Vanishing Point

Vanishing Point ~ Now this is a film of legend. The only way it could be seen when I was a kid was on late night Friday nights on local ABC affiliate channel 6. It was notorious to many teenaged boys in the pre-cable 1970s for having ever-so-quick topless scenes the censors forgot to clip.

Later in life when I managed a video store, it was one of those films like Disney's Song of the South and John Wayne's The High and the Mighty - it just wasn't available on video. If I had a dime for how many times I had to tell some disappointed customer one of those titles wasn't available... well, I'd have a whole buncha dimes. Vanishing Point from 1971 eventually came out, as did High and the Mighty (don't hold your breath for Song of the South) but in the meantime the film achieved a sort of cult status.

The premise is simple. Vietnam vet Kowalski has to deliver a car from Denver to San Francisco over the weekend. Already exhausted, he makes a bet he can get the car - a beautiful white 1970 Dodge Challenger - there the next day, in just fifteen hours. The race begins. Pursued by the police, and guided by the words of a blind disc-jockey Super Soul in Las Vegas, Kowalski becomes a folk hero as he makes the impossible run.

Now from the above, this might sound like a precursor to Smokey and the Bandit or any of the sillier car chase movies of the seventies, and they do owe a certain extent to Vanishing Point, but this is a spiritual journey. One could even say the weird almost-psychic connection Kowalski shares with Super Soul is supernatural. This movie is a lot more than it at first appears.

Barry Newman plays the at times inexplicable Kowalski, a man on the hero's journey across a short western expanse of Easy Rider America. His companion on the car radio, with whom he shares an empathic kinship is Super Soul, played with the youthful enthusiasm of a young Stevie Wonder crossed with an evangelist in the spirit is a pre-Blazing Saddles Cleavon Little. How these two escaped Oscar nods for this is a mystery.

Another mystery is the plot of the film itself. Why does Kowalski do the things he does? Why is he driving to what is eventually his death? Does he know? And what is the weird psychic connection between him and Super Soul? Is the entire film an allegory? An after-death flashback, a loop in Hell that Kowalski must somehow keep running? There are so many theories, and will probably continue to be.

No matter what you think happens in Vanishing Point, it has become a cult film, a legend. It has inspired so many, from the kids who drove Dodge Challengers in the 1970s because of it to Quentin Tarantino who honored it in Death Proof. It is probably one of the greatest car movies of all time, and worth seeing for the fortieth time or the first. Great soundtrack, great scenery, highly recommended.

Enthiran - The Robot

Enthiran - The Robot ~ This is a film whose reputation precedes it. Called the Avatar of its country, reputedly this is the most expensive film made to date in India, and also its highest grossing film. Not strictly a Bollywood film, but more accurately a 'Kollywood' film as it was made in Tamil Nadu, it is s work of science fiction, but as with all Indian films, it is truly a creature of mixed genre.

Also known as Robot, and Robo, and Enthiran, and a dozen other titles and spelling variations worldwide, this is roughly a Frankenstein story - a scientist makes a man in his own image, scarily Elvis-like, which tries to be human but eventually is looked upon as monster. The Robot, Chitti, is played by award winning veteran Indian actor Rajinikanth, who also plays his creator. His deadpan performance as the Robot is both fearsome and hilarious.

Written and directed by Shankar Shanmugam, or simply Shankar, the film has changed the way the world views Indian science fiction. And as the film is called the Avatar of India, similarly Shankar is called its James Cameron. No doubt he is one of their greatest visionaries.

The music is by A.R. Rahman, who also did the music for Slumdog Millionaire, Couples Retreat, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and dozens of Indian movies, among others - but this soundtrack was a worldwide instant blockbuster. That's the popularity power of this flick.



The real star here is the special effects. CGI and animatronics from a company called Legacy Effects, the brain child of special effects wizard Stan Winston. From the robotics that make up our hero to the evil robot rampage to the outrageous cartoonish but reality based feats later in the film, as the evil robot fights everyone, and of course, the climax, the effects are king. More cars and guns than you have perhaps ever seen on the screen. Mind boggling. Matrix and Terminator, step aside.



This movie has everything. Adventure, romance, comedy, musical sequences, violence - both cartoonish and realistic (lots of gunplay and a very scary and racially offensive attempted rape scene, so it's not for the kids), it's all here. In many ways it's a superhero movie sans costumes. This three hour long Tamil science fiction masterpiece, like Avatar, must be experienced at least once. Recommended.

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry ~ There was a time when I was a kid that I thought Peter Fonda was the coolest guy on Earth. He was in stuff like Race With the Devil and Futureworld and of course Easy Rider, so he could do no wrong. He was also in this charmer.

Until I saw Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry again recently I could remember very little about it. I remembered it starred Fonda, and Susan George, in the bizarre title roles, it was a car chase flick, and it was frequently one of channel 6's late night Friday movies - you know, the ones I wasn't supposed to be staying up watching - both because of the content, and because it was past my bedtime. Little else was retained by my memory.

Upon watching it again for the first time in almost maybe forty years, I am struck by how really bad it is. It may have been okay or mediocre for the time (1974), but let's just say the years have not been kind. Rather than an interesting time capsule like other seventies films I've watched recently, this is a creaky relic.

Loosely based on the novel "The Chase" (later known as "Pursuit") by Richard Unekis, one can easily see the influence of earlier films of the genre like Vanishing Point, Two-Lane Blacktop, The French Connection, and even Bonnie and Clyde. The problem is that you can also see this film's own influence on the destruction and mocking of the genre later in the decade by stuff like Smokey and the Bandit, Eat My Dust, and The Blues Brothers. This is the beginning of the car chase movie becoming a joke, amusing or not.

This movie is so seventies, down to the theme song by Marjorie McCoy being used throughout as if choreographed by Quentin Tarantino, to the crazy fashions and ugly cars, to the endless shots of the scenic southwest. And the late Vic Morrow wonderfully eats up the screen as the obsessed pursuing cop. It's worth a look for the curious, but it's no masterpiece, but Peter Fonda is still cool.