October 14, 2002
Why is the car in the poster smiling?
Implausabilies really should be overlooked when watching The Car. This is one of those movies where you don't just leave reality at the door, you leave it at home in drawer.
The Car is one of a hundred of those Relentlessly Pursued by a Demonic *Fill in the Blank* movies that came out in the early and mid-seventies and it has to be the funniest. The Car in question is one of those ridiculous looking muscle cars that kit-car auto magazines feature as their centerfold.
The movie takes place in the California desert someplace, too far from a major city but never 30 feet from a gas station (Just in case something needs to get blow'd up real good). The Car lurks around every turn and sneaks up on unsuspecting pedestrians, that's right it sneaks up on pedestrians, quietly.
The Car's M.O. should be obvious to anyone with a brain cell, but it doesn't flatten them under it's wheels so much as it catapults them 12 feet in the air. They die on impact which leads me to believe that they are probably landing on some really sharp rocks or they just have really brittle bones or that I'm just asking too many questions.
When the car kills someone in another car it rams them until the car flips over. There must be some volitile stuff hidden just under the roof of those cars because they all seem to explode on contact.
Coming down from wherever the nearest town is, comes Sheriff Wade (James Brolin) to see first-hand what all the fuss is about. He becomes the prime target of this car hunt when it becomes clear that The Car is on to him and just so we don't forget that the car is possessed, we get to see several POV shots from the driver's seat. The Car sees the world in red. Red, as in red devil, get it?
The movie ends with a bizarre version of a demolition derby/ chicken as the car is pushed into a deep canyon. There it explodes with a force that makes the atom bomb look like a firecracker.
In a movie designed to drive you nuts, literally, there are a million and one absuridities but the one that boggles my brain has to be this line:
"That car flew into that house four feet off the ground! And how did it know where she lived?"
Uh huh, okay.
