s score nicely supports the fast/slow pacing of the movie on and off the track. The racing scenes are well done, using a variety of camera angles and lighting effects. The race is hard to follow during a rainy night in the middle of the competition. The racers are often hard to distinguish from one another in their helmets and protective gear.

The movie has a number of highlights. One is an accident on the track that threatens to take McQueen prematurely out of the competition. A second moment, of almost pitch-perfect clarity, is McQueen’s explanation to the widow of why men race automobiles. A third is the tense conclusion of the race itself.

This movie is highly recommended to fans of endurance autoracing and of Steve McQueen.

Insurance investigator Maindrian Pace (played by H.B ‘Toby’ Halicki) and his team lead double lives as car thieves. Everyone knows him as an intelligent, respectable insurance investigator, they also know that he runs a quality auto shop in town. What very few know is that he is the leader of a group of professional car thieves.

If a car disappears, it’s most likely Pace’s gang that’s done it. In order to protect themselves in the event the police overhear them, Pace declares that they will only refer to cars by code names, not by the actual make and model of the car. Today is Tuesday and a very valued client has just contacted Pace with an exceptional order. A South American drug lord pays Pace $400,000.00 to steal 48 specific cars for him, and all but one – a 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1, whose code name is “Eleanor” – are successfully stolen by Maindrian and his associates. The buyer wants Pace to deliver the cars to him by Saturday.

All are very high-end cars ranging from Mustangs to limousines, making the order difficult to fill under the time limit. Still, Pace savors the challenge and agrees to complete the order. Pace also has Eugene’s wedding to go to in Dunkirk, New York where he asks Eugene to call off his honeymoon for some court cases next week. After arriving back at Los Angeles International Airport Pace and his crew spot Eleanor at the airport and Corlis (Ronald Halicki) tries to steal her but fails because the driver is still in the car asleep at the wheel. Then they leave the airport.

Later that night his crew is somewhat taken aback by the audacity of the plan, but they realize that if anyone can do it, Pace can. Mapping out a basic strategy, the gang begins to scout out their targets, which have all been given female names. Being part of the insurance industry, Pace does have one small idiosyncrasy when it comes to stealing, all of the cars he steals must be insured. Pace refuses to steal an uninsured car, because his secretary Pumpkin (Marion Busia) got him to agree to it during a walk in a park in Dunkirk.

Later that night Pace goes to Ascot Park and steals J.C. Agajanian’s 1974 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. Also later that night Pace goes and steals Harold Blight Smith’s (Edward Abrahms) Eleanor right out of his garage at his home. After Mrs. Smith’s constant nagging, Mr. Smith takes his dog out to the front yard where he discovers his Mustang backing out of his garage. Mr. Smith then jumps in his blue 1972 Plymouth Satellite and chases Pace for several miles screaming “that’s my car”, causing the police to pull him over in order to find out why he is driving maniacally around town. Because Smith has cheated a number of people on insurance claims, Pace returns Smith’s undamaged automobile in the exact position it was in the garage, so that when Smith and the police officers return, Smith is in trouble because (as far as they can see) nothing has happened.

Pace manages to steal all seven Limousines and The Pantera and finally Eleanor. Then Atlee steals the 1974 Cadillac Coupe De Ville right in front of the Hungry Tiger Restaurant. Then Pace steals the 1974 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow and the 1971 Chevrolet Corvette. And so they begin stealing the 48 cars. As it happens, it’s proceeding extremely smoothly, the thieves have found all the cars they need with little hardship, and no complications have arisen. That is, until they come to Eleanor, a prized ‘73 Mach 1 Ford Mustang. They’ve found their Eleanor, stolen it, but then discover that it’s not insured. The owner has placed an ad in the paper pleading for the car’s return, no questions asked. Because of giving his word to Pumpkin, Pace decides, much to the chagrin of his buddies, to return it.

Pace spots another ‘Eleanor’ Mustang in Long Beach and prepares to steal it, but is unaware that Eugene (Jerry Daugirda) has alerted to the police to the potential theft as a result of a dispute involving a stolen Cadillac that was discovered to have a million dollars worth of heroin hidden in it (Eugene wanted to keep the drugs but Pace decides to park it in a dirt lot and burn it, after telling Eugene he would take care of it). As a result of the tip-off, two detectives (Butch Stockton) and Phil Woods) are waiting for Pace as he steals Eleanor. They do not suspect him at first but decide to check him out. Pace spots them as he has stopped in the driveway to disable the car alarm and decides to run when they show the police light. The ensuing pursuit is the longest car chase (40 minutes) in movie history and takes Pace through five cities as he attempts to lose police.

In a notable scene, Eleanor is clipped by a Cadillac as a result of misjudging the freeway exit, spins out and collides with a lamp post. This scene was, in fact, a real accident, as Halicki misjudged both the lane and speed of the Cadillac. Halicki was injured in the crash, but the scene was left in, and Eleanor is seen driving away from the accident and as chase continues.

The jump scene at the end of the chase is also notable and set the standards for a number of subsequently produced pictures. Acting as the climax to the lengthy chase sequence, Eleanor is seen jumping over the scene of a traffic accident unrelated to the chase, after a hood leaning on a car, allows him to catch air. The jump manages to achieve a height of 30′ over a 128′ in distance – a feat which would not be easily replicable without the use of modern CGI techniques – and the Mustang barely manages to land safely as it meets the ground in a rather awkward fashion, injuring Halicki once again.

Shortly after this jump, the chase is ended when Pace spots another yellow Mustang pulling into a car wash. He asks for his car to be washed and then dupes the owner of the other Mustang into believing that her car must be washed again and instructs her to report to the manager’s office. Pace subsequently leaves the car wash with the stolen car as the manager (who matches the description of Pace, who was wearing a grey wig and a grey jacket during the chase) is believed to be the suspect and arrested. Pace removes his disguise, asks a police officer at a road block directions, and gets away scot-free.

Kenny Dantley (Mark Hamill) is a car-loving senior in high school. For a project in his shop class, Kenny helps build a customized Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. Shortly after the new set of wheels is revealed, the car is stolen. Kenny immediately sets out on the trail of the thieves, which takes him to Las Vegas. On the way, he meets Vanessa (Annie Potts) who is a self-described “prostitute-in-training.” Together, they hatch a plan to try to steal back the Stingray.
It is also interesting to note that Harrison Ford had a short cameo appearance as a bike rider that runs into Mark Hamill towards the end of the film. Ford was not in the film credits.

More American Graffiti is the 1979 sequel film to George Lucas’s hit film American Graffiti. Whereas the first film followed a group of friends during the summer evening before they set off for college, this film shows us where the characters from the first film end up a few years later.

Most cast members from the first film returned for this sequel, including Candy Clark, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Cindy Williams, Mackenzie Phillips, Charles Martin Smith and even Harrison Ford turns up for a cameo appearance. The notable exception is Richard Dreyfuss.

Plot

The film, set over the four consecutive New Year’s Eves from 1964 – 1967 depicts scenes from each of these years intertwined with one another as though events happen simultaneously. The audience is protected from confusion by the conceit of a distinct cinematic style for each section. For example, the 1966 sequences echo the movie of Woodstock using split screens and multiple angles of the same event simultaneously on screen, the 1965 sequences (set in Vietnam) shot hand-held on grainy super 16 mm film designed to resemble war reporters’ footage. The film attempts to memorialize the 1960s with sequences that recreate the sense and style of those days with references to Haight-Ashbury, the campus peace movement, the beginnings of the modern woman’s lib movement and the accompanying social revolt. One character burned his draft card showing a younger audience what so many Americans had done on the television news ten years before the movie’s release. Other characters are shown frantically disposing of their marijuana before a traffic stop as a police officer pulls them over, and another scene shows the police brutality with billy clubs during an anti-Vietnam protest.

The listed fates of the main characters at the ending sequence of American Graffiti were updated again at the end of this sequel. In More American Graffiti, John Milner was revealed to have been killed by a drunk driver in December 1964 (reminiscent of the tragic death of James Dean in 1955 though the accident involving Dean did not involve a drunk driver), with the ending scene of the movie driving his trademark yellow Deuce at night along a lonely highway toward a swerving vehicle. Set on New Year’s Eve 1964, it is never actually shown that his tragic end comes after his racing win on the last day of the year. The anniversary of John’s death is mentioned in both the 1965 and 1966 sequences. Terry “The Toad” Fields’ classification as “missing in action” is not explored in greater detail since the movie shows that he faked his own death. The ending sequence would have read “killed in action” had the story ended there. Terry is believed to be dead by his superiors in 1965 and by his friends – Debbie in 1966 and Steve and Laurie in 1967. Joe Young (the leader of “The Pharaohs”) is Toad’s war partner, and vividly meets his death with a sniper’s bullet to the chest in one scene after having promised once again to make Terry the Toad a Pharaoh once they get back from Vietnam.

The relationship of Steve and Laurie is strained by Laurie’s insistence that she start her own career, though Steve forbids it saying he wants her to be a mom to their young twins. Free-spirited Debbie “Deb” Dunham has turned from Old Harper to marijuana and has given up her platinum blonde persona for a hippie/groupie one in a long, strange trip that ends with her performing with a country-and-western music group. Wolfman Jack briefly reprised his role, but in voice only. The drag racing scenes for More American Graffiti were filmed at the Fremont Raceway, later Baylands Raceway Park, in Fremont, California.

This documentary chronicles a summer in the life of “Funny Car” racer Jim Dunn and his family.

Cannonball, also known as Carquake, is a 1976 film starring David Carradine. The film is one of two released in 1976 (the other being The Gumball Rally) that were based on a real illegal cross-continent road race that took place for a number of years in the United States. The same topic later became the basis for the films The Cannonball Run, Cannonball Run II and Speed Zone!. The movie was written and directed by Paul Bartel, who also directed Death Race 2000.

The name of the film and the plot were inspired by Erwin G. “Cannon Ball” Baker, (1882-1960), who travelled across the USA several times, and by the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, an illegal cross-continent road race introduced by Brock Yates to protest against the 55 MPH speed limit.

Synopsis

The Trans-America Grand Prix is an illegal race held every year between Los Angeles, California and New York, New York. David Carradine plays a recently released convict, Cannonball Buckman, trying to restart his automobile racing career by entering the race. Buckman is still on parole and if he is caught in the illegal race he will go back to prison; his best friend also enters the race with an identical car and an identical paint job to try and run cover for Buckman.

The race degenerates into a violent demolition derby as contestants use any means at their disposal to try and eliminate the competition. It culminates in a multiple car pileup in New York.

Martin Scorsese, Roger Corman, and Sylvester Stallone have cameo appearances.

White Lightning is an action film released in 1973 by United Artists starring Burt Reynolds as Gator McKlusky. The film also starred Jennifer Billingsley, Ned Beatty, Bo Hopkins, R.G. Armstrong, and Diane Ladd. A sequel, Gator, was released in 1976.

Plot summary

Gator is serving time in an Arkansas prison for running moonshine when he learns his younger brother was murdered and that Sheriff J.C Conners (Ned Beatty) was the one behind it. Gator knows the sheriff is taking money from local moonshiners, so he agrees to go undercover for the Feds and try to expose the sheriff. He gets a job running moonshine with Roy Boone (Bo Hopkins) and starts having an affair with his girlfriend Lou (Billingsley). Eventually the sheriff discovers Gator is working for the Feds and sends his associates to abduct and kill him. After escaping during a shootout with head moonshiner Big Bear (Armstrong), Gator decides to go after the sheriff in an epic car chase finale that concludes with Gator killing the sheriff and his revenge is finally met. Conlan Carter of ABC’s Combat! series, had a secondary role in the film.

Cult status

White Lightning is considered a classic 1970s action film with multiple car chases, shootouts and fist fights. The film’s music was written by Charles Bernstein. Some of this score was also used in the 2003 film Kill Bill Vol. 1.