The Car (1977) – Review

In 1975 Steven Spielberg changed the face of modern cinema when he unleashed Jaws the father of the modern blockbuster, but a twenty-five foot shark was not the only monster Mister Spielberg is responsible for as his film lead to countless Jaws rip-offs. Now some of these rip-offs dealt with killer sharks but many broached out a bit; Dino De Laurentiis gave us Orca about a vengeful killer whale while William Girdler took Jaws onto land with his 1976 film Grizzly which is almost a carbon copy of Spielberg's film but just in the woods, but my favorite Jaws rip-off is Elliot Silversteins's The Car.

The premise for The Car is beautiful in its simplicity; a small town in Utah finds itself in the cross-hairs of a demonic car and only a small group of stalwart heroes have a chance in stopping these four wheels of evil.

Trying to make Grilled-Cheese out of two bikers.

The film starts like Jaws with a young couple out for some fun but in this case biking not swimming. The Car mercilessly hounds the poor kids with its blaring horn a harbinger of death, but unlike Jaws both the girl and the boy are killed with girl being scraped against a stone railing and the boy being sent off a bridge to a spectacular 196 ft fall.

Later a French horn playing hitchhiker flips-off The Car for almost running him down so The Car backs up and runs him over several times. This death is witnessed by abusive husband Amos Clemmons (R.G. Armstrong) which brings the local law enforcement in on the case.

"So what are we thinking here, music hater?

The main law officers in this town consist of Sheriff Everett Peck (John Marley), Chief Deputy Wade Parent (James Brolin) who is the single dad to two cute little moppets (real life sisters Kim and Kyle Richards) and is dating local school teacher Lauren Humphries (Kathleen Lloyd), and then there is Deputy Luke Johnson (Ronny Cox) who is a recovering alcoholic and who falls off the wagon when the death of the two bikers is eventually discovered.

"I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue."

Sherriff Peck believes they have a "Crazy on our hands." And has an all points bulletins put out on the strange vehicle. Unfortunately for him The Car doesn't make itself easily tracked down and the Sheriff finds himself to be the latest victim, what is interesting to the now Sheriff Wade is that The Car swerved to avoid the wife beating Amos Clemmons to then run down Sherriff Peck. It seems The Car has an interesting moral code.

Doesn't pay to be a good man in this town.

And of course no one listens to the old Native American woman who says there was no driver in The Car. Wade tells Deputy Luke to cancel the school marching band practice until they find this killer, but Luke has been hitting the bottle and forgets. When the teachers and kids are down at the parade grounds practicing a strange wind blows up and soon the blaring of The Car's horn can be heard. There is a fantastic tracking shot where we just see the roof of The Car skimming along the ridge as it arrives and it is just like watching a shark fin cut through water.

Everyone runs for cover as the dust cloud of the approaching car nears and just when it looks like we are about to get a lot of little kiddie fatalities Lauren leads them all into an old cemetery. The Car doesn't enter it. Lauren taunts the unseen driver but it just roars around the little cemetery causing more dust but it never crosses the boundary. It isn't until later that Luke suggests that maybe it couldn't get the kids because the cemetery is hallowed ground.

"You're a chickenshit! Scum of the Earth, son of a bitch! "

The police eventually arrive and they proceed to try and catch The Car. This is when the characters in this movie start to really wonder about just what they are dealing with as one police officer fires his shotgun repeatedly at The Car to no effect and then finds him and his car pushed off a cliff, while two other police cars are destroyed as The Car does a spectacular barrel roll over them.

Simply put this stunt is incredible.

Sheriff Wade gets his chance at The Car and after firing several shots at almost point blank range into the windshield to no effect he approaches The Car. The window rolls down slightly and then the car door pops open but just as Wade is just about to get a look inside the door flies the rest of the way open knocking him down, and then The Car seems to vanish in a blinding light.

While in the hospital recovering from his encounter with The Car our Sherriff discovers that he's lost six police officers