I've just been watching a boxed set of The Professionals. The opening scene with the credits that always comes between the first minute of the story and the rest of the episode - where the Consul/Granada crashes straight through the tinted plate glass window - ranks as my favourite car action/chase/crash/explosion scene of all time.
I don't think there has ever been an action scene quite like it.
... or has there?
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Does Basil Fawty & the Austin been hit with a stick come as the funniest ever? ;)
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Rodney Trotter being chased by the police in his Reliant Regal van!
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Nah, it's got to be the original Italian Job.
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My vote, Steve Mc Queen's 'Bullitt' (1968)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMc2RdFuOxI
Edited by massey on 12/05/2009 at 08:07
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I think the best car scene I have ever seen was in the film Ronin.
The best ever car chase (but thats my opinion) he he
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any car chase from the sweeney
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I misread this as AUCTION! Thought I was goung to see something interesting. Hate seeing destruction especially of classic cars.
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Pretty much the entire Smokey and the Bandit film. One long car chase from start to finish.
Turn up the volume, and enjoy (link to YouTube)
tinyurl.com/ot5soz
:-)
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Not often aired on TV, but the 1978 film The Driver with Ryan O'Neal in the title rôle has a wonderful scene inside a car park. O'Neal plays a getaway driver for hire, and a potential client asks him, "can you drive?"....
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"The French Connection" for me. The sense of speed and danger keeps you on the edge of your seat.
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Early Steven Spielberg production in which a truck chases a car for the entire length of the film.
You keep on thinking the car could out-run the truck, but things keep happening to enable the truck to catch up.
Can't remember the title.
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Duel
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I take it that was the title and not a challenge? :)
Thanks for the quick answer.
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>>>> Early Steven Spielberg production in which a truck chases a car for the entire length of the film.
Duel
I thought the question was best car action scene ever, not the worst!
Was there a car chase scene in Groundhog day? This thread has a certain familiarity about it.
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I have a feeling that was rhetorical, but I think there was, after he was drinking in the bar he drives a drunks car home and goes on a bit of a chase including a bit of railroad driving.
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Not often aired on TV but the 1978 film The Driver with Ryan O'Neal in the title rôle has a wonderful scene inside a car park. O'Neal plays a getaway driver for hire and a potential client asks him "can you drive?"....
That's my favourite too.
Then having crumpled the ends, skillfully taken all the doors off in the car park, and finally lowered the roof, he carelessly remarks, "Better get it fixed if you are thinking of taking it out again".
Or am I mixing that up with another film?
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No, I think that's right.
IIRC the client turns up in a Merc which The Driver, as you say, proceeds practically to destroy with the client sitting in it.
If you want quantity, there are chases in The Blues Brothers and Midnight Run in which numerous police cars crash into one another as they chase the main characters.
And there's a British film called Bellman and True in which, a robbery having gone wrong the "stoppo" (getaway) driver has to take the Jaguar down an unplanned route and drives it to and fro between some obstructions until it's narrow enough to get through.
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Aye, that's the one, Cliff :-)
Also, a vote for Michael Caine taking the door off a MkII Jaguar in Get Carter and driving down a back street through some washing....
"You're a big man, but you're in bad shape. With me, it's a full-time job - now behave yourself"
Edited by OldSock on 12/05/2009 at 12:42
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Blues Brothers chasing around Chicago and driving through the shopping mall. It has everything and best of all it is not a speeded up fakery chase like so many others.
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The opening sequence of Mad Max is excellent too.
"What's he driving?"
"That's what hurts, it's one of our V8s ... Pursuit special on methane, very towey ..."
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51st State with Robert Carlysle and that other bloke (can't think of his name)and a rather nice Jag that ends up needing a panel beater.
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Actually even better than any of these is the film by LeLouche called Rendez Vous with that bloke tear arsing through Paris at 6am.
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That the one used as a video for the recent Snow Patrol song?
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C'etait un Rendezvous... 'that bloke' is Lelouch himself. The film was shot with the camera mounted on the front bumper of a Mercedes (450SEL I think) with absorbent suspension to minimise camera shake, with tyre squeal and the engine sounds of some other car added afterwards. A friend with a good ear says it sounds more like a Porsche flat 6 than anything else.
Lelouch, an enthusiast, did the driving himself but I think there was someone, perhaps two people, in the car with him controlling the camera. He was amused by petrolheads who wanted to believe the car was some sort of Ferrari thing driven by a racing driver, and who were disappointed that the sound had been faked... gave a Gallic shrug and said something like 'Er... it's just a film after all...'
It's a nice cheap short effort by a proper movie man.
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The overdubbing is well done then as it includes the change in car noise whenever you change surroundings and doesn't seem to hide the other sounds there like birds flying off or bus horns or the sounds of wind noise as other vehicles pass by exactly as you'd expect if the car in the film is making the noise you hear.
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The overdubbing is well done then
Certainly is, more or less impeccable in fact: gearchanges in the right places, echoing sound when driving in a tunnel (through the Louvre), etc. That's the point about this film: very little happens in it, but that's no excuse (to a proper film maker AND car enthusiast) for insulting the audience with silly sound effects, as Hollywood so often does...
Edited by Lud on 13/05/2009 at 17:23
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHn5Q15kaIA&mode=related&s...=
try this madux. If it works, it's an interview with Lelouch during which he slightly alarms the interviewer while saying what I passed on above (and a fair amount more actually). He drives the route in the Mercedes, and you can see he knows what he's doing, and loves it.
The actual film no longer seems available, but there are a couple of extracts in the interview to give the flavour. There were two others in the car with him, by the way.
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Sorry teabelly. I meant you of course. Sorry madux too. An elderly moment.
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Closing scenes of Vanishing Point
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Withnail getting pulled over in his knackered Jag by the Fuzz (in a Doormobile) on the M1.
"Bit early for festivities, isn't it?"
"I've only had a couple of ales."
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Most of the blues brothers film - especialy the opening scene where they jump the swing bridge (afte the conversation about swapping the cadilac for a microphone).
The shopping mall scence is good, as are most of the other chases
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Not one of the greatest films, but Stallone's ''Cobra'' from late 70's/early 80's.
A very rare stunt performed in that film, obviously edited but something like must have been achieved.
Many of us have performed quite good reverse spins with a little practice...reverse at high speed flip steering round and as car naturally turns repower and away.
In Cobra the heroes car is travelling approx 50 to 70 mph on freeway, he spins the car a perfect 180 and continues backwards at constant speed..shoots the baddies following him then performs the relaitively straightforward reverse spin and drives on.
Dreadful description, but worth watching for the one stunt, and the tasteful custom caris worth checking out.
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I think the first one you see is always the best.
The first scene I ever actually *saw* of an explosion involving a car was in the Italian Job ("You're only supposed to blow the bladdy doors off!") and likewise when I first clapped eyes on that Granada crashing through the window in the Professionals I'd honestly never seen anything like it on TV or the cinema.
For sheer 70s cheesiness and believable-at-the-time memoribilia, I think Michael Knight flying over the baddies in KITT is also an all time classic.
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and not forgetting the awful Dukes of Hazzard of course.
Goodness knows how many Dodge Charger's were written off filming that.
I loved the way you'd see it jump a seemingly solid 'bush', land fifty feet away and crumple its wheels and nose then be seen driving off with barely a scratch.
Artistic licence or what.
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The chase in Electra Glide In Blue (no, it's not a porn film), is quite spectacular, although it is a rare film, not well known, but think Easy Rider in police uniform and you're somewhere near. In fact the whole film is set in spectacular scenery - Monument Valley.
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I loved The Professionals, A Team, Knight Rider, Dukes of Hazzard when I was young and I daresay these helped make me the petrolhead that I am.
However when I watch the reruns on the cable channels I cringe at the poor acting, their artistic licence or just sheer poor editing.
As mentioned above you can see the General lee landing almost at 90 degrees to the ground but still drive away with no damage.
Always thought the way the A team could build a tank out of match and a fag paper was very realistic though......
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Goodness knows how many Dodge Charger's were written off filming that.
"256 General Lees were used to film the series. Others claim about 321 were used in the series."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_Lee
I can remember the wiper blades and arms used to play hide and seek when the in-car camera footage was shown. One minute they were their, the next they'd gone, then they'd be back in camera view once more.
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 13/05/2009 at 20:07
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was there a car in that programme then?
i only remember miss daisy
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Miss Daisy ... Barbara Bach ... mmm
Back to films; unusual one but made an impression on me. Barry Newman in The Salzburg Connection, gets ahead of the baddies' car and slows down a load of traffic until the Polizei arrive to help.
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Miss Daisy ... Barbara Bach ... mmm
Did Catherine have a sister then?
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Glad I'm not the only one here who can't stop remembering about Daisy Duke now.....
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Oh for heaven's sake chaps.
Winsome, athletic adolescents with artistically tattered shorts, expensively artless hairdos and that somehow hygienic look are... not the thing at all. Symmetrical but sort of rubbery.
Takes all sorts I suppose.
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Granted Lud, but things which influenced one's formative years are to be excused their artlessness are they not ? Bit like Mk 1 Escorts with wide wheels really. Wouldn't want one now......
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I thought it was Jessica Tandy in 'Driving Miss Daisy'... ;¬)
John R
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>> Miss Daisy ... Barbara Bach ... mmm Did Catherine have a sister then?
In my dreams. Catherine it was. Senior moment.
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and not forgetting the awful Dukes of Hazzard of course. Goodness knows how many Dodge Charger's were written off filming that.
IIRC on the flat, they never looked like they were doing more than 30mph. Of course they slid easily on the dust tracks. (There might have been sequences on Tarmac, but I don't remember those.)
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no-one's yet mentioned the Bourne Identity/Supremacy/Again (no, sorry scrap that last one!)
Good chase in the first film involving a battered Mini outrunning the gendarmes in their Citroen ZX's et al and of course the last film (or was it the second?) in which a Lada seems to crash into just about everything and still drive at 90mph everywhere.
...and what about Bond. Plenty of action in those. Cars twisting over bridges, 2CV's ending up on buses and of course the speeded up film of the Aston hitting a wall in Goldfinger's factory complex.
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I've just been watching a boxed set of The Professionals.
One of my favourite scenes in The Professionals is where Bodie has to make an escape from a farmhouse and finds an old Landrover in a barn. Unfortunately the head gasket is shot, so he fashions a new one from a piece of lino!!! They dont write em like that anymore.
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A scene from The Professionals often features in out-take programmes.
To make his get away, Bodie jumps into the back of a barely moving Transit.
The van then accelerates hard and he tumbles out onto the road.
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