Gosh, movie theaters. Remember them? I first saw "Vanishing Point" when it first came out in a movie theater with my mother and I couldn't have been more than seven years old. Suffice to say, what with the drug references and use, gratuitous nudity, wanton disregard for authority, romanticizing of radio and of course a ground pounding 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T, it's no surprise it left a permanent and indelible conscious and subconscious impression on me. My mother never did much for me but I will give her mad snaps for dragging me along to see "Vanishing Point". Thanks, Mom!
A "vanishing point" is defined as being the point at which receding parallel lines viewed in perspective appear to converge. Why "Vanishing Point", the movie, is named such is conjecture, but it's a 1971 film about a guy named Kowalski, whom I swear is referred as "Mitch" in one scene, who works for a car delivery company in Denver, Colorado. What there is of a plot involves him delivering a brand-new Dodge Challenger R/T to a customer in San Francisco. Why the customer couldn't just buy the car in San Francisco is never brought up although there is some allusion to the car being "super-charged". I guess it's up to us to deduce that the customer wanted the after-market engine work done at a speed-shop he fancied in Denver? Bueller?
Anyway, Kowalski's got an entire weekend to make the approximate 1,300 mile trip but he's chosen to do so in just fifteen hours because he's bet his drug dealer that if he can do so, he gets the mouthful of "bennies" he inhales at the beginning of his traipse through the far west for free or he pays triple for them. Such a deal.
On the way to "Frisco", Kowalski's troubles begin when a motorcycle cop tells him to "pull-over" and, inexplicably, he takes off instead. We presume the cop was going to site Kowalski for speeding but because we're so immediately empathetic towards our strung anti-hero, right or wrong, we determine that all authority must be questioned and scorned. Police then chase Kowalski through at least four states, five if he went through Wyoming, and along the way he meets a colorful cadre of characters including a nutty Jaguar XKE driver whom he ends up drag-racing and nearly kills, a couple of hitch hikers who try to "stick him up", a naked motorcycle riding woman who all but throws herself at him and let's not forget about a rattle snake charmer he runs into when one of his Goodyear Polyglass tires blows out. Not sure if it's the drugs or not but he also flashes back a lot about his past seemingly disastrous lives as a motorcycle and race car driver, as a policeman and about a woman who broke his heart when she died in what is implied as a surfing accident.
What's more, despite being in such a hurry, after all "ups" are expensive, Kowalski always makes time to make sure whomever he ran off the road, like that idiot Jaguar driver, didn't get killed or seriously injured. This guy's a mensch. Oh, did I mention he's a Vietnam War hero and somehow takes a respite from the mayhem to check in with a blind radio disc-jockey named "Super Soul" too? Gotta hand it to Kowalski, brother does a lot in just fifteen hours.
I'm no film critic but I can tell you that after seeing "Vanishing Point" recently for the first time in, gulp, fifty years, I can tell you that it's pure, unadulterated, thrown-together, senseless exploitative trash. It ain't all bad, though. The upside is "Vanishing Point" is a shameless ninety-minute commercial for Dodge's new-for-1970 Challenger R/T.
Although the Chrysler Corporation was technically the first of the Big Three to launch what would be known as a "Pony Car", they introduced the Plymouth Barracuda two-weeks before Ford debuted the Mustang, Chrysler's Dodge division was late to the party by six years. They didn't waste anyone's time, though, when they finally got to the rager with arms full with fresh ice-cold kegs, a case of Jack Daniels, a pound of marijuana, strippers and tons of pizza. Problem was the cops where on the way to shut the whole thing down but for 1970, man, that was some party. Folks are still talking aboutt it too.
Between 1964 and 1969, the pony-car market grew to an amazing thirteen-percent of all vehicles sold in this country. However, the the first "pony-car", Plymouth's Barracuda, sold poorly up against an onslaught from Ford and GM (as of 1967) and to a lesser degree American Motors with their weird but cool AMX'. When Chrysler planned to reboot the Barracuda for 1970, Dodge wanted in and Chrysler obliged with a fairly similar "pony" albeit one with a slightly longer wheel base. By the way, don't feel bad - you wouldn't be the first person to a confuse a Barracuda with a Challenger; their differences are quite subtle.
How'd it drive? I've never driven one but a late 1969 Car and Driver road test review of a Challenger R/T Hemi tears the car apart for being too heavy and plagued with horrible over and under steer. Even the vaunted 426 cubic-inch Hemi gets a knuckle sandwich with them claiming it idled horribly and was sluggish and unresponsive at low rpm's. Well, it was a street-legal race engine, what did they expect? Furthermore, Car and Drive found that the "smaller-engine" Challengers were better balanced cars but those engines, couldn't produce enough horsepower and torque to compete with the lighter and apparently more nimble competition. They did, however, applaud the styling. So, what's fair is fair - if they were right about the styling they were probably right about everything else.
Even in the movie you can see that whomever is driving the Challengers, there were four used in the making of it, there's a mighty struggle to keep the things going where intended and in several scenes the cars are bouncing all over the screen. There are a number of shots of Kowalski, by the way he's played by the wonderful Barry Newman, where he's sea-sawing the big, non-tilt adjustable steering wheel while at speed. That's not exactly "sporty" on a car of sporting pretensions even fifty-years ago.
As for the actual movie cars themselves, Chrysler supplied the producers of the film with four cars with three of them being 440 cubic inch R/T's with a single four-barrel carburetor, pistol grip four-speed manual transmission and "Sure-Grip" rear end. The fourth car was a 383 cubic-inch powered automatic. Rumor has it that as many as eight cars were used in the filming and some where Hemi's but there's little corroboration on that speculation. Mr. Newman has been quoted as saying the Chrysler 440 V-8 was too much engine for the car.
Producers chose white for the cars because they they'd film better against the desert background that's in most of the film. One of the cars delivered was purportedly green and subsequently painted white.
All the cars used in the film were badly damaged during filming and Chrysler crushed them after filming rather than repair then and use them for publicity. Allegedly, Chrysler suits were upset at the drug use in the film and didn't care for their wares being associated with such behavior. Umm, did we not ask to see a script before we lent them the cars?
While the movie, again in my opinion, is a mess, for the most part, the producers did a good job of continuity; if a fender was dented in one scene, it was dented in another and so on. However. in one of the last scenes of film, it's pretty obvious that the car that blows up on impact with the bulldozers is not a Dodge Challenger.
It is, of all things, a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro. Not a bad way to go but it's certainly no '70 Challenger R/T. I know they were pressed for time in making the movie but they couldn't rig a Challenger wheel to fit for this scene? That sucker is pure General Motors. Kowalski deserved better.
To say the least, contemporary reviews of "Vanishing Point", just like road test reviews of the Challenger, where mixed at best. Again, to me the film has a nonsensical, thrown-together, "what should we do next" feel to it but I might be alone in that assessment seeing that "Vanishing Point" has become something of a art-house, cult-classic. I don't get how or why that could be given how nothing in the film makes sense; especially the premise behind Kowalski, who seems like a highly intelligent and wonderful guy, running from police in the first place. Well, drugs can make you do some crazy stuff. Just say no!
Then again, understanding "Vanishing Point" above and beyond the Challenger is probably like my trying to explain what I see in these lovely cars to someone who doesn't see anything more special about it than that it being an old car. Note the Challenger's body roll in the above screen capture; Chrysler's torsion-bar suspension at its finest.
Try and dig up "Vanishing Point" and see for yourself what I'm talking about or not. If nothing else, if you're of a certain age, you'll get a kick out of being reminded of the fast cars, drugs, hippies, race riots and more of when we were young. Then again, some things never change.
There's a 1997 remake starring Viggo Mortenssen that, despite the Challenger R/T used in that movie being a Hemi, is a complete waste of your time. Waste your time, instead, on the original.
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