Summary: We all know that inanimate objects make the best bad-movie villain, as seen in Trucks. In the case of The Car, the enemy is a strange car of undeterminable make and model, and it features bulletproof body and glass, no door handles, and tires that can't be shot out. Too bad Tupac couldn't drive one of those. Best Scene: The movie starts out like most bad movies, with the ominous car killing two bicyclers on a mountain road as they plea for their lives in a girly fashion.
Next a kinda gay hippie French horn-playing dude gets hit while trying to hitch a ride from the car (bad idea). Of course this drunk guy named Amos (surprised to find a smalltown guy named Amos?) happened to be looking out his window in between sessions of beating his wife and saw the kid getting rocked by the crazy automobile, talk about getting a show. Then we meet Wade the cop (James Brolin) and his girlfriend Lauren the schoolteacher (Kathleen Lloyd). They aren't very interesting, but they are the main characters so I had to mention them. More interesting is another cop named Luke who whips out a flask to celebrate his 2-year sobriety. Awesome. By the way, another Wilford Brimley siting, look in the background at the police station.
Amos moseys on down to the station to give his statement and this time he happens to see the police chief getting clocked by the same car, that dude Amos is bad luck. So he goes crazy and they put him in jail. The next day the car won't follow Lauren and her students into the cemetary after it chases them there so Lauren curses it out. So of course the car comes after her and drives through her house to kill her. Why? Because she cursed it out (and the Indian assigned to protect her bailed.) How vindictive. The car also kills five more cops, though I'm not sure why such a small town always has 15 cops on duty. Wade the cop frees Amos the drunk and meets up with Luke the drunk cop in the mountains with the car chasing them. Amos and Luke unload a truck filled with cases labeled 'high explosives' and wire the hillside as Wade lures the car toward them. They get their BOOM on and bury the car in dirt. As it dies, we can see a dragon made of fire rise out of the explosion. Wade points this out, but the others say, "sorry, dude, I don't think so." Was this an attempt at a sequel or did they just really want to end the movie? Probably the latter. Oh, and do they ever explain where the car comes from and why it wouldn't go in the cemetary? Nope, but I guess that's better than some stock radioactive or military-testing bullshit. |
