Mary: (as they head full-tilt towards a rising drawbridge) Hey, wait a minute... why aren't we slowing down?
Larry: She doesn't know me very well, does she, Deke?
Deke: Not likely she ever will, with about one second to live.
--Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry
Kid in Schoolyard, 1974: And so Dirty Mary bites Crazy Larry, and they go off the road, and Crazy Larry says to Dirty Mary, 'If you try another stunt like that again, I'm gonna braid your tits.' And then Deke goes, 'When you people are through impressing each other, I'd like to get out and take a look at the car.'
Other Kid: Who's Deke?
The 1970s were a Golden Age of road trip movies, car chase scenes, and epic trash cinema. All three meet in one of the stupidest and most stupidly entertaining carsploitation pics ever made, an MGM crash into the Grindhouse and Drive-in.
It's 1974 in America. Down-on-his-luck stock car racer Larry (Peter Fonda) and his mechanic, Deke (Adam Roarke), commit a fairly disturbing robbery of a supermarket by holding the owner's (Roddy McDowall) wife and daughter hostage. They plan to pick up their dream car, a souped-up 1969 Dodge Charger1, escape the heat, and make their racing dreams come true.
Several things go wrong.
Firstly, the frequently hilarious police Captain who oversees the case, Frank (Vic Morrow) will stop at nothing to bring our anti-heroes to justice. Secondly, Larry's one-night stand, Mary "Supercrotch" Coombs (Susan George) inserts herself into their plans.
The trio zoom off in a mid-1960s Chevrolet Impala, eventually switch it out for the film's real star, the Charger, and the chase continues, with only a few moments of downtime. Fonda aptly sums it up as, "20 exciting stunts and about five minutes worth of acting. We had to make our scenes count. Adam Roarke, Susan George, and myself were sort of like The Three Stooges I guess you could say. I had a fine time making the film. It was a lot of fun."
I can't say much more. That's literally the movie. Our criminal threesome bicker and make stupid jokes while driving fast. Captain Frank directs a ridiculous number of soon-to-be-wrecked police cars and one helicopter to the pursuit. It all ends when.... that would be telling. Released in the spring of 1974, the film proved a huge summer hit, made a lot of money, and Peter Fonda went from being the star of Easy Rider to the king of carsploitation and dumb action movies.
Larry: You know what a man would do right now if he were smart?
Deke: What?
Larry: I don't know. I thought you'd know.
It's all terribly 70s. Filmed on a comparatively modest budget, as MGM films go, it features real stunts-- no model work. They had only three green-yellow Chargers to work with, so the mechanics put in long nights ensuring at least one was roadworthy on any given day. Filming took place almost entirely on location: we see actual small towns and stop in an actual roadhouse. It's period-perfect because it's real.
The script, despite its naughty dialogue, remains PG, and we get an interesting glimpse into the sensibilities of an era. Casual misogyny and homophobic slurs? Totally okay. But the swearing doesn't get much stronger than "tit" and "ass." "Kiss off" and "crotch" get used in circumstances where stronger diction likely would have been uttered. The drawbridge operator mouths the words, "Holy shit!" rather than speak them aloud. Either that, or the editors killed the sound, fearful that they might get an R-rating and reduce the lucrative teen market.
The movie also lacks the expected 70s soundtrack. We get a cheesy ballad playing over the open and closing credits that feels at odds with everything else, and a generic rock song on the radio in one scene. The movie has a retroactively curious lack of music. The previous year saw the runaway success of George Lucas's American Graffiti which inaugurated the era of the non-stop pop soundtrack for films that weren't expressly musicals or about music.
Is this a good movie? If you modify your definition, possibly. If this review suggests that you'd enjoy it, you probably will. Star Fonda was apparently gobsmacked by its success but, viewed as 70s carsploitation, it's an entertaining movie, one of the best truly stupid films of its era.
Directed by John Hough
Written by Leigh Chapman, Antonio Santean, and James H. Nicholson
Loosely based on The Chase by Richard Unekis
Peter Fonda as Larry
Susan George as Mary Coombs
Adam Roarke as Deke
Vic Morrow as Capt. Everett Franklin
Roddy McDowall as George Stanton
Kenneth Tobey as Carl Donahue
Eugene Daniels as Hank
James W. Gavin as Helicopter Pilot
Lynn Borden as Evelyn Stanton
Janear Hines as Millie
Elizabeth James as Dispatcher
Adrianne Herman as Cindy Stanton
T.J. Castronovo as Steve
Al Rossi as Surl
Ben Niems as Police Chief Markey
Bonus Seventies Movie Check-list: Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry
Glowing Fish reminds me that Beastie Boys reference this movie in "High Plains Drifter."
1. It's occasionally a '68-- they went through three Chargers during production, and I do not even want to know how many other vehicles of various makes and models. Many automobiles were harmed in the making of this film.
2. There is no second footnote. Those are supposed to be "squared" signs.