T.o.t.L.O. E10: “Crash!” (1976)

For the 10^th installment of Drag City’s Theatre of the Less Obvious I’m doing a very quick look at a very bizzare flick from the mid ‘70’s. Of all the movies I plan to call attention to on this here blog, this is my least favorite; unlike most of my T.o.t.L.O. call-outs, I don’t even particularly like this film, but I thought it deserved at least a quick mention because it is so weird-O-rama that you have to see it to believe it. While it still can’t approach the truly cosmic strangeness of T.o.t.L.O.’s 8^th installment The Cars That Ate Paris, its still likely to make you shake your head multiple times and ask, “WTF am I watching???”

As an entry into the “car crash genre” so popular in the 70’s, it is a typical low-budget outing with C-grade actors and unknowns (save for a brief “cameo” from John Carradine), uninspired (if adequate) cinematography, and almost no musical score to speak of. As such, it is notable only because it is so utterly bizzare, and one has to wonder which of 2 possibilities drove the creation of this movie: either A) the director found an idea and a script he liked and made it into something he thought he could sell, or B) the director wanted to pack as many car wrecks and explosions into 80 minutes that he could, and hunted around for a some semblance of a plot to string them together and came up with this. I’m voting for “B.”

As best I can explain this strange “vehicle,” The plot centers around a woman named Kim Dennison (Sue Lyon), who is hospitalized after an accident orchestrated by her possessive husband Marc (Jose Ferrer). She gains control of a strange ancient talisman by buying it from some street freak at an LA drive-in swap meet (where else would you find a Hittite artifact) which she decides to use as a key ring to keep the keys to her black ‘68 Camaro convertible (which, though its never mentioned, we can assume from looks and sound is a 350/TH350 equipped car). The little idol gives her strong telekinetic powers, but not until after her husband attempts to kill her by sicing his vicious Doberman on her while she’s headed out of their property. The dog attack causes Kim to roll the Camaro-top down, mind you-and she is believed dead until she’s found by some good samaratans who get her to a hospital. Waking from this near death experience with amnesia and unable to remember who she is or what happened to her, the talisman “activates” Kim’s new-found powers and, despite her amnesia, she uses them to remotely possess her car, turning it into an instrument of revenge.

Soon the driverless ‘vert is crossing the coutryside causing havoc, en route to “reunite” with Kim and finish off its ultimate victim: her abusive husband. As her telekinetic abilities grow stronger, the film spirals into a series of bizarre and deadly car crashes, orchestrated by Kim from her hospital bed. Meanwhile, Marc becomes increasingly desperate to stop her as the supernatural events surrounding the talisman unravel.

There’s an attempt at an emotional subtext in that Marc Dennison is in a wheelchair due to a car wreck some years before for which he blames his wife, and he’s also a professor of antiquities who has some idea what the ancient talisman is and what it can do, but all of this is subordinated to the real point of the film: car crashes! Some of the wrecks and stunt driving are pretty impressive, but they are ruined by the filmmaker’s insatiable need to blow everything up spectacularly, resulting in every crash-even minor rollerovers-ending with every car going up in a ball of flames, all of which is laughably unrealistic.

There was actually some seed of an interesting idea here, and there are a couple of creepy scenes; the sequence where the dog is killed by an unmanned wheelchair is pretty spooky, and the way Kim’s eyes turn into soulless bulging red orbs whenever the talisman starts doing its boogedy-boogedy is quite unsettling. Unfortunately, the plot is chopped up by flashbacks and foreshadowing which are used primarily to work more crashes into the runtime, and this non-linear storytelling turns out to be the biggest “crash” in the movie! Why, for instance, is Kim’s telekinetically controlled Camaro after her husband, when she herself doesn’t even remember who he is? Has the car itself come to life? Does the idol know what Kim doesn’t? They might have had something here if they had played it linearly, but this attempt at “enhancing suspense” results in the story making virtually no sense at all.

Of course in the end the evil husband gets what’s coming to him in one last fiery crash when the oft-battered Camaro finally blasts into a ball of flames itself after running him off the driveway in his wheelchair. One wonders why they chose to use that particular car for this film. It seems like it would have been much more compelling to use a big black Continental or a Cadillac deVille, or maybe one of those evil-looking finned MoPars from the late 50’s-those make great “evil cars” from what I hear! The only conclusion I can draw is, well, they had a Camaro, so that’s what they used.

This film was apparently an early effort by Charles Band. I originally thought perhaps he was another stuntman turned filmmaker a-la H.B. Halicki, but it turns out Band is a prolific horror film maker responsible for a lot of B-movie schlockfests I’ve really enjoyed, among them the Lovecraft-inspired “Re-animator” (1985) and “From Beyond” (1986) before settling down at Full Moon Features, where he helmed the gruesome and memorable “Puppermaster” series. That’s quite a body of work, so seen in that context, “Crash!” is another of those “fledgling efforts” by a filmmaker who hadn’t yet hit his stride.

Though the film has intriguing ideas—mixing occult elements with vehicular destruction—its execution is uneven. The performances, while earnest, are hampered by a disjointed script. The film’s pacing is sluggish at times, with moments of action or suspense scattered too sparsely throughout the runtime. Despite its flaws, “Crash!” has a certain B-movie charm, making it a curious watch for fans of 1970s exploitation cinema. Plenty of AMC Matador and Plymouth Satellite police cars and other ‘60s and early ‘70s big Detroit iron trashed spectacularly in that age when steel was cheap. Of course, it’s always a shame seeing all those cool old cars get demolished, but like I always say, that’s how it was back in the diz-ay. As an oddity, this is a movie that is so odd that it might be worth seeing once…and that should do it.

SO, where can you see it?

Surprisingly, this one isn’t on YouTube for free viewing, but it is available on Amazon for free streaming with a Prime account, and its also available on Plex. Perhaps more surprisingly, it has been released on both DVD and BluRay, though its production was limited and it is out of press on both formats. You can probably find some copies for sale, but I would suggest you keep the price of admission low on this one; if you don’t have a Prime or Plex account, it might be enough just to watch the clips of the car crashes on YouTube. I mean, that’s really the point, right?