So back for another week, and while I’m sure I’ll be diving into the Summer movie season soon, I’ve been having too much fun watching these Exploitation movies to really get in the mood for gigantic blockbusters. Then again, I’m sure with superheroes and undead pirates heading to the multiplex I’ll be coming around soon. As for now, these trashy epics have kept me glued to my couch, wanting to take in more of their glorious freedom. What these movies lack in budget or even in good acting, they make up for with energy and creativity, which is what really separates them from most of the crap we see in theaters and on DVD today.
Now I’ve covered a lot of Revenge flicks in the last few weeks, so I thought I’d try to move on and cover some more facets of Exploitation movies. This week I want to cover the mayhem of motor vehicles with a bunch of Car Chase movies. To be honest, there aren’t really that many good ones. At any rate, these films should help you out if you really have a Death Proof fix you need to take care of.
Vanishing Point Starring Barry Newman and Cleavon Little. Directed by Richard C. Sarafian.
This film has gained quite a bit of notoriety in the last month or so because of Quentin Tarantino’s reverence for it. The movie had frankly always interested me with its intriguing DVD cover and the quote splashed on it calling this film “The greatest car chase movie of all time”. That’s quite a boast, especially considering the time period it was made produced other chases that have stood the test of time, including the ones in The French Connection and Bullitt. Watching the film for the first time, it was a much different experience from the one I expected. While the movie does have its supercharged, adrenaline inducing sequences, there’s an undercurrent with the film that is quite thought provoking, even existential.
The movie stars Barry Newman as Kowalski, a down and out driver who has to deliver a 1970 Dodge Challenger to San Francisco from Denver. This would probably just have made an interesting road movie all on its own, but before Kowalski leaves he decides to get a pick me up from his local dealer. While there, Kowalski makes a bet with him that he can get the car to his destination within 15 hours. The difference here as compared to most movies like this is that Kowalski makes this particular bet for no reason. There’s no big payoff or record he’s going for, he just makes the bet. I don’t think he even wants to prove to himself he can do it.
So of course Kowalski starts to have problems with the law almost from the start. Instead of pulling over for traffic cops, he instead rams them off the road. The same fate goes to another motorist wanting to test his mettle against Kowalski and his Challenger. Eventually, there are dozens of cops on his tail from three States, building roadblocks and trying to run him off the road. If this was the entirety of the film’s focus, it would probably still be a fun, but ultimately forgotten movie. What separates this film from the silly Gone in 60 Seconds/Smokey and the Bandit lot is an underlying sadness that’s not present in any of its contemporaries.
There are moments peppered throughout the movie that give you a vague conception of what has happened to Kowalski throughout his life. The movie gives you vague, dreamlike flashbacks that show Kowalski as a race car driver and getting kicked off of a police force for assaulting his superior officer to stop him from raping a young woman. We’re given small pieces, but not the whole puzzle, which I think is actually kind of a brilliant device, like we’re not really supposed to know everything about him, but we do want to know why he’s doing what he’s doing.
Kowalski almost becomes the embodiment of the American spirit itself, not allowing himself to be tied down by the law as he makes his way west. This element of the film is enforced by the constant updates on Kowalski’s journey by Super Soul, a blind DJ played by Cleavon Little. Super Soul is a like a Greek chorus, giving us a crazy narration to this story while Kowalski and his white Challenger drive on.
Vanishing Point is one of the strongest films in this little subgenre because it dares to try not to just be about crashes and chases, though each of those are quite spectacular in the picture. The film tries to be the thinking man’s Car Chase movie and for the most part I think it succeeds. This could have been one of a hundred films that are just about action, but when 20th Century Fox went to Director Richard C. Sarafian with 8 new Dodge Challengers that were on loan from Chrysler, he went out and made this film instead of another Gone in 60 Seconds, but he did end up destroying 7 of the 8 Challengers, while the 8th one was stolen by a prostitute.
Death Race 2000 Starring David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone. Directed by Paul Bartel
When you discuss Exploitation movies, the name Roger Corman eventually has to come up. The legendary schlock producer is the king of these types of films, creating knocks offs and cheap thrill rides, but always coming up a winner. His movies almost always make money, making him one of Hollywood’s biggest success stories, despite the fact that he’s never made a Hollywood blockbuster. The closest he’s probably ever come to making one of those films is perhaps one of the most popular Cult movies of all time.
Death Race 2000 is a picture based on a short story by Ib Melchior about a futuristic trans-country race where drivers try to kill each other, and also earn points for killing civilians. Of course, this all happened in the far off future. In the year 2000. The original story was apparently very serious and so was Corman’s original treatment of the material, but apparently he thought that would end up “kind of vile”. Instead, he changed course on the film, adding a satirical political context and made the film as campy and fun as possible, filling the movie with outrageous characters and cars.
Among those characters is David Carradine’s Frankenstein, the reigning champion of the race and the number one racer in the world. His introduction is appropriately awesome (though it looks like it was shot in a high school cafeteria), with a group of reporters showing up and hovering around Frankenstein as he comes out of stasis. They make mention of all his replaced limbs and body parts, and we can see just a little bit of his skin under the eye holes in his mask. The rest of him is covered from head to toe in black spandex and leather.
The problem is that they build him up so much that you know there’s no way any of these other drivers are going to beat him, except maybe Sylvester Stallone as Machine Gun Joe Viterbo. Stallone plays Frankenstein’s main rival WAY over the top, but that’s part of the fun of the movie. Carradine is much more reserved in his role as the movie’s hero, but still has enough screen presence to carry the film. It’s just so weird to see these two, especially Stallone, knowing that they would go on to be in much better films.
The biggest reason to watch the movie though is its really goofy tone and comic book style violence. With big splashes of bright red blood and all sorts of motor vehicle mayhem, the movie never really takes itself too seriously, even with its discussion on America’s love of violence. Director Paul Bartel and Roger Corman also throw in plenty of T&A, adding to the flick’s kitschy vibe.
Now, the film’s extremely crude special effects and ridiculous cars may turn some people off, but because of their camp value they also probably draw in just as many viewers. The cars are actually just used Volkswagens with those bodies built around them to keep costs way down. Considering this, the cars are actually kind of creative, even the goofiest of the cars; Machine Gun Joe Viterbo’s Tommy gun-laden vehicle with the gigantic knife in the center.
The whole experience is just goofy fun, as Death Race 2000 ends up cinematic junk food that’s better to you than it is for you. It’s the rampant silliness of the movie that has made it the enduring film that it is, despite its obvious shortcomings in budget and performance. Oddly enough, the movie may still be the best of the futuristic murder-as-sport type films, beating out other similar offerings, such as The Running Man.
Once again I’ve covered perhaps too much ground with these films and will have to push another movie back to next week. Then again, I’m having so much fun with these movies that stretching it out for a few more columns doesn’t really bother me at all.
