Skip to main content

Gone in 60 Seconds: Not the one with Nic Cage

I didn't realize for quite awhile that the Gone in 60 Seconds movie released in 2000 was actually a remake. The original movie was made in 1974 and has the same basic premise as the later remake, although this one seems to have been much more a labor of love.

H.B. Halicki wrote, produced, directed, and starred in a movie about an insurance investigator who runs an auto shop. On the side, however, he buys totaled cars at auction, salvages whatever parts they can, and then steal all of the identification numbers off it. The next step is to go steal an identical car, and swap out all of the identification numbers and sell it. Much like the hitman who says "no women, no kids", this car thief only steals from people that are insured. It's a victimless crime! (Not really of course, but that's the impression the movie tries to give you.)

Our hero takes on a job from some foreign scary guys, to boost 40 cars in 48 hours, and deliver them to the docks, I assume for export. And that's pretty much it for the setup.

Really, this is a pretty terrible movie, all of the actors are either real people (there's a scene with a press conference with the mayor, that really is the mayor) or more commonly with Halicki's friends and family. There wasn't an actual script, just an outline with main plot and dialogue points. So much of the movie is ad libbed by people that just aren't very good actors.

There are quite frankly a lot of parts of this movie that are amazing. Every car in the movie was owned by Halicki, who had been buying them over a span of two years at public auction, paying on average $200 a piece. A lot of the bystanders in the film, were unwittingly part of the movie, just watching high speed car chases, and yelling at police officers that were ignoring the "wounded". At one point, Halicki is driving down the freeway at nearly 100 mph when he gets bumped by another driver and spins out into a lamp post. Apparently as soon as he regained consciousness his words were "did we get the footage?".

As I've said this is a pretty terrible movie, for about an hour, then the rest of the movie is one giant car chase, with mr. Halicki in a 1973 yellow Ford Mustang named Eleanor. Much like the French Connection's chase, this is a frenetic, balls to the wall, non-stop chase. 93 cars were wrecked for this final scene, Halicki had the accident with the lamppost, and then the chase finally culminates with a 128ft jump and compacted 4 vertebrae.

Bottom line, the last half hour of the film definitely makes this film most definitely worthwhile.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lemme Tell You About The Transformer, Astrotrain, And Why He's My Favorite

       I am, quite obviously, a massive fan of Transformers, but I grew up in kind of a weird time for being a fan. Really, I'm just a LITTLE too young. I remember seeing my brother, who was six years older than I, get all of the coolest Transformers, and then by the time that I started being able to ask for Transformers for myself, the nature of Transformers had greatly changed. I have a great anecdotal story about him clipping Soundwave (arguably one of the coolest Transformers toys ever, which turned into a microcassette player) to his shorts and climbing a tree. He then proceeded to fall 30 feet out of that tree, and land on Soundwave, which poked him right in the kidney, and he peed blood for a week.        While I still have a great deal of fondness for them, Powermaster Optimus Prime is just not as cool of a toy as the original Optimus Prime. Notably, if you landed on Powermaster Optimus Prime, he probably wouldn't puncture your kidney, but the original Optimus Prime mig
Post a Comment
Read more

A Return To My Brainstorming Days Of Old

Way back when, say, ten years ago, I had a dream of making a game. At first I wanted to make it a videogame like a JRPG (Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, etc.). Then it was going to be a pen and paper RPG (Dungeons and Dragons). And for many years, it kept bouncing around, back and forth between the two, I thought I was so very creative and clever. Eventually I started to realize that I was never going to be able to do anything like this on my own, and that neither I, nor any of my friends, had the time or energy to put into learning the necessary technical skills for a videogame, or simply the desire for a tabletop game. Still, I really liked brainstorming ways that different elements of a setting would interact with each other, whether it be a game system, a fantasy world, a system of government, or a military force. Sometimes I'd write this stuff down, but more often than not, I just day dreamed about it. I think it was kind of like therapy. I still wanted to do something wit
Post a Comment
Read more

The Worst Contact Allergic Reaction I've Ever Had

I'm started to feel like a bit of a freak show. I've of course been injured by shrapnel from a pipe bomb, and I've got impressive scars to prove it (side note: One of my friends said that I need to come up with a really awesome story to go along with my scar, and I sad "Someone throwing a pipe bomb at me isn't awesome enough?") I've mentioned that I took a first aid/CPR class in my first quarter of college, taught by Ron Hussman at Edmonds Community College. He was a great instructor, with a lot of great stories being a navy medic for 24 years, I think that's what he said. I'm proud to say that the pictures of my leg injury are now part of his curriculum, but I got tired of raising my hand every time he asked if someone had done something in particular. Called 911? Check Used an epipen? Check Been in shock? Check Ridden in an ambulance? Check Had burns in your throat? Check (seriously, don't let your kids hold roman candles while they fire) Lat
1 comment
Read more