Chase scenes. No movie seems complete without them, especially if you’re a hardcore car fanatic. The streaking green Ford Mustang and hulking black Dodge Charger in the 1968 Warner Brothers’ film Bullitt quickly became the benchmark for all other movie and TV car chases to follow, and remains so to this day. However, for every Bullitt and Seven-Ups, there are plenty of other celluloid chases that are just as thrilling, but not as well remembered. This blog entry pays tribute to these forgotten and semi-forgotten tire-burning gems of cinema.
The 1979 CBS-TV film Death Car On The Freeway stars the gorgeous Shelley Hack (of Charlie’s Angles fame) as an ambitious young television news reporter chasing the story of her career – a murderous psychopath dubbed The Freeway Fiddler. The Fiddler spends his days prowling L.A.’s freeways in his souped up, tricked out Dodge Van, targeting lone female drivers that he then chases down and runs off the road, usually with fatal results. He gets his name from the crazed, frantic fiddle music heard blaring from his speakers every time he goes on the attack. She eventually tracks down a guy who she suspects might be the Fiddler, a disfigured loner with a love of custom vans and bluegrass fiddle music. During their tense and awkward meeting, the man is consumed with guilt and practically confesses. Once he’s caught, with both the cops and the media hot on his trail, and with nothing left to lose, he tries to make Hack his last victim. This leads to a climactic final showdown with an all-too-predictable ending.
I’m pretty sure that this movie, along with the huge proliferation of serial killers during this decade, did nothing to improve the public’s image of the lowly cargo van. If you can look past the misogynistic violence, this flick can be high-octane, low-budget fun for the average gearhead. Dig Shelley’s Datsun and all the other prime vintage iron in the background. Groovy, dude.
In the 1974 film McQ, one of John Wayne’s final roles, The Duke plays a hardboiled police detective who quits the force and becomes a private eye to track down whoever murdered his partner. McQ soon discovers that his late partner was crooked, and in business with some really nasty drug dealers. When he finds his dead partner’s stash, the dealers will do anything to get it back, leading up to this climactic scene with vintage Detroit heavy metal being mercilessly flogged on a Pacific Northwest beach.
One aspect of this scene constituted a first in modern film. A hidden air cannon, buried beneath the sand and launching a large projectile, was used to flip over the bad guys’ Impala, rather than a traditional ramp. Unfortunately, it worked a little too well. One of the stunt drivers was seriously injured and spent months recovering.
In the action flick Fire Down Below, Steven Seagal plays a government inspector who rallies a small, idyllic mountain town to stand up to the evil corporation attempting to buy the townspeople off while poisoning their community with toxic waste. Seagal has some nasty run-ins with both the local constablery and the corporation’s boss. He also romances a local girl and earns the wrath of her mentally deranged, money-hungry, incestuous brother. All of this culminates in a botched attempt on Seagal’s character’s life.
https://youtu.be/dT-qIkdWINA
The sight of that Advance Design Chevy and that old Mack DM both being totally destroyed made me rather queasy 🙁 . Even so, it’s a decent scene- even if it is a shameless ripoff of Duel.
The 1986 film Quicksilver stars a young Kevin Bacon as a New York stock trader who loses his job after a disastrously bad investment decision, and ends up being a bike messenger on New York’s mean streets. Bacon soon locks horns with “Gypsy”, a neighborhood thug who threatens and intimidates the couriers to move his illegal merchandise. When Gypsy kills one of Bacon’s bike messenger friends, and brutalizes the girl that Bacon’s character has fallen in love with, it’s war.
This scene is tailor-made for our fearless leader Paul Niedermeyer. When Paul sees what kind of car Gypsy is driving, and what happens to it, I know it’ll make his day. This one’s for you, Paul 🙂 .
https://youtu.be/GWOCxj_qvoI
A bit of trivia. Although this story takes place in New York, most of the footage was shot in San Francisco. The painting is a local artist’s rendition of the then-incomplete 105 Freeway that runs east-west from Paramount, Ca. to El Segundo, Ca. I know that freeway very well. It’s a 10-minute drive from my apartment, and I drive on it almost every day, whether for work or play.
In the low-budget film Speedtrap, Joe Don Baker plays a maverick detective helping the local police track down a mysterious and elusive car thief known as “The Road Runner”. As one might expect, there are numerous chases, but my personal favorite this one, pitting Joe’s malaise-era Charger against some punk kid in a stolen Eldorado. For some odd reason, I like the Eldo better.
https://youtu.be/K83NTmod_Go
Another chase, with Joe in a “borrowed” C3 Corvette, chasing a stolen Mercedes W109 .
https://youtu.be/ylLJnuupD_s
The mechanical carnage here will make both Moparites and GMphiles weep.
Abigail, Wanted, also titled Stingray, is a 1978 low-budget charmer that tells the story of a Corvette, two hapless young men, a large stash of money and drugs, and a ruthless woman. A young man, with his best friend in tow, buys his dream car- a red Corvette convertible. Unbeknownst to them, the ‘Vette contains a quarter of a million dollars and several ounces of heroin, stashed there the night before by a gang of low-rent drug dealers as they flee the scene of a murder they just committed. When Abigail, a cold-blooded career criminal and the gang’s bloodthirsty and foul-tempered leader discovers what’s happened, her and her dim-witted henchmen tear the town apart to get their cash and dope back, leaving the two young, innocent guys and the girl they pick up no choice but to run. And run. And run. Until Abigail and her goons finally turn on each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpXRFIG29VQ
https://youtu.be/C_Ms9H1Kk7g
https://youtu.be/-9i466ROQ0E
https://youtu.be/_KJiO7ryLYQ
https://youtu.be/xNxRdnsD9Kg
https://youtu.be/omrDrB7QBJo
Abigail is one tough chick. And she’s fine as hell. Unfortunately, she’s also a very nasty woman, if not downright psychotic.
https://youtu.be/Svv9Z4bU69c
https://youtu.be/m6yKuQcwNRU
https://youtu.be/bZB0gWgMhMw
https://youtu.be/u4DzyL711BI
Watching that poor Chevelle helplessly pitch and wallow around the slightest turns shows just how far suspension and tire technology has come in the past 40 years.
I hope you enjoyed this. There’s more to come in a future installment. Stay tuned!
The original “Italian Job” with Michael Caine is one of my favorite car chase movies.
A+
Thanks for this post! While I know some of these, like McQ, most are new to me and I definitely want to see them! Do you know if they are on Netflix?
They probably are.
The clips from Death Car and Stingray are the complete movie, broken down into segments. 🙂
McQ is great, not even just from a car chase perspective. It’s around but not free, I was looking for it a few months ago as I wanted to see it again. It’s worth a couple of bucks though, especially if you are at all familiar with Seattle for the scenery alone. It’s sort of like watching Bullitt if you are familiar with SF.
I liked the first chase in McQ better than the one on the beach. The Trans Am chasing the delivery van that ends with Wayne catching it and finding nothing inside, and then seeing the other van go by on one of the ramps overhead. Terrible quality, but the subtitles are interesting:
I forgot about this one! One of the Duke`s best non-western or war roles.
I thought the Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry was just as good as Bullitt. That Lime green 68 Charger was pretty cool!
Great collection. Keep them coming. It does hurt to see these great vintage machines destroyed, but when these movies were made they were mostly just cheap old cars. And it’s real, not the computer generated crap that passes for chase scenes today.
+1
Oboy ~ long clips I can watch as soon as I find a decent hard wired connection….
Good times ahead .
-Nate
As for the movie “Stingray”, it might bring confusion with the 1960s pupper-animated series made by Gerry Anderson, more well known for Fireball XL5, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, UFO and Space 1999.
And there’s another series who’s also titled Stingray starring Nick Mancuso who aired on NBC from 1985 to 1987.
And as for a car chase involving a Chevelle, there another one from the 1983 movie Vigilante with Robert Forster as the lead role.
Remember that show well. The gorgeous brunette he canoodled with in the pilot episode permanently embedded herself into my adolescent brain 🙂 .
LMAO, what crap movies. They really do a disservice to the letter “B” as in B movie. Glad I didn’t bother to go to any of these back then. I did take a look at the Stingray clip just to see Mopars destroyed. That scene where the streets are full on onlookers just standing there watching is priceless.
Blue Jean Cop AKA Shakedown, Sam Elliott and Peter Weller chase the bad guys jet in a Porsche, not a bad film with some impressive but unbelievable stunts.
The rear projection shots are pretty jarringly unrealistic looking, but I enjoy the chases in “It’s a mad mad mad mad world” quite a bit.
https://youtu.be/8HjTon8emoI
https://youtu.be/sQSc-7-LQdo
Those were good chases! Of course, the entire movie was kind of like a chase….
Now, split evenly among 23 shares….
You can’t imagine what it was like , seeing this star studded film in the theater in 1963……
-Nate
Probably the first move I saw that I remember well. The theater is long gone, my parents are too. I was 7 when I saw it.
Those 70’s and 80’s movies were something else! It’s what I grew up with and I still have fun watching those chase scenes or any old car scenes for that matter! Great post Chris!
You can’t have a movie chase scene list complete unless you mention the original “Gone in 60 seconds” from 1974. That is an epic chase scene!
Agreed. In my mind, that’s the best car chase ever. From what I’ve read, they wrote off 93 cars in the chase. That’s impressive!
The Driver starring Ryan O’Neal was a pretty good 70s film that was often overlooked
Love that movie, as a car enthusiast car chase movie fan I really had to seek this one out, and it’s quite surprising since it’s a pretty damn good movie to boot. Most other movies featuring a car chase sadly should be watched like porno, skip to the ******* lol
The one from the 1990 comedy “Short Time” was excellent and quite long, if a bit derivative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE2i08S3YeY
I’ll second the motion on this one–The most indestructible ‘M’ body ever!
I like the chases in the ’73 Dillinger for a self-serving reason… it was filmed in and around Enid, and I knew all of those buildings and roads perfectly. I had even done one of the ‘stunts’ before the movie did it. (Jumping down the embankment at the back of the Broadway Tower parking lot, in my ’50 Willys pickup.)
There were lots of mislocations and mistimings in the movie. Oddly, the moviemakers modernized some buildings that HAD been pure untouched ’30s, adding obvious 1970s doors and fixtures.
You couldn’t film such a movie in Enid now. Enid has gone through a remarkable renaissance in the last decade, replacing time capsules with modern and thriving stores.
Fear is the key is another obscure one. It stars Barry Newman, who any self respecting car guy should remember from Vanishing point, as well as John Vernon as the only notable actor I recognized in it. The chase is around the beginning of the movie and features a 72 Gran Torino fastback taking a hell of a beating
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFDbhIJoGIk?rel=0&w=420&h=315%5D
Wow! That Torino got the snot kicked out of it! Cool chase scene!
Funny , isn’t it ? .
Everyone hates those early 1970’s cars but they did yeoman duty in most car chases back then sans modifications , they were crappy build quality maybe but tough as anvils .
Where’s the link to ‘ Mr. Mayjestik ‘ with Charles Bronson where (IIRC) all they did was instead much heavier shocks and then beat the living crap out of a Ford pickup truck .
-Nate
Mr. Majestyk has been nearly removed from the internet. For the article I wrote about my fathers cars back in June, the only clip to be found of the chase from Mr. Majestyk had had the English dubbed over and was in black and white. That’s the one I had to use.
One of the strangest and most enjoyable chase scenes in movie history can be found in Louis Malle’s crime thriller Elevator to the Gallows (release title in the US – 1958). A punk in a stolen 52 Chevrolet convertible is tailgating a 57 300SL Gullwing coupe and nails its bumper when the chase ends at an ultra modern motel on a highway outside of Paris. Louis Malle, Jeanne Moreau, a Miles Davis soundtrack, and a great cast of cars (Moreau, the wife of a corporate head rides around in a chauffered Bentley but also drives a Renault Dauphine) – what more can you want? Available on Hulu and DVD, shown on TCM on occasion.
CHiPs! It’s been about 20 years, but I recall that pretty much every episode featured John & Ponch chasing down baddies–in between hang gliding, dirt-track racing and winning disco contests.
If TV shows count, I’ll nominate the chase from The Rockford Files:
Much of this looks like AFH and Sierra Highway back in the day .
-Nate
Very reminiscent of “Duel”.
Looks like it was filmed on the same roads around Acton.
All filmed at walking pace then speeded up Ponch could not ride a motor cycle
But, more importantly, he looked good playing a guy riding a motorcycle. In contrast to Jim Garner, who both could drive the hell out of a car and look damn good doing it.
Neither could the Fonz or Ron Pearlman (Clay from Sons of Anarchy)
Great one Chris. I’ll be watching these throughout the weekend.
And of course Charley Varrick with Walter Matthau and a mean Joe Don Baker.
A short but infamous chase and destruction scene between a 1967 Imperial driven by Joe and biplane piloted by Walter.
What about ‘Duel’ from 1971? That whole movie was one big car-truck chase. Pity the little Valiant..
Spielberg’s made-for-ABC classic! Friend of mine had that on vhs when I was in middle school and I loved it. Still do.
Can’t forget ‘Brannigan’…
I’m greatly enjoying watching these ~ I remember many cheesy Burt Reynolds movies in the 1970’s that had car chases too….
Squealing tires on dirt , wood and grass …=8-) .
Why doesn’t any one in a car chase ever use the rear view mirror instead of wasting time looking back wards ? .
-Nate
‘ Fire Down Below ‘ was a seriously crappy movie , I saw it with my then rich G.F. who had a thing for Segal .
You can clearly see the A Frame front suspension in the chase scenes .
The close up truck they used for him driving sans crashes , wound up (as so many did back then) at Aadlen Brothers Auto Wrecking in Sun Valley , Ca. for sale , as I owned an Advance Design truck at the time I stopped in to look at it , it had a 350 V8 and TH350 tranny just _barely_ tack welded into place ~ I’d not driven that dangerous junk around the block .
-Nate
The Best….
French Connection
The Italian Job-1969
Bullitt-only reason to watch it other than Steve Mc Queen
The Blues Brothers
The Seven-Ups
The Original “Gone in 60 Seconds”-the whole movie IS a car chase.
I read an article about the stunts in McQ, I recall that the air cannon was a steel pipe attached to the frame of the car, with a four or five foot section of telephone pole stuck in it ,and fired by an explosive charge. It went through a hole in the floorboard and the charge caused the car to flip over sideways. This was the first time this technique was used. I think it was Hal Needham who engineered the stunts. He was responsible for the stunts in Smokey and the Bandit.
A car chace from the British television series ‘The Sweeney’. Naturally the robbers (‘Blaggers’ in Sweeney speak) drive a Jag:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFeJAe4f9g0
The next being the centerpiece of the film ‘Robbery’, directed by Peter Yates before he directed ‘Bullett’. This is a long one, at just short of 14 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlFAn_8vuig
This film gets a long overdue Blu-Ray release at the end of August.
Two of my favorites, both with Citroens: Burt Reynolds messing up a SM in “The Longest Yard” and Roger Moore out-running the bad guys in a 2CV (!) in “For Your Eyes Only.”
Speaking of Roger Moore, the great Lotus vs. helicopter chase from ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’:
Speaking of Steven Saegal car-chasing scenes, i´d like to mention the fantastic blue ’80 Euro 745i Turbo Automatic Baader-Meinhof Wagen in the ´90 “Marked for death”…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUCRuuI5Sjk
Other favourites include the underestimated “Jade”, with David Caruso at his best…
In a word, movies with car chases ‘suck’. There are exceptions:
The French Connection (the only Best Picture academy award winner with a car chase I can think of)
The Blues Brothers
The Italian Job (1969)
Terminator
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Ronin
I could go either way on Bullitt and Smokey and the Bandit. Steven McQueen, the 1968 San Francisco ‘vibe’, and realism to police work make Bullitt okay, but the dialogue, script, and mind-numbing pace are laughable (as is with just about every car chase movie). Smokey and the Bandit is okay as mindless entertainment, Jackie Gleason’s over-the-top performance, and a reminder of how idiotic the seventies were.
Likewise, it’s not to say that movies with cars as a main theme are necessarily always bad, either (American Graffiti, Two-Lane Blacktop) but it usually doesn’t help.
Maybe the best way to put it is, the more emphasis a movie places on cars, the higher the likelihood is of it stinking.
I don`t know if most of the films that feature car chases suck, but I will say that a good deal of todays movies in general do suck. All we seem to get are sequels, prequels, remakes,tv shows turned into “movies”, “franchises” and countless superhero films. I do agree about the “French Connection”, “Italian Job”-the original and the “Blues Brothers”. These films had a solid story and the car chases were essential to the story, not gratutious add-ons.
It was mentioned earlier but The Driver should make that list as well, The chase scenes in Terminator even seemed to emulate it (tunnel shootout – which happens to be the same actual tunnel). White Lightning should make the good list too, That’s a Burt Reynolds car chase movie that really counterbalances Smokey and the Bandit.
I agree though, as much as I enjoy the original gone in 60 seconds chase the first half hour of the movie is like watching the exposition to a porno, and the later dvd releases of the movie which removed the soundtrack and substituted cheesy instrumentals makes it even worse. I’d still rather watch the worst car chase movie over the best romantic comedy though.
I find it funny no one’s mentioned my favorite movie Vanishing Point. That white Challenger kickstarted my love of pony cars when I caught it on the late night TV when I was 14. Until then, planes were my obsession, not cars.I included a link to the trailer. May not be safe for work because of nekkid hippie girl on a minibike.
An interesting bit of trivia on the nekkid hippie girl is that doing all that riding around in the hot desert sun without any clothes resulted in a bad sunburn of her lady parts.
The fact that Vanishing Point gets any kind of credit as a watchable movie, at all, is quite amazing when one considers the impetus behind it. Chrysler was shopping around the idea of a movie made around the new Challenger and simply handed over five, relatively identical cars to anyone that would make a film with them. They didn’t care if the cars got beat to hell (which they were) so long as they got them back. But they didn’t want any of them completely destroyed, which is why the final shot is that of a white sixties Camaro exploding.
The impetus behind all movies is to make money, even in the best movies made you’ll find product placement everywhere. In the end entertainment and fantasy is what dictates a watcable movie, and I find Vanishing Point quite excellent in those respects, advertisement for Dodge or not.
I find the casting of Barry Newman as Kowalski more irritating, according to the director, Richard Sarafian, Gene Hackman was slated for the role but the studio saddled him with Newman. Every time I watch that movie(which maybe I should be ashamed to admit I’ve probably seen more times I can count?) I wonder how much different that movie could have been. I always found it as good an existential road movie as Easy Rider, it’s lack of big names always kept it under the radar though and relegated it to an obscure car guy flick.
“The Seven Ups” with Roy Scheider [pre-Jaws]. The then brand new ’73 Pontiac Grand Ville gets thrashed on the streets of NY. And the Ventura into the truck at the end. Complete with same sound effects as ‘Bullit’. Same production company.
That Bullitt soundtrack absolutely ruined the chase scene in The Seven-Ups. I think the soundtrack won an academy award for sound editing in 1968 and they really wanted to get their mileage out of it. Plus, it was a freebie so they could save money. It was an idiotic move.
It’s a shame they just didn’t use the real sounds of the Pontiacs’ engines and automatic transmissions downshifting. It would have made the chase scene exponentially better.
The weirdest thing with the recycled sound effects is it sound like the volume knob was cranked to 11 in the editing room. I have both movies on my PC and if I play the chase scenes simultaneously The Seven-Ups completely drowns Bullitt out, even distorting my speakers. Had they turned the volume down I think it could have worked better, since the last thing I’d suspect from a grey 70s Ventura driven by cops is THAT kind of noise.
There’s a few scenes in Vanishing Point where I hear the Bullitt soundtrack recycled too but it was much better mixed and there seemed to be some genuine Mopar noises in there to balance it
An underrated carguy movie called Drive with Ryan Gosling as a pro getaway driver. The opening sequence is less a chase than brilliant game of hide and seek. The only other real car chase in the movie is a beautiful homage to Bullitt, complete with modern Mustang and Hemi Chrysler.The rest of the film I’ve heard called fodder for film students. That may be so but I liked it anyway. Check out Albert Brooks as a murderous mench.
Leathal Weapon 2, at the start of the movie Murtaugh and Riggs chases some bad guys in a BMW 6-series in Murtaughs wife Olds Custom Cruiser.
Not a car chase, but the scene in Die Hard 3 (New York) when Bruce Willis drive the yellow taxi Caprice through the park etc. is actually quite good. Later in the movie the chase with Willis and Jackson drives the S-class MB chased by the bad guys in a Dodge pickup truck.
To Live and Die in L.A. Great cop movie and car chase scene.