The Car | Rotten Tomatoes (2024)

30% Tomatometer 20 Reviews 53% Popcornmeter 5,000+ Ratings

Two bicyclists are run down by a strange black car in the desert near a small town in Utah. But this is just the first in a series of hit-and-run murders. Sheriff Wade Parents (James Brolin) is called in to investigate, and his deputy, Everett (John Marley), is killed by the black sedan, which, some witnesses say, has no one behind its wheel. When the car threatens a local school parade, the lives of the town's children and Wade's teacher girlfriend, Lauren (Kathleen Lloyd), are endangered.

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The Car

Critics Reviews

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The Car | Rotten Tomatoes (1) Gary Arnold Washington Post There's nothing under the surface either, no pattern or primitive fear mechanism guiding the car. What you see is what you get, and it deserves to be thrown back. Dec 21, 2015 Full Review The Car | Rotten Tomatoes (2) Dave Kehr Chicago Reader As silly as it sounds, but strangely dull. May 6, 2008 Full Review The Car | Rotten Tomatoes (3) Tom Milne Time Out Interminably drawn out, with some good special effects but its characters hauled straight out of the cracker-barrel, it has nowhere near the same minatory charge as Spielberg's Duel. Jun 24, 2006 Full Review The Car | Rotten Tomatoes (4) Dennis Harvey 48 Hills A southwestern chiller with James Brolin... Sep 22, 2023 Full Review The Car | Rotten Tomatoes (5) Steve Warren The Barb (Atlanta) The Car is still bad enough to turn you against the motion picture industry. May 6, 2023 Full Review The Car | Rotten Tomatoes (6) Brian Costello Common Sense Media Cheesy '70s horror with domestic abuse, stereotypes. Rated: 2/5 Jun 17, 2020 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

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CodyZamboni Z Exciting, Scary, Intense tale of a demonic car on a killing spree in the US Southwest, It's up to James Brolin and his deputies to stop it. Streamlined, low fat, 1970s genre filmmaking that pushes all the right buttons. Rated 4/5 Stars • Rated 4 out of 5 stars 08/15/24 Full Review S R Saw it since it was filmed in Utah and it was well done showcasing Zion, Hurricane and Washington County. However, the Satan car's plot was so poor and cheesy that it was only laughable at most parts. The music was memorable in that it set the stage for later horror genres like Jaws. RUS. Rated 2.5/5 Stars • Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 07/15/24 Full Review Matthew D Great for the time it was made Rated 5/5 Stars • Rated 5 out of 5 stars 10/04/23 Full Review Jack B So irritatingly stupid I could not sit through it. James Brolin either lost a bet, returned a favor or had a mortgage payment due. Rated 1/5 Stars • Rated 1 out of 5 stars 07/02/23 Full Review Audience Member I absolutely love this movie! That car had serious issues; it was so scary to think that a demon car could do that kind of damage. This is my kind of horror. Rated 4/5 Stars • Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Audience Member America. The late 70s. It was a very different time and place, to be sure. Fuel was scarce. Crime wasn't. We weren't yet in the grip of the 1980s Satanic Panic, but thanks to Manson, Son of Sam and Zodiac, we were darn close. And despite blockbusters taking over the cinema, there remained grimy little movies unafraid to broadcast their flirtations with the dark lord –The Devil's Rain, The Omen, Mephisto Waltzand this largely forgotten little thriller —The Car.I first saw this film in another way the 70s were different — we only had five channels. ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and a new pay channel – HBO. And unlike the HBO that you know and love today, there were no original series or blockbuster films. Just around 15-20 movies a month that would play again and again and, well, again. Anyone that grew up in the halcyon days of nascent HBO can recite many of them by heart:Flash Gordon, Sharkey's Machine, Superfuzz, Scavenger Hunt, They Call Me BruceandThe Car. I can personally claim to have seen this film over 280 times, perhaps because the summertime was all reruns when it originally aired and perhaps because it was my grandfather's favorite movie (untilTerminator 2came out and that is a story for another article).You'll notice another difference about 70s movies right from the start of this film — kids aren't just put in danger to scare the audience. No, in 1977, movies just outright killed kids two minutes into the movie and we sat there in mortal terror, watching jaws agape.Let's back up a bit. The hero ofThe Caris, quite literally, The Car. A George Barris customized 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III (Barris also created the 60s Batmobile), the secret of The Car appears to have no driver at the wheel…unless you count Satan! It has a blaring horn noise that is based on the Morse code for the letter X and it shows up just blasting that horn when you least expect it.Don't take it from me. Take it from thetwo kids, a hitchhiker and the sheriff that it smooshes. After that nice little spot of multiple vehicular homicide, The Car goes after an entiremarching band and their leader Lauren (played by Kathleen Lloyd, who you may remember fromIt Lives Again, a sequel toIt's Alive), chasing themthe whole way to a cemetery. It turns out The Car can't cross hallowed ground, so she stands and insults it and calls it names. That leads toher boyfriend Chief Deputy Wade Parent chasing the car, shooting at it and tries to get into The Car, only to discover that it has no doorhandles.Oh — if you're watching horror for beefcake, let me alert you.Amityville Horrorstar James Brolin stars as Wade and you all know that he's going to smolderingly gaze at the camera. What I didn't know is that Brolin was almost Bond forOctopussy(one could argue he played a Bond/Pee Wee Herman mashup inPee Wee's Big Adventure)! Or how deep my straight man Brolin-mance went! I kid!To protect Lauren, the Chief Deputy puts roadblocks all around her house. But The Car will not be stopped. While she's on the phone with Wade, it leaps through the air and into her house, killing her. Yep — the 70s again, when no one makes it out of movies alive, even the ones you think will.A grief-stricken Wade lies in his hospital bed, where he concocts a plan — to lure The Car into a mine shaft and blow it up real good. But oh, the brains behind that automobile. It's already waiting in Wade's garage! A chase through the desert ensues, where The Car finally is lured — by Wade and his deputy, played byRobocopandTotal Recall'sRonny Cox — into driving off a cliff where it is detonated by case after case of dynamite. Why did Jazz and Amos and all the other cops have so much TNT? Again — it was the 1970s. And even more importantly, if it seems to you that this movie is only an hour long and not packed with story, you'd be right.Then comes the most hotly debated moment of this film amongst my family, as a demonic face is glimpsed in the smoke. My grandfather held fast to his belief that The Car wasn't Satanic and was quite moral, as he only killed people who swore at it or disrespected it. Even at a young age, I was all for The Car being an amoral Son of Baphomet.Of interest to the more occult minded readers out there, leader of the Church of Satan Anton LaVey was the technical consultant to this film, lending his quote "Oh great brothers of the night who rideth upon the hot winds of hell, who dwelleth in the Devil's lair; move and appear," to the opening. One wonders what exactly the self-styled Doctor did on this B-movie potboiler other than sit in a chair in the shade and opine on breasts, the inherent Satanism of "Yes, We Have No Bananas" and Cecil Nixon's Isis automaton.Some cuts of this film show The Car surviving, slowly gliding through the streets of LA. And best of all, Kenner nearly made a toy of The Car! Yes — this scare fest for adults, one that kept me up at night way into the early 80s — was almost a toy. That said, despite the cancellation (one imagines after Kenner got blasted for making Alien toys that whomever was behind these adult movies being made into toys was promoted to President or, more likely, fired) Ertl made a collector-friendly large-scale toy in the early 2000s.One final family related post-script. For years, my grandpa had an El Camino and had altered the horn to sound EXACTLY like The Car. Upon arriving home from a long day in the steel mill, he would drive up the front yard, right up to the front window, ruining his grass, honking that ominous horn and screaming, "THE CAR IS HERE! RUN!" He did this at least five times that I can remember and surely, it was more than that. Ah, memories. Rated 5/5 Stars • Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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Cast & Crew

Elliot Silverstein Director James Brolin Wade Parent Kathleen Lloyd Lauren John Marley Everett R. G. Armstrong Amos John Rubinstein John Morris
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Movie Clips

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The Car

The Car: Official Clip - Brutality Against Bicyclists The Car: Official Clip - Brutality Against Bicyclists 2:14 The Car: Official Clip - Death to Hitchhikers The Car: Official Clip - Death to Hitchhikers 2:15 The Car: Official Clip - Trapped With the Car The Car: Official Clip - Trapped With the Car 3:35 The Car: Official Clip - Run Over The Car: Official Clip - Run Over 2:00 The Car: Official Clip - Demonic Explosion The Car: Official Clip - Demonic Explosion 1:28 The Car: Official Clip - Motorcycle Death Race The Car: Official Clip - Motorcycle Death Race 2:02 The Car: Official Clip - The Car Hates Cowboys The Car: Official Clip - The Car Hates Cowboys 2:27 The Car: Official Clip - The Car Hates Cops The Car: Official Clip - The Car Hates Cops 2:30 The Car: Official Clip - Indoor Roadkill The Car: Official Clip - Indoor Roadkill 1:06 The Car: Official Clip - Hurting the Car's Feelings The Car: Official Clip - Hurting the Car's Feelings 3:13 View more videos

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The Car

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Synopsis Two bicyclists are run down by a strange black car in the desert near a small town in Utah. But this is just the first in a series of hit-and-run murders. Sheriff Wade Parents (James Brolin) is called in to investigate, and his deputy, Everett (John Marley), is killed by the black sedan, which, some witnesses say, has no one behind its wheel. When the car threatens a local school parade, the lives of the town's children and Wade's teacher girlfriend, Lauren (Kathleen Lloyd), are endangered.

Director
Elliot Silverstein

Producer
Marvin Birdt, Elliot Silverstein

Screenwriter
Dennis Shryack, Michael Butler, Lane Slate

Production Co
Universal/Universal Int

Rating
PG

Genre
Horror, Action, Mystery & Thriller

Original Language
English

Release Date (Streaming)
Apr 20, 2016

Runtime
1h 35m
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