Simply Perfect

Powerful

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Bitter invalid Marc Denne (well played to the angry hilt by Jose Ferrer) tries to kill his unhappy young wife Kim (a solid and appealing performance by Sue Lyon). However, Kim survives the murder attempt and uses a strange trinket with supernatural powers to sic a lethal black car that destroys everything in its dangerous path on Marc.Director Charles Band uses the pretty silly script by Mark Marais as an excuse to go hold wild with loads of spectacular vehicular carnage complete with strenuous slow motion, plenty of explosions, and more than enough mangled metal for a dozen demolition derbies. The capable cast treat the foolish material with admirable seriousness: John Ericson as the concerned Dr. Gregg Martin, Leslie Parrish as sweet nurse Kathy Logan, John Carradine as the helpful Dr. Wesley Edwards, and Jerome Guardino as the diligent Lt. Begler. The ever-creepy Reggie Nalder has a nice bit as a weird guy at a swap meet. The sharp widescreen cinematography provides a pleasing polished look. Andrew Belling's funky-chilling score does the right-on groovy trick. Sure, this movie is basically mindless schlock, but it's nonetheless still quite entertaining in a blithely inane sort of way.

Crash! from independent film director Charles Band is an energetic but almost totally nonsensical entry in the possessed vehicle stakes. It even throws some wild and woolly occult magic into its jumbled brew, just to tangle its disparate elements a little further. One thing it does have going for it is the presence of horror veterans José Ferrer, John Carradine and Reggie Nalder, although only Ferrer gets any meaningful screen time. Sue Lyon is here too, though seeing her in a cheapjack genre film like this seems dispiriting after the early promise she showed in Lolita and Night Of The Iguana.Pretty young lady Kim Denne (Lyon) buys a curious trinket from a flea market. Later it becomes evident the trinket is a Hittite charm which can give its owner strange powers. Kim is married to the much older Marc (Ferrer), a bitter and twisted wheelchair-bound professor who holds his young wife responsible for his condition. Theirs is a totally broken relationship, and it's no surprise when Marc sets his ferocious Doberman upon Kim while she is driving, hoping to kill her and make it look like an accident. Kim survives this attempt on her life but comes out of it a disfigured amnesiac. While the police and doctors try to ascertain who she is and what has happened to her, Marc learns of her survival and tries to kill her again. Using her newly-acquired powers, Kim summons her car to come to her rescue. The driverless vehicles tears across the miles, destroying everything in its path as it races to its mistress's aid.Crash! is a complete muddle of a movie. It throws in everything but the kitchen sink yet, crucially, fails to tie it all together with any real sense of logic or narrative flow. There's nothing particularly frightening in it, despite efforts to make Lyon look creepy and otherworldly with her scarred face and orange-glowing eyes. The car is certainly not scary at all. It roams, rams, wrecks, smashes and destroys everything it comes into contact with… but the overwhelming impression is more of a Hal Needham/Burt Reynolds-style demolition derby than an ominous chiller in the tradition of Duel. Plus, of course, there's the gaping plot hole that the car is under the control of Lyon, one of the film's supposed 'good' characters. If evil Ferrer was the one guiding the killer automobile, things might make more sense. But in order to save her own life it is actually Lyon who causes the death of countless innocents. How are we meant to empathise with her when she's responsible for the death of half the road-users in the county?!? A strange, senseless and largely unsuccessful film, Crash! does not shine brightly in the possessed vehicle canon.

This movie appeared on CBS late night TV in the early 1980's. That's when CBS reran the old NBC mystery shows (Columbo, McCloud, Quincy) and some TV-movies in their late night schedule. Those were the days before VCR's, so you didn't have much choice for late night TV.Of all the bad 1970's B-movies, this film has the most absurd & disturbing opening scene. It's such an unpleasant scene, I changed channels the first time it was on. Several months later, they ran it again, so I reluctantly watched the entire movie. It opens with a couple on a road trip. You barely see a black sports car approaching from behind. Suddenly their van inexplicably just plunges off the road, and in an eerie slow-motion sequence, goes down a hill and crashes into the embankment, where it explodes into a massive fireball. It is such a distasteful and unsettling scene, it's impossible to sit through the rest of this trashy movie with the bad taste that scene left you with.The rest is average B-grade trash, only worthy for some stupid action car scenes, and for Jose Ferrer, who makes it halfway watchable. The director filmed some good car chases and stunts. But he has no heart or soul presenting the rest of the story. The remainder of the movie plays with the same distasteful, unpleasant style as the opening scene, which regurgitates in your stomach. It's too bad because the story could have been intriguing or original, but comes off as nasty.Jose Ferrer is an angry, bitter paraplegic who blames his wife (and her occult antiques) for the crash that left him paralyzed. It was that unknown car that caused the accident. She was not hurt, but he was left in a wheelchair. She deals in antique jewelry and acquires an ancient voodoo token. When she holds it in her hand, an unmanned black sports car speeds through the mountainsides by itself, running other cars off the road, causing crashes, and then speeding away with no driver.While she's driving her convertible with the roof down, Ferrer send his trained dobermans to jump in and attack her, hoping she'll crash and die. Instead she survives in a coma, then recovers with amnesia and a lot of plastic surgery.Since she has amnesia, he calls her to arrange an antiques sale. When she arrives, she doesn't remember the house, or the sauna (steam room) inside. There is one brief, frightening moment from Ferrer. As he shows her the house, he changes the subject from antiques to asking her if she remembers it. Then they get to the sauna, and an evil look comes over his face. He runs his wheelchair into her, pushing her inside, then locks her in and turns up the heat to melt her plastic surgery face, with some creepy 70's synthesizer sounds playing. Meanwhile her doctor suddenly realizes it was her husband who caused her accident and races against time to save her.

Not a bad mix of horror and massive car-crashing B-movie - for better appreciation, you see the crashes twice, once in parts, injected into the story, once mostly blocked and through some sauna haze. One point I could not figure out is that the initial accident of Mr & Mrs Denne seems to be already caused by the black Camaro.Historically, this seems to be the first movie Charles Band directed under his own name. As some funny parallel, Steven Spielberg's first was "Duel" (1971) in which a demonious truck chases cars off the road... I was thrilled to see that Charles Band had also acted, 15 years before, in "La leggenda di Enea" (1962).As several users asked for DVD availability: I bought it yesterday (at EUR 1 you don't risk much). German sound only (German title "Draculas Todesrennen" which isn't such a bad fit), no frills, Laser Paradise 1997889, production year not evident. Colors and sharpness are not perfect (maybe the DVD was made from older video tape), but OK to watch.