..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Wednesday, May 21, 2003

“Stay off the moors. Stick to the roads. . .”
-An American Werewolf in London



THE CAR CHASE



Who was the first to do it? Someone somewhere slid over their hood, jumped into the driver’s seat and peeled out (Well, maybe not peeled out, since the first chase probably involved horses. Maybe a horse could peel out on wet grass though...) and then someone else followed them. It probably happened all over the world at the same time, just like the cave men who invented wheels. it wasn’t just one wheel, it was spontaneous wheels everywhere. And all they needed was four cave men to roll wheels out of their caves at the same time and they'd have a car. Then, someone invented movies...

The Best Car Chases of All Time:

1.) Ronin
last chase in the movie, silver sports cars going Mach 12. lot’s o’ traffic, a real sense of danger for the characters. Too bad the movie blows. Perfect chase though. No music for the first 2/3rds of it. Okay, maybe it should have stuck with no music the entire time. Still, this sequence is as close to perfection as a car chase in a movie has ever gotten.

2.) Mad Max
the first chase in the movie. two ugly yellow Fast-and-the-Furious-looking police “interceptors,” a motorcycle driven by a guy named Goose, and anyone named Goose ain’t gonna last long, all chasing "The Nightrider" into some construction. a great chase, a real sense of danger for the stuntmen. how many aussie day-workers were “killed or injured during the making of this film?” Rumor has it that they got paid in beer. the chase, and the movie, starts kind of lighthearted, then things quickly escalate into serious vehicular mayhem. a van, a camper and a baby all wander onto “Anarchie Road” at the wrong time.

3.) The Driver
the last chase in the movie. Camero Vs. Red Pick-up Truck. Cat and mouse in a warehouse, with a very pleasing crunch when the mouse finally gets caught. What makes this chase so satisfying is the build up to it when the bad guys make the mistake of having the hero test drive one of their cars with them in the back seat. The nameless “driver” bashes the fuck out of their ride, scraping it against every sharp corner he can find. A beautiful punishing scene

4.) Mad Max II: The Road Warrior
the last chase when Max tries to drive a decoy truck full of sand through about fifty screaming apocalyptic nutjobs and their custom vehicles. bizarre muscle cars, dune buggies, harpoon equipped El Caminos, jet-powered forklifts all take their turn under Max’s eighteen wheels. Watch close for what happens to The Humungous’ two hostages when Max slams on the brakes. Oops. The death of Max’s ride ("the last of the V-8s”) is more tragic than when that tornado hit Little House on the Prairie and Charles lost his faith. Seriously though, this movie might be the most satisfying view of the future i’ve ever seen. i want to collect gasoline from car wrecks with cracked frisbees. i really do. Maybe someday...

5.) Bullitt
you know what chase. Mustang Vs. Dodge Challenger. Mustang wins. this chase has been overrated, then it was underrated. i put it at number five because it effectively blurred the line between reality and fiction when Steve McQueen clicks on his seatbeat and stabs the gas...then does all the driving. it's not really a movie anyone after that (kind of like when he slapped his wife/co-star in the face in The Getaway) sure, maybe he’s like Jackie Chan and he’s just a stuntman pretending to be an actor but we’re talking driving not fighting. fuck The Great Escape motorcycle jump, this was Steve’s defining moment.

6.) Mad Max III: Beyond Thunderdome
the last chase where Max doesn’t really drive a train full of kids to a dead-end escape through the desert. more bizarre dune-buggies ramming those metal wheels like moths to the flame though. maybe it was just the nostalgia of seeing desert + Max + wheels + Evil Village-People-looking-bad-guys and hoping that combination would still equal perfection. maybe it don’t. maybe he's not all that "mad" in this movie. maybe the “last of the V-8s” is being pulled by horses (say it ain’t so!) in the opening scene but it’s Mad Max so it’s guaranteed a spot on the list.

6 1/2.) Grand Theft Auto III
this part of the list is like the half floor in Being John Malkovich. this is where the Matrix Reloaded chase would be if it wasn’t disqualified for turning into a pussy-ass videogame. but then i thought about that and decided that Grand Theft Auto III gets the spot because you can take your chase into the park with a five-star wanted level and stand on that little island and shotgun police and FBI cars out of the sky when the computer sends them flying off the bridge above you by mistake. cars screaming over your head on fire while you just keep lighting them up. like my friend matt said when he saw that happen: “it’s like the end of the world.” see, this is the videogame that deserves the slot. Matrix Reloaded is just a videogame that you can’t play.

7.) The French Connection
Gene Hackman steals a car to chase the bad guy riding on the elevated train above him. he seems to be killing (or at least injuring) several innocent people during his pursuit. Hackman plays Popeye Doyle, the first of the Dirty Harry type cops and he does a fantastic job gritting his teeth and screaming and honking the horn. and that horn is like the baby crying in Eraserhead. the whole thing must have been very unnerving back in the 70s. a little tame these days but in today's movies you never get watch the cop shoot the bad guy in the back in frustration at the end of the chase.

8.) Raiders of the Lost Ark
No, it’s not called Indiana Jones and the...that more bullshit revisionist history from fucking Lucas. but you almost forgive him for the name change when you see that truck scene. good guy crawling all over that truck like a chimp. lots of Nazi slipping under the wheels, cheap shots from everyone. maybe it’s more like a fight scene that a chase scene but that truck is lovingly filmed and gives the scene lots of momentum. and this scene is right after what is arguably one of the greatest fist fights of all time: Jones against a big bald Nazi with the help of a propeller. what a sweet fucking brawl that was. those guys were throwing bombs. fist fights, that’s a list for another time.

9.) To Live and Die In L.A.
the chase about halfway through. when the 2 “good” guys screw up their scam to steal drug money from one group of criminals to buy counterfeit money from a bonkers Willam Defoe. turns out the deal they were ambushing was being staged by the authorities for a bust and our heroes have to drive the wrong way through traffic to escape. agents materialize around every corner as it starts to dawn on the them that they fucked up. at least it starts to dawn on one of them. the other one, William Peterson from Manhunter and CSI, keeps his head, happily flashing back to his recreational bungee jumping from the opening scene (the birth of extreme?) this man follows the most important rule of the road, he "don't lose his composure in a high speed chase,” just like Tom Waits said. of course he can’t follow the other rule; “One-Way Traffic.”

10.) The Hidden
the first chase in the movie. aliens are among us. and you’d never guess. until they start stealing Porches and Ferraris and rocking to bad heavy metal music while mowing down old people in wheelchairs. this is a great opening to a movie (right up there with The Last Boy Scout) where the crowd is shocked into a satisfying kind of stupor. movie starts with some crazed looking business man robbing a bank, tearing ass down sidewalks in a black Ferrari, nodding along with the music and grinning while plowing through police road blocks (with Twin Peaks’ Agent Cooper as the good alien, doing his spaced-out Agent Cooper thing two years early). the audience is as confused as the cops and for a while you think you’re strapping in for the greatest film of all time. It isn’t, but for a second you think it might be.

runners-up (runner-ups?):

11.) Goldeneye
Tank vs. Peugeot. bit of a mismatch. Bond, driving the tank, accidentally destroys St. Petersburg as a result. but don’t tell me those tiny foreign cars sprinkled all over those streets weren’t destined to be chewed under a tank tread. i think they were trying to say something profound about the end of an era with all the Russian monuments and historic symbols being destroyed.
and the message is clear: tanks fuck shit up.

12.) Terminator II: Judgment Day
Truck vs. Harley vs. mini-bike. i think the truck plowing through cars when the T-9000 first jumps on is better than the famous chase through the reservoir, but still lots of twisted metal. hate that kid though. the helicopter smashing into the Swat van later is sweet.

13.) The Blue Brothers
it’s a comedy so sometimes it’s easy to forget that this movie always seems to be on the brink of Carmageddon.

13 1/2.) Highlander
no one is really chasing him but the bad guy stealing the car and driving through pedestrians and oncoming traffic with a screaming passenger is just too much like Grand Theft Auto Vice City to ignore. the bad guy is also singing Tom Waits which then morphs into Queen. and Queen wrote the song “I’m In Love With My Car” so there’s some kind of synchronicity going on here that is bigger than all of us.

BONUS LISTS!

The Best Anti-Chase:

1.) Wages of Fear/Sorcerer
same movie done twice, thirty years apart. both excellent. trucks hauling nitro through the jungle at about 5 mph. the building-the-trucks scene in Sorceror to the tune of Tangerine Dream makes me want to build a truck to die in too. the original is a little Frenchified but both movies are twitchy/sweaty masterpieces

2.) Way of the Gun
when the two guys take turns sticking their feet out and walking their cars for some reason. not sure if it works but it’s got to be some kind of important milestone in car chases.

3.) Fargo
just when you think the chase is about to start, the taillights flicker in the distance and one of the cars is upside-down in the snow. tragic because of the young lives, and the chase, cut short in its prime. sniff. what's worse?

The Best Movies That Are Sort of One Big Chase But Don’t Really Contain A Single Good Chase:

1.) Two-Lane Blacktop
i know this movie is about a race because that’s what the nameless (goddamn i love nameless) characters said. but for some reason, i can’t remember ever seeing one. i remember some mumbling about tearing out the heater in the heroes car to make it faster, but i can't remember a race. i remember some tough talk from the rival driver, but no one seems to win. i can't even remember the cars. the slowest race/chase movie ever made. for some strange reason, against all of my instincts, one of my favorite movies.

2.) Vanishing Point
very symbolic. dude takes “speed” then decides to drive from Denver to San Francisco in fifteen hours for no good reason. he’s helped by a psychic DJ named Supersoul. true story. and guess what? another Dodge Challenger. problem with this movie is the fucker keeps stopping and getting out of his car. perfect ending though.

3.) Smokey and the Bandit
good wrecks and some good crunches. Buford T. Justice's magically shrinking cop car is funny. but it's a comedy and it makes you long for the destruction that reached biblical proportions in The Blues Brothers.

4.) The Getaway/The Getaway (1993)
both versions have great moments when the movie stops cold so the hero can shotgun the shit out of a cop car. so satisfying they did it it twice. also in both versions the movies stop so the leading men can smack their co-stars/wives across the face. i think McQueen hits his wife twice though. and Baldwin gets hit back so i'm leaning towards the original. trivia note: written by Walter Hill, the man responsible for many an existential masterpiece, including number three on the big list, The Driver.

5.) Duel
cool evil oily truck, but it’s a made for TV movie.

6.) The Hitcher
lots of cops get killed by C. Thomas Howell and the bad guy from Blade Runner. or is the guy from Blade Runner just a figment of the kids imagination and he’s a one-man cop slaughterhouse? maybe like the dude in Fight Club!? actually no. i was hoping though.

7.) Joy Ride/Jeepers Creeper
both rip-off Duel for the opening third of these movies. and both do it better. too bad they (sigh) start getting off the road and out of the cars. hate when they do that. best double feature since the crazy rabbits in Donnie Darko and Sexy Beast.

8.) Death Race 2000
some cool goofy Autorama-looking rides. the creepiest thing is the strange opening credits and music. what the hell was that?

9.) North By Northwest
the first mindless action movie. no good chase to speak of but some excellent drunk driving.

Some Crazy Cars:

1.) The Car
big limousine looking thing with red-tinted windows. driven by THE DEVIL. huge impact on me as a child. i thought we were rooting for the Car until the end. the equivalent of the Black Sox scandal on my young mind.

2.) The Wraith
early Charlie Sheen classic. rips off High Planes Drifter (some called it High Planes Dragster or High Lanes Drifter, i call it the 80s) Audrey from Twin Peaks doing her Audrey thing two years early. Charlie comes back to life as a combination space-alien/Dodge Interceptor concept car. Jesus Chrysler another fucking Chrysler. at least it ain't a Challenger. The car/Charlie hunts down and kills the lamest gang since the home intruders in Weird Science. however, some very impressive fiery wrecks rolling down mountains.

3.) Christine
Stephen King and John Carpenter rip off The Car and do enough cool shit with the idea to be forgiven. the '58 Plymouth Fury pulsing and heaving and creaking to restore itself is almost orgasmic. Speaking of...

4.) Crash
these cars kill too, but that’s an accident. they really just want to fuck.

The Best Chases With Vehicles That Don’t Count:

1.) Ben-Hur
hear about the Roman transsexual? Ben Hur? get it? sorry. not since high school boys cranked Queen’s We Will Rock You before their football games have straight males been so excited and confused at the same time. you’ve all seen the chariot race by now right? how about that rowing scene though? That’s a chase scene, I think they were being chased but they weren’t allowed to look.

2.) Darkman
Darkman hanging off the helicopter bouncing and running off the tops of traffic still makes me smile.

3.) Abyss
decent little sub chase ending with the bad guy getting smashed from the water pressure like an empty beer can.

4.) Black Rain
nice little dirt-bike chase through that farm. ends with a solid fist fight that shows how American right hands and cheap shots can defeat that sneaky Kung-Fu any day.

5.) Face-Off
i’d kind of forgotten about the boat chase until i heard someone angrily describe it as “the director jerking off onto my face.” any chase that gets that kind of reaction has to be mentioned somewhere.

6.) Runaway Train
train with escaped convicts heading for a dead-end. lots of arguing. oddly touching ending.

7.) True Lies
the horse chasing the motorcycle through the hotel. and the two Harrier jets taking out the terrorists on that bridge.
Pilot: “will the nukes go off if we take out the bridge?” Schwartzenegger: “No.” then he turns and does this guilty shrug to Tom Arnold. funny shit. movie also has a loving kiss in front of a mushroom cloud.

8.) Hard Rain
the jet-ski chase through the flooded school. who wouldn't want to do that? there's a kind of madness to that scene that i think is great. any time you flood a house strange shit happens. Deep Blue Sea had sharks in and out of that flooded lab, opening doors, learning how to use ovens (i was waiting for a shark to get on a phone and try to sucker a pizza man) and Dagon has people reverting back down the evolutionary ladder and swimming through their homes. someone should make a movie called Hard Black Rain to cause even more confusion when i go to rent these movies.

9.) The Long Riders
blatant Wild Bunch rip-off when the James Gang rides out of town after their fucked up robbery. Slo-mo bullet wounds and backward bullet noises are impressive as hell though. that scene is better than most movies. especially this one.

there. the list may change as i remember more of them. for now i'm thinking it's done.

Coming soon: the greatest fist-fights of all time. again, computer bullshit is instantly disqualified. maybe that wire shit too.

::: david - 2:49 PM [+] :::
...