Earlier this year, in my review for Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, I invoked Richard C. Sarafian’s drive-in masterpiece Vanishing Point as a comparison in commitment to form. Both films take the “sizzle” of their respective genres and turn them into a full meal. In the case of Wheatley’s film, the gunfight begins at the end of the first act and doesn’t conclude until its final minutes. In Vanishing Point, meanwhile, the protagonist Kowalski begins by making a bet to drive non-stop from Denver to San Francisco, and proceeds to make good (barring the occasional stop to chat with local eccentrics and free spirits – it was made in 1971, after all). Both films make their intentions known early on, and both fucking deliver.
Yet Vanishing Point has more on its mind than mere automotive thrills (though, again, there is an awful lot of that). Like its contemporaries Easy Rider and Two Lane Blacktop, Vanishing Point uses the skin of a Roger Corman-style drive-in exploitation film to smuggle a countercultural meditation on the ephemerality of the American Dream. Most memorably, the film is effectively narrated by a blind DJ named Super Soul (played by a pre-Blazing Saddles Cleavon Little), framing Kowalski’s odyssey as a move against The Man on behalf of The People, even if it is just a guy driving from one place to another very fast. There’s also an old-timey gold prospector, a naked lady motorcyclist, a pair of gay carjackers (progressive at the time, uncomfortably dated now), and a groovy church choir featuring Rita Coolidge and Delaney & Bonnie, among others. In short, Vanishing Point is very much a movie of its time, occasionally corny, but miles outside what could ever be made today.
But let’s be honest: all of this is probably not why you’re thinking about seeing this movie at the Brattle tonight, and it sure as hell isn’t what’s enshrined it in the annals of drive-in movie history. Simply put, Vanishing Point features some of the greatest car chase footage ever filmed– and it features a lot of it. There’s a reason why the girls in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof spend so much of the film trying to recreate its iconic thrills, or why it’s been cited as a signifier of cool by artists ranging from Primal Scream to Mojo Nixon to Audioslave. Even if you’ve never seen the film– or heard of it even– when you think of car chase movies, you’re thinking of Vanishing Point. As Super Soul says, in what may as well be a thesis for an entire school of exploitation filmmaking: “The question is not ‘When’s he gonna stop,’ but ‘Who’s gonna stop him?’” Buckle up.
Vanishing Point
1971
dir. Richard C. Sarafian
99 min.
Screens Saturday, 6/17, 7:30PM @ Brattle Theatre
Part of the ongoing series: All About the Chase
Double feature with Gone in 60 Seconds (the original, natch)
