What's the worst car movie ever.

It's like none of you have seen "Two Lane Blacktop."

Sure, the car is cool, but it's like they spent so much on the car, they forgot about plot.

It's the black hole of plot.

It sits on my DVD shelf, sucking the plot out of the movies next to it.

I was looking for something, anything to do, while watching it. At one point the credits were rolling and I didn't remember the movie ending.

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

It is cheesy but there's something cool about an old beater Corvette.  Like he dumped all his money into the engine and suspension to street race.  Screw the body and interior - how it races thru the canyons is key.  

Wasn't there a red RX7 or Miata Mazda guy that had an awesome handing car thru the tail/dragon?

I have the winner

Appleseed said:

Redline. Yeah, the one where Eddie Griffin wrecked an Enzo. Piggybacking on the Fast & Furious wave. Jesus ,  it's bad. Me and the bros, who weren't really car guys ripped on it start to finish.

I remember Daniel Sadek and his Quik Loan sub-prime loan company during the financial collapse who produced Redline and whose own cars and girlfriend were in the movie. I have just spent the last hour trying to figure out what happened to him, but I can't find anything. 

Ok except for Drive, which sucked. Every other movie called out is friggin awesome. But they don't all stand the test of time the same way. Folks rag on Bullit for being too slow, back then movies had more suspense, maybe people had longer attention back in the day. Corvette Summer was not just about the car, it was cutie Annie Potts if you were a teenager at the time. BTW Eat My Dust is not a normal movie, every car scene or chase is actually from another older movie. They just made up a horrible plot, filmed Ron Howard and stole clips from other movies. Yeah I guess it sucked. 

"Smokey bites the dust" 1981

I win

In reply to Datsun310Guy :

That's what I meant - it's a movie of its era, and for that era was pretty cool.  It's not like current car movies always have amazing plots. Usually they are just vehicles for over the top special effects. At least back then, you pretty much knew the stunts were real.

In reply to SkinnyG (Forum Supporter) :

I've seen Two Lane Blacktop more than once. I own the dvd as well. No it's not fine cinema but it's astonishing it ever got made. It's like an art project. What other movie has the guts to literally show the asphalt in headlights with no sound but the roar of an engine for minutes at a time? who needs plot when you have eight cylinders and a gas pedal? It's just so strange and so raw. I'm amazed it got released at all. 

dculberson said:

In reply to SkinnyG (Forum Supporter) :

I've seen Two Lane Blacktop more than once. I own the dvd as well. No it's not fine cinema but it's astonishing it ever got made. It's like an art project. What other movie has the guts to literally show the asphalt in headlights with no sound but the roar of an engine for minutes at a time? who needs plot when you have eight cylinders and a gas pedal? It's just so strange and so raw. I'm amazed it got released at all. 

For once you and I agree.  I knew it would happen one day! 

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

Oh no! I'm worried about whether the suns going to rise in the morning now. The prophesy has been fulfilled. 

Gone in 60 seconds. What a horrible waste of two hours of my life I forever regret giving away. Puke.

In reply to dculberson :

The reason it feels boring is because most of life is boring.  The genius point of the movie was "what if someone filmed an average week of your life and made it into a movie?" Except that the people filmed happen to be street racers.

Appleseed said:

"what if someone filmed an average week of your life and made it into a movie?"

"Worst movie ever" crosses my mind with that statement.  Except that this one happens to be a car movie.

I'll probably be watching it again, though.  And sooner than I expect.

These are all inspired choices, and I disagree with almost none of them. Ron Howard made "Eat My Dust" for Roger Corman so he would finance Howard's first movie, "Grand Theft Auto". Corman stuck car chases in a lot of his movies because it was easy action. And as someone else noted, the scenes were often re-edited into other movies to keep Corman's low budget movies even cheaper. 

I'm going to nominate this Australian turd because it made promises in the trailer it couldn't deliver, despite having John Cusack in it.

Much like "Two Lane Blacktop", nothing ever happens in this movie. You keep waiting for the Mustang to at least do a burnout, but...nope. 

I think the most painful car movie I've watched was "Drive Angry". Despite the Charger and a pre-insanity, very hawt Amber Heard that movie is truly a waste of time to even have running in the background while you're working in the garage. I don't think Nick Cage has made a good movie since "Raising Arizona". Don't even get me started about GISS and world's ugliest Mustang.

dculberson said:

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

Oh no! I'm worried about whether the suns going to rise in the morning now. The prophesy has been fulfilled. 

I'm not worried about the sun at all.  There are much more immediate issues to address.

You can't hate on Drive Angry because that whole movie was clearly made by a professional actors having fun the entire time. It's a movie with surprisingly deep takes on Christianity and the nature of hell, while ALSO having Nick Cage in a gunfight mid berkeley! I can statistically proove it gets better the more friends and beer you watch it with.

Appleseed said:

Redline. Yeah, the one where Eddie Griffin wrecked an Enzo. Piggybacking on the Fast & Furious wave. Jesus ,  it's bad. Me and the bros, who weren't really car guys ripped on it start to finish.

I can't remember if it's Redline or Need for Speed, but it produced a gif of a guy screaming at a terrible CGI crash over 200MPH that only lives on as a meme. I think it was a Lambo Diablo.

If it's the WORST car movie, for me it has to be one that also carried some expectation of being good at some point and also be something I can't find any enjoyment from. Bullit's pretty up there since the "suspense" really isn't and the car chase meanders, but it was one of the first so I can't harsh on it too much. I think I'd have to say 2 Fast 2 Furious because it's such an ugly shift from the prior movie that actually had soul, and only because I refuse to see Smokey and the Bandit II which has the exact same problem.

For the simple reason that I am who I am because I saw and was influenced by it at an early age, Corvette Summer is not the worst car movie ever!

Of all the ones mentioned I saw Need for Speed, so that gets my nomination.

I love bad movies, and so many of the bad car movies listed are ones I love, but the worst, that I will not even consider watching again, is Banzai Runner.  I rented it as a kid, because it had cars, and Dean Stockwell was in it, and I thought he was cool in Quantum Leap.  It's about some rich guys who highway race each other and a cop who tries to infiltrate their group.  And that sentence makes it sound way cooler than it is.  It's not good bad.  It is bad bad.

I would nominate the original "Death Race 2000".

Except for, y'know, boobs.

stroker said:

I would nominate the original "Death Race 2000".

Except for, y'know, boobs.

 

Boobs are canceled out by Sly Stallones giblets. 

I'm prepared to get shelled for this, but American Graffitti. Car guys put this movie on such a pedestal, but it's just a bunch of teenagers that I don't care about or are given any reason to care about futzing around for an hour and 45 minutes. And then the street race that it spends the whole film building towards ends immediately when the '55 Chevy crashes out. I thought maybe I didn't get it because it was a generational thing, but my father said "I grew up in this era, and I don't get the hype." I don't really get the love for Two-Lane Blacktop either, but at least that one had some actual racing and car scenes. 

It's like you're blocking Drive Angry from your memory. 

In reply to NickD :

Hmm... maybe it's because I grew up watching that movie with my father (who was 14 during the year it was set; my mother could have been the Mackenzie Phillips character), but I always considered American Graffiti as a "coming of age" movie more so than as a car movie. Cars were just the backdrop vehicles. 

The sequel was often panned, but it never tried to be the same movie. The themes are a lot darker. 

The original Gone in 60 Seconds is almost unwatchable until you get to the car chase at the end. 90% of the story is just expository dialogue spoken by unseen characters while unrelated events play across the screen, punctuated by a quick car stealing scene, and then more weird narration. It's completely and utterly awful. Fortunately, the car chase is almost half the runtime of the whole movie, and it holds up as a great chase even now. Just not quite good enough to redeem the utter trash that is the rest of the movie.

AMiataCalledSteve said:

The original Gone in 60 Seconds is almost unwatchable until you get to the car chase at the end. 90% of the story is just expository dialogue spoken by unseen characters while unrelated events play across the screen, punctuated by a quick car stealing scene, and then more weird narration. It's completely and utterly awful. Fortunately, the car chase is almost half the runtime of the whole movie, and it holds up as a great chase even now. Just not quite good enough to redeem the utter trash that is the rest of the movie.

My favorite line from that movie for sheer absurdity is:

"At least my mother didn't name me Atley." Spoken by the guy whose mother named him Maindrian