Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Car [1977 Film]

[Blog contains some spoilers.]

Here is a movie my fellow author Shawn O'Toole had been recommending that I watch for years. We finally did something of an unofficial trade the other day. I watched The Car while he watched The Peanut Butter Solution. It was all in good fun, mind you. But after finally seeing The Car for the first time, I actually felt bad that I had not seen it sooner. There are only a handful of movies I would give a perfect score to... and The Car is one of them.

The Car is a 1977 film about a driverless, demon-possessed car that is murdering people. When I first heard about it, I actually thought it was more of a 50's or 60's film that was created as horror fluff for drive-in movies. Boy was I wrong. Leave it to the 70's to make a silly idea awesome. I've seen it happen time and time again.

Every detail of this movie is taken so seriously that I had no choice but to do the same. The car itself was not just some random vehicle. They custom built the thing in order for it to seem familiar yet somehow alien. The idea was perhaps to let you know that this thing isn't normal. For example, the doors have no perceivable way to open them. The sides are pretty flush and smooth all the way across, almost giving the illusion that there aren't actually any doors there. The headlights seem particularly small surrounded by a huge bumper and a perfectly square grill. The effect makes it look like some sort of creature that's staring at you. The windows are tinted in red (although sometimes they looked gold to me.)

The car had it's own language. It had 2 main horn honks that it would do. It did a rapid fire "BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!" when it was taunting its oppressors. Once it killed someone it had a sort of four-beep laugh, "BEEP - BEEP BEEP BEEP!" I know it seems silly but the effect was actually a bit terrifying.

The people of the town acted realistically to the strange phenomenon. Everyone was convinced that this was the act of some murderer who was driving the car. It wasn't true, of course. It was the car itself by dint of the thing that was possessing it that was doing it. One of the main points of the film was the concept of how difficult it is for people to believe in such things. It actually makes it hard to fight supernatural beings if you can't bring yourself to see what's right in front of you. This is a point I have brought up a few times in these blogs.

I also want to mention the fact that this car would become particularly aggressive towards those who insulted it. Yes, it would kill indiscriminately, but if you went out of your way to mock it, it would go out of its way to slaughter you. There was a sort of hatred there that was barely noticeable, but the subtlety of it made it seem real and powerful.

I don't really want to spoil anymore then that. I do, however, want to say that this movie was panned by critics for having a silly plot and bad acting. I completely disagree. In fact, I'd go so far as to call it a perfect movie. I rarely say this. Even my favorite movie of all time [The Black Hole] is still flawed. The Car was perfectly presented. The acting was phenomenal, even by today's standards. The characters felt real, and the car itself was perfectly terrifying for what it was. Highly recommend!

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