A crippled and bitter husband schemes to murder his much younger wife because she likes to go shopping without him, or something, so he trains their pet Doberman to run miles and miles to ambush her while driving on a back country road: luckily, the top was down on her ’67 Camaro! That strange sentence makes more sense than the rest of the film which includes a demonically possessed amnesiac wife with glowing red eyes whose Id manipulates her driverless Camaro to exact revenge upon her husband (and murder many innocents too), control his motorized wheelchair as a blunt weapon, become a victim of a rather unbelievable coincidence and then gets locked in a sauna.
Now, I won’t rehash the absurd plot as it makes no linear sense. It’s like Director Charles Band wanted to crash cars (hence the title) and had to write a script around some inane spousal melodrama…with demons. As the ’67 Camaro races and crashes everything off the road that explode into fireballs, we’re supposed to believe that it’s the same car that Kim (the wife, played by Sue Lyon) owns, yet we see the car begin its brutal rampage before Kim crashes it herself! When she’s laid up in the hospital and the car continues its random murder spree for the entire second act, we’re supposed to believe it hasn’t been impounded. Yet we get a scene in the final act where the Camaro is impounded and once the keys (with demon attached to key-ring) are inserted into the ignition it races off and we see nearly every crash replayed through a cinematic filter. WTF? Were all of the crashes foreshadowing this event and shown out-of-narrative context? Some of the crashes are quite strident and darkly humorous such as the elderly couple that gets squashed by a racing police car! I suppose the Demon makes the cars explode too, even upon the most minute impact. And damn, this possessed Camaro truly hates cops for some reason, as it’s the husband who it races towards which we see in various signposts as it gets closer to town. Which is another WTF moment: how was this car so far away. I mean, she crashed in town (or just outside) yet the Camaro speeds through hundreds of miles of blacktop! Oh, and the crippled husband can walk just fine though he’s a bit lame. We see him walk out of his car and grab his wheelchair: is he just fucking with us? Note: this is the first film where I’ve witnessed a dog murdered by being bludgeoned with a motorized wheelchair.
The husband seems to think he has the perfect murder plan by locking Kim in the sauna and cranking up the heat. This from a guy who thought a trained dog racing through miles of empty desert to murder his wife was also a good idea. Ha! Now the great coincidence is that Kim has lost her memory so when her Doctor is researching the strange idol he brings her directly to her husband, the expert of demonic anthropological stuff! Both are clueless of the relationship except the husband, of course, who schemes her second demise by sauna. For some inexplicable reason that defies editing, when the ’67 Camaro reaches the house and confronts the husband, he motors back towards the house but ends up in the desert. As in, the wide-open spaces where a possessed car can run you over. Which it does. I thought it would crash into the house and kill him which probably would have put the film over-budget. Anyway, a 70’s action film full of car crashes and painful contact lenses gets my recommendation no matter how silly and confusing the story. And this ’67 Camaro is a Demon on wheels.
Final Grade: C
