Crash! (1976) – Review

Before Charles Band became the king of VHS-era horror with Puppet Master and Ghoulies, he directed this oddball supernatural thriller, Crash! Equal parts domestic melodrama, occult weirdness, and demolition-derby stunt reel, it’s the cinematic equivalent of an out-of-control car: noisy, dangerous, and weirdly fun to watch.

After witnessing brutal road-rage crash, caused by a mysterious black Camaro, we are introduced to Kim Denne (Sue Lyon), a young, beautiful, and unlucky enough to be married to Marc Denne (José Ferrer), a wealthy old crank who spends most of the film sulking in a wheelchair, though not exactly “bound,” since he can still shuffle a few feet before collapsing back into it. Once a tennis fanatic, now an “active invalid,” Marc blames Kim for the accident that left him half-crippled and devotes his time to making her miserable. When she finally tries to leave in her sleek black Camaro, Marc sends his Doberman after her. The dog leaps into the moving car, mauls her, and she crashes, ending up in the hospital bandaged head-to-toe, muttering the word “Akaza,” and clutching a weird little flea-market keychain idol, an artifact of the Hittite god Akaza. And let’s just say, he’s not the deity you want weighing in on your marital issues.

“The medical term is Revenge-Fuelled Coma?”

With Kim wrapped up like the Invisible Man, the real star becomes her possessed Camaro, which resurrects itself and roams the highways like Christine’s sloppy cousin. Random motorists, especially unlucky AMC drivers, are terrorized in slow-motion smash-ups, while back in the hospital, Kim occasionally channels Akaza directly: glowing demon eyes, flying keychains, and wheelchairs that suddenly go berserk. Best scene? Marc’s motorized chair gets possessed, rams his Doberman into oblivion, and forces him into a crutch duel with his own furniture.

José Ferrer vs. The Chair.

To help solve the mystery, we have Dr. Martin (a Robert Stack look-alike, John Ericson), who takes in the amnesiac Kim and sets out to unravel her mystery. His investigation leads to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo from John Carradine as a local anthropologist, who conveniently points him to—of all people—Marc Denne. Small world. Before long, Kim stumbles back to her old villa without realizing her abusive husband still wants her dead, at least until he tries to roast her alive in a sauna, a scene that feels like it wandered in from Charlie’s Angels. By now, Kim is half-human, half-Hittite rage spirit, and more dangerous by the minute.

Fun fact: The film Crash! was marketed as “the ultimate in car-crunching terror.” Audiences quickly discovered that the phrase meant “gratuitous car crashes” barely related to the plot.

The climax finds Marc, shotgun at the ready, squaring off against the demon-possessed Camaro in what has to be cinema’s only Mexican standoff between a man in a wheelchair and a car. The showdown ends with the Camaro giving him a gentle shove down a hill before launching itself on top of him with all the grace of Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, capped off by an obligatory fireball explosion. Or at least I think that’s what happened. The scene is so murky you don’t know anything’s over until the boom. That’s Charles Band’s Crash! for you: part supernatural revenge tale, part killer-car flick, part unintentional comedy, and 100% gloriously WTF. And the lingering question you’ll be asking isn’t “Who will survive?” but “Why did the car waste time mowing down random motorists before bothering with Marc?”

I guess evil cars don’t need a motive.

Stray Observations:

• Kim purchases the little Hittite idol from a creepy dude at a flea market stall located at a local drive-in theatre, and I’m guessing the next stall was selling Monkey’s Paws.
• After her forced accident, we find Kim all bandaged up in a hospital room, still clutching her little Hittite keychain. Are we to assume the doctors couldn’t remove it from her hand while they operated? Is there something called a “Pre-Death Grip?”
• The way the film is edited, with us seeing the killer car even before the attempted murder of Kim, is quite odd. This causes a weird disconnect between what is going on with the killer car and Kim’s trauma, which makes it seem like we are watching two different movies smashed together.
• It’s weird that with the numerous attempts by the police to stop the killer car, not one of them mentions that the convertible Camaro is obviously driverless. Are they afraid of being accused of drunk driving?

Tremble before the endless shots of the driverless car!

What makes Crash! entertaining isn’t the logic — because there is none — but the sheer sincerity. The film plays its absurd premise straight: an abusive husband uses black magic to sic cars on his wife. José Ferrer delivers his lines with grim conviction, as though he’s in a courtroom drama, while Sue Lyon spends most of her screen time screaming, crying, or running from vehicles moving at about 10 miles per hour. The stunts, however, are the showstopper. When cars begin flipping, colliding, and plummeting down embankments, the movie transforms into a mini-disaster film, and you can see where Band spent every cent of the budget. If you’ve ever wanted to watch station wagons and pickup trucks behave like possessed sharks, this movie delivers.

Note: This film continues the long tradition of vehicles being forced off the road and then exploding, even if it’s just a small incline.

But the film also has that unmistakable Charles Band touch: the mix of the absurd and the straight-faced. Everyone delivers their lines with Shakespearean seriousness, even when the script is talking about ancient curses and killer Buicks. On that front, José Ferrer, whose commitment to the role feels both admirable and baffling, like he’s trying to win an Oscar in a movie about a demon car causing traffic accidents. And then there’s Sue Lyon, who does her best as the tormented wife, though she spends the bulk of the film sitting in bed swathed in bandages while occasionally having demon spasms.

She’s got those demon bedroom eyes.

In retrospect, Crash! feels like a prototype for the kind of gonzo B-movie empire Band would later build. It’s messy, sometimes unintentionally hilarious, and yet oddly charming. There’s a kind of grindhouse sincerity to it: no irony, no winking at the audience, just pure pulp madness played straight. Is it a good movie? Absolutely not. Is it a fun one? Without question. This is the kind of midnight-movie gem best enjoyed with a group of friends, some drinks, and an appreciation for that special brand of ’70s drive-in nonsense where even a Camaro might be possessed by an evil amulet.