The Car

(1977) **

Of all the knockoffs of Jaws out there, this might be the silliest. James Brolin is the sheriff of a small Utah town whose residents start getting picked off by a big, black car driven by Satan. Yep.

In a way, this movie has heart like they only did in the '70's. As Jordan mentioned, the decade was putting out some amazing examples of the art, and at this point that's what the junk food movies were trying to emulate. So we spend some time getting to know and like our characters, like James Brolin, his girlfriend and daughters, his crusty boss, and his 364 days sober deputy Ronny Cox (you'll remember him from Robocop, as evil corporate devil Dick Jones). We're actually meant to care about these people in a way we're never invited to in the 80's, when all we wanted to do was watch those teenagers drink and screw and get speargunned in the eye.

And in a way, so what? Like Snowbeast and a dozen others, this syrupy character stuff is equal parts comfortable and tedious. This isn't helped by the fact the monster is a car. A car! Just climb up the steps!

Try as I might, I couldn't engage with the scenes of danger. The first victims of the Car are a pair of bikers, at least one of whom has ample opportunity to just slam on their brakes and watch the Car zoom past them. No matter how much evidence mounted that the Car was invincible, I still couldn't get into it. One victim is killed in her house, which involves the Car supernaturally leaping four feet off the ground -- but she spends a full minute telling someone on the phone "I'm scared! I can hear that Car's engines!" without turning her head slightly to notice the approaching headlights out her window. Hard to sympathize.

Maybe this would work better if they managed to make the car scary looking, but too often it just looks like a car. That probably could've been solved with more imaginative cinematography, but even then the design just doesn't do it either. The grill/bumper combo is so huge it looks like a church organ, and while we're supposed to go "oooh" because there are no door handles, it just accentuates the fact that the Car's unadorned sides make it look like the fake-o custom job that it is. A real antique would have been scarier. To cap it off, it honks its horn obnoxiously right before each attack. "Honkhonkhonkhonk hooooooooooonk!" I like to think Satan would have a little more style.

Some of my hardcore compatriots might find this fun, but I say "meh."