Fine di un giorno di festa

This movie amounts to little of significance, but it has for some reason stuck in my consciousness ever since I saw it. With a well-known cast, I am a bit surprised it doesn't turn up occasionally on late-night or weekend small-station airings. The "smash-up" of the title is a massive 40 or 50-car accident on the Southern California freeway which both opens and closes the film. After the initial footage of the accident, the film skips back a day or two to tell the stories of several of the victims: a woman having an affair with a married man, some young criminals on the lam, a biker gang, and an elderly couple (the wife suffering from cancer), among others. The action leads back to the wreck, which is reshown in greater (and gorier) detail, followed by its immediate aftermath. The acting is rather good as I remember, especially Sian Barbara Allen as the "other woman" and Buddy Ebsen and Harriet Hilliard (Nelson) as the sweetly tragic elderly couple. As I've been writing this, I realize how much I'd like to see it again. I guess that amounts to a fairly strong recommendation.

After years of disaster films set on planes, ocean liners and even on trains, we finally got one set on the freeway. Other than that, it is just like the rest of the seemingly endless parade of mid-1970's disaster epics. Also, the characters were just like the ones in the others. You had the lonely rich middle age lady who finds love with a trucker, the older couple facing a terminal illness, the young lovers on the run and the vengeful cop looking for his partner's killer. All of these characters could have been put on the plane, train or ship but instead they are all on a collision course on a major California freeway. Also, it was pretty interesting that this film began with the "smash-up" and showed all the events leading up to it and showing it again at the end and all the aftermaths. For all its faults, it still was a pretty good film.

Incredible that but for one review, and even that only two months ago, no-one has seen fit to comment all through the years on this above average telemovie. Inarguably dated now, as evidenced by the vehicles themselves, the flares, hair-do's and music, SMASH UP ON INTERSTATE 5 is a reasonably faithful reconstruction (disaster-movie style) of the events leading up to the true-life pile up not so many years earlier.

Better than average script give the cast of well known actors and actresses something to work with. Robert Conrad, still looking the part of Jim West plays the police patrol officer most closely involved in the fifty car collision. Tommy Lee Jones, also a cop, looks like a youthful long haired refugee from WOODSTOCK and Buddy Ebsen is well, Buddy Ebsen, as always!

The film does not attempt to sensationalise the events, merely presenting them as is, albeit with considerable literary license one suspects. The actual collision is quite well done for its day, showed in stop-frame at the beginning and in full gory detail at the conclusion. I have this film in our library and decided to compile this review having watched it this evening, the first time in ten years or so. An absolute time-capsule!

Titled COLLISION COURSE in Australia, and several European countries.

SMASH-UP ON INTERSTATE 5 begins with a brief introduction to the various drivers involved in the catastrophe of the title, before plunging us into the vehicular mayhem, complete with slow-motion impacts!

Next, we're shown the lives of the victims, two days before the incident. This is made up of a true, all-star cast of 1970's TV luminaries, elder stars, and future celebrities.

Robert Conrad is a highway patrolman. Vera Miles is the lonely Erica. Scott Jacoby is a small-time crook, who got mixed up with a fugitive from justice. Buddy Ebson and Harriet Nelson are a loving, retired couple. David Groh is a trucker. Sue Lyon is a biker chick.

Even the co-stars are great! There's an impossibly young, Tommy Lee Jones as a cop, and Donna Mills as a pediatric nurse!

Unlike many such films, the individual backstories are actually interesting. The characters are fleshed-out well, and carry on intelligent conversations. We come to "know" and care about these people. So, when disaster strikes, it's tragic, and not just another action sequence.

Highly recommended, especially for the 1970's TV-movie connoisseur...

Have you ever been in a severe traffic accident? I have... And even though it was nearly 20 years ago, I can assure you the narrated words during the opening sequences catapulted me straight back to the exact same sentiments I felt in the first hours and days after the accident. "For the majority of people, the victims of this smash-up will be nothing more than a holiday weekend statistic". That's also how I felt after I crashed into a tree on a Friday night and miraculously came out almost unharmed. In the blink of an eye, you're nothing more than a weekend traffic statistic. But behind every traffic casualty sits a person with his/her own story to tell, and that's what this modest but more than admirable made-for-TV disaster movie wants to emphasize.

In the weekend leading up to the 4th of July, we follow of handful of seemingly random people living in the area between Los Angeles and San Diego. Now, from the title and the opening sequences we already know these same random people will be the ones heavily impacted by the traffic accident on Interstate 5 (39 vehicles, 65 injured, 14 deaths) but before that tragedy happens, they are all "common" people dealing with versatile issues, like accepting medical diagnoses, romantic dilemmas and running from the law. It's not exactly the most exhilarating segmented film ever made, but it perfectly does what it intends, namely giving a background to usually anonymous traffic accident victims.

"Smash-Up on Interstate 5" can rely on the competences of the best TV-movie director in history, John Llewellyn Moxy, and has quite an impressive cast, with Robert Conrad, Vera Miles, Donna Mills, Scott Jacoby and Tommy Lee Jones. For the latter, it was still a relatively small role, in the period shortly before his breakthrough.