The Car

March 18, 2010 by Editor
Filed under Film Reviews

The Car (1977)
Directed By: Elliot Silverstein

Written By: Ken Knight
Mondo Film & Video Guide Feature Contributor
IMDb.com Link

WHAT EVIL DRIVES THE CAR…?
From out of the desert dust and hot winds of Hell itself comes an unstoppable black car powered by what might just be the Devil himself! When a pitch black, un-branded car the size of a Lincoln roars through a tunnel sounding it’s awful terrorizing horn to take out a young couple riding their 10-speed bikes along a lonely desert highway, the fun begins as the nearest town in Arizona becomes the subject of on-going terror under the wheels of THE CAR! Sheriff Wade (James Brolin) doesn’t know what to make of it at first except that the population of his small community is dwindling at the wheels of a strange and unstoppable automobile that appears to have no driver!

From a crazy hitchhiker to the previous Sheriff, to a few of Wade’s Deputes, THE CAR punches through all of them without missing a beat even going after a school band whom all take shelter in a cemetery where THE CAR cannot pass through because it’s “holy ground”!(that was the tip-off to this being an Occult thriller). Then comes perhaps one of the most intense “gonna get your ass” scenes in cinema history when the woman who cursed at THE CAR runs into her house on a windy night and calls the Sheriff just as she hears THE CAR’s sinister horn approaching outside, and then she’s taken out when THE CAR crashes straight through the house as if it were nothing more than fly-paper!

A nail-biting film from start to finish and for it’s day a very well-crafted “occult thriller” due to the supernatural origin of the murderous vehicle and THE CAR remains a film in a class all it’s own because no other copycats have been done nor has this film been re-made in the past 30 years. We see a quote from the late Anton LaVey (founder of the Church of Satan) on the screen just before the thrilling tunnel scene which adds to it’s Occult theme from the start, and rumor has it one of Anton LaVey’s personally-owned vehicles at the time influenced THE CAR’s design.

THE CAR is readily available on DVD and can occasionally be found playing on regular TV late at night also.
I give this very entertaining film two horns up!

Ken Knight is the author of the book – The Midnight Show: Late Night Cable TV “Guy-Flicks” Of the 80′s. The book is available now thru www.amazon.com You can email Ken Knight directly at The Mondo Film & Video Guide at kenknight@mondo-video.com