What can I say. I'm a sucker for this. I grew up on those drive-in car movies. Vanishing Point was my favorite film. It's like a spaghetti western in it's set up, it's long slow pans torn apart by speed and flash. Exciting.
Here is the ultimate scenario for any film lover, the director who'll rewrite your memories for you as a sly nudge and wink. There is the "Driving while bleeding" scene, the custom hood ornament shot, the shoulder squeeze, stunts I know so well, the sex as car crash, the violence as answer.
In the end, all those movies shared that quality, that violence was the only way to resolve the situation. Whether it's I Spit on Your Grave or Death Race 2000, somehow violence lends a sinister edge to the race.
In a car movie, you fear the crash because of the silence which follows. In car movies, the noise of engines is the stuff of life, all it's rage, it's mania for living.
I remember Corvette Summer was nearly as cool as Star Wars. I remember that film with William Shatner (or was it Lee Majors?) driving a van in search of fuel in some post apocalyptic California. Driving across the nuclear wastelands.
I remember Damnation Alley. So many great movies targeted spot on our fears and passions.
Now it's the stuff of rehash, but there is something so enervating in Tarantino's meta-narrative, that I forgive myself for liking it as much as I do. There must always be this feeling of the little guy rising up and destroying the oppressor. Just so for a moment, we might shrug off our own fears and just shine who we are.
Exploitation films serve a valuable purpose. They are the antidote to social ills at times just for putting a face to things that go unspoken, unrepresented.
But all the same, the stunt girl spreads her legs on the hood of a white charger and the the black charger keeps ramming from behind. Holy crap, that's good cinema.