The Car
| The Car | |
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Promotional poster
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| Directed by | Elliot Silverstein |
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| Music by | Leonard Rosenman |
| Cinematography | Gerald Hirschfeld |
| Edited by | Michael McCroskey |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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98 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Car is a 1977 American thriller film directed by Elliot Silverstein and written by Michael Butler, Dennis Shryack and Lane Slate. The film stars James Brolin, Kathleen Lloyd, John Marley and Ronny Cox, along with real-life sisters Kim and Kyle Richards (as Brolin's daughters). It tells the story of a mysterious car which goes on a murderous rampage, terrorizing the residents of a small town.
The film was produced and distributed by Universal Studios, and was influenced by numerous "road movies" of the 1970s including Steven Spielberg's 1971 thriller Duel and Roger Corman's Death Race 2000.
Two bicyclists cycling on a canyon are followed by a mysterious matte black car (similar in appearance to a Lincoln Continental Mark III) down the road. At the bridge, the car proceeds to crush one cyclist against the wall, and ram the other from behind, catapulting him off the bridge. A hitchhiker, hoping to get a ride, encounters the car and insults it after it purposefully tries to run him down. In response, the car runs over him several times and leaves. The local sheriff's office, called to the first of a series of hit and run deaths, get a lead on the car that appears heavily customized and has no license plate, as pointed out by Amos Clemens (R. G. Armstrong) after he sees it run over the hitchhiker.
That night, in an apparent bid to kill Amos, the car instead runs over the sheriff, leaving Chief Deputy Wade Parent (James Brolin) in charge. During the resulting investigation, an eyewitness to the accident states that there was no driver inside the car, furthering Wade's confusion. Wade asks his girlfriend, Lauren (Kathleen Lloyd), who is a teacher at the local school, to cancel the upcoming marching band rehearsals for their safety. Lauren and her friend, who is Wade's deputy Luke Johnson's (Ronny Cox) wife, ask him to let them rehearse, to which Luke unwittingly agrees.
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Wikipedia