| FROM HERE TO OBSCURITY: CRASH! |
[May. 31st, 2008|01:17 am] |


"An occult object takes possession of a driverless car and causes one spectacular crash after another until fifty cars are pounded into a mass of twisted metal"That's the tagline for CRASH!, an extremely hard-to-find 1977 flick from a then fledgling director named Charles Band and starring the likes of Jose Ferrer. Having not done a new "From Here To Obscurity" review for Dread Central in quite awhile I decided now was the time for a new one after recently getting my hands on a copy of this ultra obscure ditty. Somewhere between THE CAR and SMOKEY & THE BANDIT lies Charles Band's CRASH! As always, link below the blurb. "Take a moment and try to envision what a feature-length episode of "Night Gallery" would have been like if directed by Hal Needham. That's what I was envisioning as I watched an ultra obscure (Good luck finding a copy!) early Charles Band effort from 1977 simply entitled Crash! That exclamation point is very much part of the film's title; it was the mid-to-late Seventies and filmmakers and audiences both loved one-word titles with exclamation points back then almost as much as they loved hearing wa-wa peddle music while watching cars get totaled. Movies about the paranormal were also hugely popular in the polyester era. So with Crash! a young, enterprising Charles Band decided to mix chocolate with peanut butter - the gothic horror of a Seventies supernatural horror movie mixed with the car crashing thrills of Southern fried chase flick." FROM HERE TO OBSCURITY: CRASH! |
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| Comments: |
From: (Anonymous) 2008-06-01 08:59 am (UTC)
Oddly enough... | (Link)
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... when I watched the movie for my next book, I had a sneaking suspicion that the seemingly unrelated car crashes were from another movie entirely. Like they pasted together the remains of two different flicks. Btw: In Germany "Crash!" was released as "Dracula's Death Race" to cash in on the success of "Death Race 2000", which had been released as "Frankenstein's Death Race".
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/36301461/7302809) | From: foywonder 2008-06-01 10:39 am (UTC)
Re: Oddly enough... | (Link)
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From what little info I've been able to find about CRASH! the wrecks were specifically shot for the film. The money people told him they'd love a movie with a whole lot of wrecks.
I'm also familiar with how any kind of supernatural/horror/monster movie in Germany ends up with Frankenstein's name in front of it. Heck, THE X FROM OUTER SPACE's German title roughly translates to FRANKENSTEIN'S DEVILED EGG. | |