Gone in 60 Seconds (H.B. Halicki, 1974)

Eleanor taunts her pursuers. 

Cast: H.B. Halicki, Marion Busia, Jerry Daugirda, James McIntyre, George Cole, Ronald Halicki, Markos Kotsikos. Screenplay: H.B. Halicki. Cinematography: Scott Lloyd-Davies, Jack Vacek. Art direction: Dennis Stouffer. Film editing: Warner E. Leighton. Music: Ronald Halicki, Philip Kachaturian. 

True, Americans love cars. But it's equally true that they love seeing them crash. Gone in 60 Seconds is the fulfillment of stunt driver H.B. "Toby" Halicki's dream: to make a movie with the wildest, most destructive car chase in film history. At that he succeeds, with a 40-minute scene in which a yellow 1973 Ford Mustang called Eleanor takes on all comers, leaving 93 automobiles in ruins. Eleanor is the true star of the film, as Halicki realizes: She's the only performer mentioned in the opening credits. The remaining hour or so of the film is just setup, although an additional 32 cars get wrecked in some fashion before the big chase. Halicki plays Maindrian Pace, an insurance investigator with a sideline: He and his crew steal cars and resell them after disguising the stolen cars with identification numbers and license plates taken from similar models they buy from junkyards. (As an upright insurance man, he insists that all the stolen cars be insured.) When he gets a big order from a Venezuelan drug lord for 48 vehicles of all sorts, he and his gang set out to procure them. Each car is given a woman's name as a way of keeping track of them. There are a few hiccups: Nancy, a Cadillac Eldorado, is discovered to have a trunk full of heroin; Maindrian insists that she has to be destroyed, which angers his brother-in-law, Eugene (Jerry Daugirda), who wants to sell the drugs. Eleanor is also a problem: At the very last minute before he's supposed to deliver the cars, Maindrian discovers that she's uninsured, which goes against his rule. Fortunately, he knows where another Eleanor can be stolen, which further angers Eugene, who rats out Maindrian to the cops, giving them the location where Maindrian is going to steal her. When he's discovered, Maindrian takes off in the new Eleanor, leading a flotilla of cop cars from various Southern California towns and cities into the film's autopocalypse. The remarkable thing about the great chase is that Halicki was able to get cooperation from various authorities, ranging from the California Highway Patrol to the mayors and city councils of the towns through which it runs. The story of how the movie was made is in some ways more interesting than the movie itself. Halicki, driving Eleanor, was seriously injured in one scene and had to shut down filming for three weeks. (Fifteen years later, Halicki was killed in an accident while making a sequel to the movie.) Much of Gone in 60 Seconds is tedious setup exposition, and it's poorly acted -- the cast largely consists of Halicki's friends and family -- but those 40 minutes are golden, a tribute to Halicki's persistence and especially to his cameramen, stunt drivers, and film editors.