Santa Ynez, a small mountain town in Utah, is being terrorised by a rather naughty black car. You see this black car, a Lincoln Continental Mark III, has a very nasty habit of running people over, you know as in killing them outright, and then whizzing away to consider its next dastardly deed. The car has come from apparently out of nowhere and starts off its killing spree by bumping a couple of teenage cyclists off the road.
Its next victim is a rather too perky, read bordering on insane, hitch-hiker whom has already peed off a local fella, Amos Clemens (R.G. Armstrong), before finding himself under the wheels of the driver-less vehicle. That’s right! Like Stephen King’s Christine, and the later John Carpenter adaptation, our car has no driver. It also has no door handles and seems immune to any damage caused to it.
Sheriff Everett Peck (John Marley, who turns in the film’s worst performance – of which there are a few), is having none of this malarkey and puts his men on alert. Seemed like a good idea at the time, as no sooner has he done so than he too is bouncing under the wheels of the speeding vehicle. Stepping up to take the car on is Captain Wade Parent (James Brolin), no that really is the name they came up with for him, and matters become more personally when his girlfriend Lauren Humphries (Kathleen Lloyd) becomes the latest casualty.
The Car is listed among The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson’s book The Official Razzie Movie Guide. I’d have to disagree with the ‘enjoyably’ part. There is nothing enjoyable about this car wreck of a film, pun intended. From the crap acting to the ludicrous concept, left feeling even more incredulous by a daft script, this is one celluloid road trip you’d be best not to hitch a ride with. And yet for all its dumbness you can’t help but admire the sheer gall of the film-makers to try and transfer the sensational thrills of Jaws into a terra firma set battle against a monster, hence the two star rating rather than one.
Even those interviewed in the disc’s extras seem incredulous that they are still talking about this movie so many years on which says a lot for what they think of it. Elsewhere An American Werewolf in London director John Landis pops up to provide a commentary on the film’s trailer and seems as surprised as we are to see him doing so. He has no affection at all for the flick and seems rather surprised to be discussing it, albeit just for the trailer. He does however mention that Pacific Rim director Guillermo del Toro, had a replica made of the film’s mechanical star but that’s about as interesting as the extras get.
For whatever reason, you DO keep watching The Car if only to marvel that James Brolin has a film on his CV that is even worse than the original The Amityville Horror. And like The Amityville Horror The Car looks like something that has been made for TV where ideally it was best suited for rather than congesting cinema screens. On the plus side there is no solid explanation offered up for why the car is knocking over people and in a way that’s quite neat as I’m sure given the trite served up as a script that if the writers did offer up an explanation it would have finished off what sanity I had.
That sanity was sorely tested by THAT scene where Brolin is stood transfixed, eye-balling the car as it sits static in his garage. Listening to that stupid bitch as she takes not a blind bit of notice of anything he says, instead becoming increasingly hysterical going inside as she is being told to is irritating beyond belief. When you consider that director Elliot Silverstein, who also co-produced, was also responsible for Cat Ballou and A Man Called Horse you do wonder where his head was at when it came to deciding to making this.
For personal reasons James Brolin brightens up proceedings by removing his shirt and even, at one point, strolling around in his undies. The film, along with life, the universe and everything else, is sheer bliss for those brief, and very welcome, moments. There is also some fun to be had in boring whoever you watch The Car with by pointing out that one of Parent’s daughters is played by Kyle Richards, who went on to star in other horror fare, most notably John Carpenter’s original Halloween. And to irk your viewing partner that bit more also mention that Leonard Rosenman’s score rifts a little on the same classical piece that Kubrick used to open his version of The Shining – the Fifth Movement from Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.
In fact, pointing out such facts during a joint viewing of The Car maybe preferable for both of you given that you don’t really give a shit about anyone in the movie and that the car should run over the lot of them. You see Ronny Cox’s Deputy Luke Johnson hit the bottle to cope and toy with doing the same, you see a car fly through the air and wonder why it is that someone probably got paid more than you’ll earn in ten years for coming up with this idea. You’ll wonder why it is at all that you are still glued to The Car and why, for all its faults – and there are plenty more than have been mentioned here – you’ll still recommend a friend watch it even though you know it’s bad shit.