L'enfer en 4ème vitesse

If you're going to make a film called Car Crash, then you better put some car crashes in it! Luckily for us, the director here is Antonio Margheriti, a man who almost always delivers the good when it comes to films called Car Crash or thereabouts.

In the US somewhere, mates Joey and Vittorio Mezzogiorno (who played a similar role in Stelvio Massi's Speed Cross) are travelling through America, taking part in demolition Derbys. Joey's just won a race and angered the local mafia, and now both have had a bit of kicking and warned that they are absolutely not to take part in the big illegal race that's happening down in Mexico. This is like a red rag to a bull for our boys, but as the Mafia took their car as a precaution, how are they supposed to enter the race?

Thus begins a road trip as our bromancing guys head for the border, get a car that only costs them the life of a dear friend, pick up a lady friend who tries to Yoko the whole deal, and get caught up in the crazy rich guy games of rich guy John Steiner and his grumpy butler. I can't tell if Steiner was great or crap in this, but his eccentric rich guy act certainly livened up the place. Can the guys get to the end of the film in time for the big destructive race?

After some slight fannying about, Margheriti kicks things into high gear as we get car chase after car chase, including Joey racing Steiner through Steiner's estate and destroying the place, fake cops trying to do a drive-by on our lads, and Joey taking on Sla Borghese in the explosion filled grand finale. I'll tell you what - my copy was pretty blurry, but Margheriti's model work was well integrated into this one - I couldn't tell what was what.

I'm sure none of this was meant to be taken remotely seriously and imagine it was just a way to make money off the back of films like Convoy and Smokey and The Bandit. We want car crashes, and we got them. Freeze frame ending too. God bless the eighties and all who crashed cars during her!

I suppose, if you are some sort of gearhead or automobile enthusiast, you might find something to hold your interest in this movie but, other than that, this one is a snoozer with only nostalgia going for it. Honestly, I didn't even like these kinds of car-centric / racing-centric films even back in the day and found this one exceptionally tedious with minimal action, predicable plot with love interest tag-on, and a lack of any grit or nudity, aside from the fact that these guy seem to think nothing of dudes flying off the roads and getting themselves crushed or blown up as a result of their "racing" shenanigans. Tame, dumb stuff that appeals to the lowest common denominator--and I usually like the lowest common denominator. Deserves to be lost and forgotten.

Crash Course has it all...and none of it good. The plot is just a thin piece of floss used to hold together some of the most uninteresting car chases ever filmed. Somehting about gangsters and owed money...who cares? Let's just all enjoy a young and fit JOEY TRAVOLTA prancing about town in the tightest jeans ever caught on film. If the overdubbing doesn't distract you, Joey's hair will. Brother JOHN must've have taken some tips from JOEY when he did SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER! Did I forget to mention the story? There really isn't one. Unless you have an extreme TRAVOLTA FETISH, there is no reason to sit through this complete waste of time. I wish Joel, Servo and Crow T. Robot were there to get me through!

Paul (Joey Travolta) is an ace driver and at times an illegal and freelance racer, while Nick (Vittorio Mezzogiorno) is a wizard of mechanics, they form a perfect team of auto racers. By winning a rigged race and Paul had to leave victory to a rider of a team in the pay of a gangster named Wronsky (Ricardo Palacios), our friends are forced to temporarily erase circuits; to get away the wrath of Wronsky and his henchmen (Sal Borghese). Then the reckless drivers get involved with the usual gang of goons who proceed to make their life painful . Along their risked adventures they meet Janice Johnson (Ana Obregon), an antiques dealer, who falls in love for Paul. Thing go wrong when the three of them go to the house of the wealthy Kirby (John Steiner) and his snooty butler Gershwin.

Formula thriller with noisy action , thrills , crisply edition , tension , intrigue , and loads of noisy races. A routine thriller dealing with the relationships between three friends: Joey Travolta, Vittorio Mezziogorno , Ana Obregón in the world of car racing competitions, accompanied by other prolific secondaries in a large number of Spag Westerns and other Latin sub-genres. The main duo Joey Travolta and Vittorio Mezzogiorno are threatened by a mobster not to participate in the car tournament called the 'Race of the Dead', but the stubborn pair are determined to compete at any cost. The picture was unevenly written by four screen writers: Marco Tullio Giordana, Massimo De Rita, Concha Espina and Margheritti himself, being regularly shot by Antonio Margheritti in his peculiar style .Antonio was considered to be one of the best Italian craftsmen , making a nice career, shooting all kinds of genres. Here he delivers frenetic action, suspense, thriller and violence enough along the nail-biting flick. There is a good stuntwork with risked races , pursuits and cars jumping here and there.

This is a mostly Italian film, in the early 1960's Italians made movies about Gladiators known as Peplum or Sword and Sandals , then they made Spaghetti Westerns , then Spy Movies , Gothic Horrors , War Flicks , Giallo Slashers , Crime Trash Epics or Poliziotto , Sex comedy , Rampaging Shark thrillers , Star Wars ripoffs , and eventually Racing Movies . This Car Crash(1981) belongs to car races sub-genre in which protagonists competing in dangerous circuits trying to force each other off the road, combined with a threatening mobsters subplot . Stars Joey Travolta as a brave racer whose role gets involved in problems when he's blackmailed along with Vittorio Mezzogiorno as the sympathetic expert on car mechanics. And there're various familiar faces, habituals of the prolific Italian and Spanish sub-genres of the sixties, seventies, and eighties, such as Ricardo Palacios, John Steiner, and the eternal secondary and stuntsman Sal Borgese. A nice cast in this one doing their bit , but the story is rather small scale and slightly dull and tiring in parts . It makes up for the excellent races taken from real competitions , though the car crashes are lousy stock footage , as well as the exciting climax final of the movie. And with some hilarious use of miniatures (of which the director was an expert with continuous use in his films, as well as explosions) and scale models of toy cars jumping over trains or cliffs.

It contains atmospheric and colorful cinematography by cameraman Hans Burmann. Likewise , catching and moving musical score in the Eighties style, composed by means synthesizer, including some songs at the time .The motion picture was average but professionally directed by terror/action/adventure expert Antonio Margheritti, and it displays some failures and flaws . Antonio was assisted by his son : Edoardo Margheriti who usually served as second unit filmmaker . Antonio often used pseudonym Anthony M Dawson, he was born in Italy 1930 and passed away in 2002 . Italian writer director of horror and exploitation films, a former university engineering student who began shooting in 1956 . Antonio directs with ordinary aplomb and being especially known for films as ¨Yor, Virus¨ and ¨Horror castle¨. He was specialist in model-making, optical effects , FX, miniature as floods, scale models and explosions . He directed all kinds of genres such as wartime : ¨The last hunter, Tornado, Codename Wild geese, Der Commander, Command Leopard¨ . SCI-Fi : ¨War of planets , Planet of the prowl, Criminal of the galaxy, Yor the hunter from the future, Treasure planet¨ . Spaghetti Western as ¨Joko, Dynamite Joe, The stranger and the gunfighter, Take a hard ride, Ghosts go west, Joe implacable, God said to Cain¨ . Terror as ¨Virgin of Nuremberg, Cannibal Apocalypse, Alien from deep, Flesh for Frankenstein¨. Action : ¨Operation Goldman, Indio, The squeeze, Cyberflic¨. Rating Car Crash(1981) : 4.5/10. Average but acceptable and passable, at times.