An innocent summer's day, bicycling in the mountains of Utah, is marred by a psychotic demon car! 1977's The Car shows us the Devil can take many forms, even a heavily customised Lincoln Continental. I found myself thinking more of a shark, though, as the film's plot seems, incredibly, modelled closely on Jaws. It's a bit silly at times but it's a lot better than its low Rotten Tomatoes score would suggest.
The film opens with two teens on bicycles, laughing and racing each other on winding mountain roads. I said, "Get out of the water! Or off the road!" Immediately, a flaw becomes apparent when one realises there's no such thing as skinny-cycling.
These poor young fools don't reckon on the big black demon car without door handles or license plates. Who's gonna stop this roving menace? It falls to Captain Wade Parent (James Brolin).
Parent is apparently the single parent of two little girls. The other parent of the Parent girls apparently disliked Captain Parent and so the Parent family was pared down to three. But Captain Parent's a good parent and appears pairing with potential new parent for the girls, Lauren (Kathleen Lloyd).
Lauren was my favourite character in the film and she deserved a lot more screen time. She's a junior high school teacher and there's a bizarre scene where a concerned coworker shows her a nude drawing one of the students drew of her.
No-one remarks on how this drawing is professional quality. Lauren just laughs and says the kid drew her bust too big, adding that it's perfectly healthy for a thirteen year old boy to imagine his teacher naked. What a sweetheart.
In a later scene, when the car has her pinned down in a cemetery (it can't go on hallowed ground) she starts throwing insults at it. She was great. But most of the movie focuses on Parent, the apparent paragon of the parable. Brolin is pretty good, though. Ronny Cox also has a small role as a recovering alcoholic.
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