- Director: Elliot Silverstein
- Writers: Dennis Shryack and Michael Butler
- Stars: James Brolin, Kathleen Lloyd, and John Marley
- Runtime: 98 minutes
- Trailer Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWlFpl8T1dU
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A small desert town is terrorized by a killer on wheels. As the body count and attacks climb, the local sheriff and his crew struggle to stop it, and gradually learns it’s no ordinary car and driver. The pacing is a little clunky, but a good cast and decent script with some surprises elevates it. It’s not excellent, but we were both entertained.
Spoilery Synopsis
After the credits, we open in the desert as a couple of bicyclists zoom down the desert road and into a dark tunnel. We see a car drive into the other end of the tunnel (from the car’s POV). The not-so-subtle music hints that something bad is going to happen. The car comes up behind the bikers and both young people die gruesome deaths. The car, on the other hand, honks gleefully and drives on.
Wade and his girlfriend Lauren wake up and do hanky-pankie as his young children listen outside the bedroom door. Elsewhere, John Morris plays his French Horn outside grumpy old Amos’s house. John puts out his thumb for a ride when the car swerves to hit him. It misses, but then comes back for more.
Wade is the sheriff’s deputy, and he gets called out to Amos’s place, where the car has repeatedly run over John the hitchhiker. His description is a little sketchy, but it was obviously intentional. Not long after, they find the dead bicycle girl, but they don’t find the boy, who went over a bridge at a different point.
Meanwhile, Amos’s wife, Bertha, is at the police station. Sheriff Beck wants her to sign an abuse complaint against her husband. Beck’s had a crush on her since high school. Beck watches as the car zooms toward Amos, but it hits and kills him instead. An old Indian woman sees what happened and blames an evil spirit; there was no driver in the car. Wade takes over as the new sheriff, and he’s not happy about it.
There’s going to be a parade rehearsal this afternoon, and Wade knows it’s a bad idea. They get a call that they’ve found the bicycle-boy’s body, so that distracts everyone for a while. In the meantime, Deputy Luke starts drinking again.
At the fairgrounds, the kids and teachers practice their parade marching as the wind picks up and visibility drops. Everyone panics when they hear a car horn, and the horses go berserk. The kids all run a mile or so to the cliffs instead of going into a building or onto the bleachers or something. They all hide in the old cemetery, but the car stops just outside the gate and waits as Lauren taunts it from inside the fence.
Deputy Ray spots the car in the desert and follows it. All the other cops move in sped-up footage to get to that area. Things go badly for Ray as the car slowly pushes him over the edge of a cliff.
Somehow, the car rolls over, takes out two more police cars and comes to a stop in front of Wade and his little pistol. Wade shoots the car’s tires and windshield, but it appears to be bulletproof. It then knocks him down when he approaches the driver’s door – which has no handles, and Wade passes out.
In the hospital, the deputies all discuss what they know. Lauren wonders about the wind at the parade; it was almost like magic. Luke admits he’s started drinking again and simply forgot to cancel the parade rehearsal with everything that’s been going on.
Deputy Chas drives Lauren home, and the car follows them. As she goes into the house, the wind picks up; the car wants revenge for all her taunting earlier. It drives right through her living room and kills her. We get a long scene where Wade is sad. Luke thinks the car didn’t go into the cemetery because the ground was hallowed. Wade is skeptical, but he doesn’t have a real explanation that beats that.
Wade has a plan, but he needs Amos’s help with explosives. We get a long scene of Wade repairing his motorcycle, only to find the car is in his garage. After a standoff, the car chases Wade and his motorcycle down the road. He lures the car to where the surviving deputies and Amos are rigging up dynamite in the cliffs.
Wade keeps the car busy while the deputies finish wiring everything, and blow it up excessively. Afterwards, Wade and Luke debate what they saw in the fire. As the closing credits roll, we see the car is in a city now…
Brian’s Commentary
There’s no explanation for any of this. We never find out why the car is killing people.
It’s got a lot of similarities with “Duel” from 1971 as well as “Christine” from 1983. One came before, and one after, but the influences carry over between films. It may be stretching things a little, but “Rubber” (2010) is also in the same neighborhood.
The dialogue and the pacing are really weird. They focus on lots of things that aren’t really all that important to the plot. The cast is surprisingly good for such a weak film; most of the actors were big at the time, or would become big later.
I was entertained, but it’s a long way from great.
Kevin’s Commentary
I saw this one when it came out at the theater. I was eleven, and it was a formative movie for my enjoyment of horror. I haven’t seen it since, and I was interested in seeing what I thought of it now.
In one scene a group of teachers and kids seeks refuge in an old cemetery, and the car doesn’t follow them in. It’s said that the car wouldn’t go on hollowed ground, and I thought at the time I first saw it that it made perfect sense – it was afraid of falling in the hollowed ground of graves. It was years later that it suddenly occurred to me oooooooh, they said “hallowed ground,” not hollow.
The cast has lots of familiar faces of actors from the 70s that were in lots of stuff before and after. James Brolin was young once.
That’s quite a few deputies for such a small town, though they do have a big area of land to cover, but that was necessary for the action and body count.
Watching it now, almost 50 years later, I was still entertained.
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