Rating: C+
Dir: Charles Band
Star: Sue Lyon, José Ferrer, John Ericson, Leslie Parrish
This was the first movie directed by Band under his own name. I don’t think I’ll be chasing down Last Foxtrot in Burbank, his Last Tango in Paris spoof, even though it was edited by some up-and-coming film-maker called John Carpenter – under a pseudonym. If Band also had to use a fake name (“Carlo Bokino”), and the director still tried to destroy the prints, I think I’m good. Crash! came out six years prior to Parasite, and at least is a horror movie. In parts, anyway. It feels as if Band had also seen the recently popular Gone in 60 Seconds, and wanted to try his hand at making a car-crash feature.
These two aspects do not mesh well together. Indeed, right up until the end, I was inclined to believe these were a pair of different movies, spliced together in editing. One is the story of Kim Denne (Lyons), unhappily married to the crippled Marc (Ferrer). He tries to kill her, using a rottweiler to trigger a car crash. As you do. She survives, but without her memory: an amulet bought at a swap meet (from Reggie Nalder) gives her occult powers and red eyes. Meanwhile, her mysteriously repaired car is terrorizing the local highways without a driver, baffling police and causing multiple crashes. I must say, these are done quite well, under stunt coordinator Norman ‘Von’ Denny, and have genuine impact. As I’ve mentioned before, seventies cars were built like tanks, and hit differently.
Less successful are some editing and scripting choices. The first thing we see is the driverless car in action (again, well executed, whether through remote control or a hidden stuntman), making it seem like it pre-dates Kim’s accident. Then later, we get a dream sequence, entirely an excuse to use every single car-crash again. It’s simply repeated shots, not even alternate angles – while I said the stunts were good, they were not that good. The story is simply unclear, with the precise connection between the amulet, the car and Kim murky at best, despite the presence of veteran John Carradine in a small role as Prof. Exposition. And let’s not start on the many, easier ways to commit murder, than canine-induced automobile accidents.
Eventually, Kim regains her memory, and the two films merge, with the car going after Marc. It stalks him like a proto-slasher villain, as he tries to fend it off from his wheelchair with a shotgun. I did kinda enjoy the loopy idiocy here, including an early example of the “Wait! The killer’s not dead!” trope. However, the rest of the film only works intermittently, and the abrupt shifts in tone, from psychological domestic abuse to Smokey and the Bandit, are not well-handled by Band. While his subsequent career certainly leaned heavily into the horror elements, I probably preferred the vehicular mayhem. These sequences tended to have a better payoff than watching Lyon lie around swathed in bandages.