Laughably bad, no make that astonishingly, laugh-out-loud bad, 1977's THE CAR is basically JAWS with four wheels and a giant grill.
This is the kind of movie that many good actors would love to scratch off their IMDB history. Actors like James Brolin as a small town sheriff. His opening scenes feature one of the most awkward "lovers waking up together" scenes in film history between Brolin and Kathleen Lloyd as his girlfriend. Her acting is horrible, but to be fair, her dialogue is so bad that at one point, the screenwriters have her doing a James Cagney impression.
Eyebrow raising bad.
A huge, black car is chasing down people and killing them methodically in their town. The music swells, the car revs, and the car chases people around. It's hilariously bad.
John Marley (The Godfather) is horrible as the oldest cop, Ronny Cox (Deliverance) is a great actor in a very bad performance as an alcoholic cop and John Rubenstein is a hitchhiker playing a french horn on the roadside that made me start rooting for the car.
Brolin does his best and looks happy to be off Marcus Welby.
The writers Dennis Shyrack & Michael Butler went on to much better screenplays, including "Pale Rider" and "Code of Silence", apparently dumping all their worst moments in this disaster.
Universal made a lot of money in the seventies cranking out these B-movies with better budgets and great posters but they have NOT held up, to say the least.
THE CAR stalls quickly and gets an F.
A hilariously bad F, but garbage is garbage.
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