Since it’s hot as HELL outside, I figured I may as well throw you readers a bone in the form of a film with a lot of heat under its hood that won’t burn you (unless you’re expecting it to blow you away with stellar acting and a memorable plot.) If you take it at all seriously (and it’s VERY hard to do so, mind you), 1977’s THE CAR isn’t a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but it sure as hell is a really and unintentionally hilarious one.

It’s more or less a nasty-tasting cake made up of equal parts of single-word title films (JAWS, DUEL), a dash of devil possession from some other popular 70’s flicks, a custom George Barris ride that looks like a tricked out rolling bathtub and some (as in too many) scenery chewing lead and character actors having at the jumbled script and its crazy plot diversions.

This is a “Yours is not to question why…” flick, plain and simple. Small run down desert town gets visited and its citizenry terrified (and run down) by a mysterious driver-less evil car from hell (more or less). Sheriff and crew take on car with mixed and amusing results until they realize that good old fashioned explosives and a few tons of boulders solve many problems. Crash, Bang, Boom… The End? Yeah, it’s that simple enough to be a thirty minute episode of some sort of horror anthology on TV (or as part of a much better film anthology), but THE CAR is padded with a number of dopey subplots that don’t really go anywhere because after too many minutes of greasy buildup someone usually gets killed (and taken out of the picture as a result), leaving that screen door swinging in the breeze until the next victim shows up…

Continue reading →