Crash! (1977)
AKA Akaza, the God of Vengeance, Draculas Todesrennen [Dracula’s Death Race], Death Ride
Starring José Ferrer, Sue Lyon, John Ericson, Leslie Parrish, John Carradine, Jerome Guardino
Directed by Charles Band
Expectations: High, I need some more giant 70s explosions courtesy of Charles Band.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
So last week I was pretty sorely disappointed with Full Moon’s latest offering, Killer Eye: Halloween Haunt, leading me to plumb the depths of Charles Band’s filmography in search of something sure to wet my whistle. I found it right at the beginning of the list in Crash!, a movie promising more car action than I would know what to do with. Perfect timing after my disappointment with the lack of said action in this summer’s Drive. While Crash! isn’t quite as exciting as the poster makes it out to be, it is a barrel four-barreled good time, with more crashes and explosions than you’d ever expect a low-budget film from 1977 to sport.
The plot isn’t the strong suit here, but as Crash! is Charles Band’s second directorial effort and earliest surviving film (his first film Last Foxtrot in Burbank is a sex comedy forever lost to the sands of time, perhaps for the better), it is interesting as foreshadowing for his later career path. I expected this to be nothing more than a rollicking car crash movie, but it’s actually a horror film about a driverless, killer car and a woman doing her best to avoid being killed by her invalid husband. The woman picks up a small, primitive idol at the swap meet and somehow it inhabits her car and starts driving around, blowing up other cars. I’m not sure exactly what happened, nor do I care, the explosions are great and the car stunts are spectacular, hitting notes that The Blues Brothers would echo a few years later.