Lately I’ve been watching quite a lot of old late 60’s to early 70’s road/chase movies, and to be fair some were significantly better than others and a couple just left me wondering how I managed to endure watching them. One of them in particular has had re-make in the last few years, I am of course thinking of Gone in 60 Seconds. In my honest opinion, the original is by far the superior version of the movie, several reasons why I came to this conclusion. One man H.B Halicky, who as well as aswell as starring in the 1974 original, almost single handedly funded, produced and directed it, as well as designing the safety cage that kept the car in one piece throughout the entire film, including an unplanned accident in which the car crashed into a pole on the side of the freeway, spinning the car around, surviving this the car carried on for many more shunts and crashes throughout the rest of this truly epic car chase.
A few of them had had quite unexpected endings, for instance both Vanishing Point and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry ended very suddenly and in a ball of flames, Concrete for one a Freight train for the other, thant being said however they are both good films in their own rights. Two Lane Blacktop is a fine example of one of those that brought you to say “did that seriously just end like that”, lets just say I was expecting a little more, although not a bad film, the ending just seemed a little distant from the whole point of the story – I use “story” quite loosely, being as this was a 1971 movie. So just like every genre, there are some truly great films and then there are those that are just a failed attempt.
“They don’t make ‘em like they used to”. True! These old road/chase movies are some fine examples how to do a car chase, as lets face it nothing does it better than a big-block V8 muscle car screaming down the raod with a fleet of black & whites chasing it down. Now i’m not saying that all modern car chase sequences are rubbish, Ronin & the Bourne movies which each have truly great chase scenes in them, but the problem is, with a lot of the them is that there’s so much money put into them that when the car is slightly damaged, it’s often (not always) either repaired or sometimes I swear a new car takes it’s place in the very next scene! wow, now thats how you make a film engrosing, or not as the case may be, I am sure it’s not just me who finds this daft? I mean if they could manage it in the 60’s & 70’s why is it so hard now? Maybe it’s just late and I feel like having a little rant, but it will still irritate me the next time I see it happen in a big budget film. Install a space-frame or other kind of strengthening into the vehicle if they don’t want the vehicle to suffer catastrophic damage. For instance in the original Gone in 60 Seconds H.B. Halicky jumps the ‘73 Mach 1 Ford Mustang (modified with a nascar style space-frame throughout the vehicles body) and the very same car carries on with the rest of them film. Wiki Quote “The jump manages to achieve a height of 30ft and over a 128ft in distance – a feat which would not be easily replicable without the use of modern CGI techniques”
