The Car is a 1977 American horror film directed by Elliot Silverstein and written by Michael Butler, Dennis Shryack and Lane Slate. The film stars James Brolin, Kathleen Lloyd, John Marley and Ronny Cox, along with real-life sisters Kim and Kyle Richards (as Brolin's daughters). It tells the story of an unmanned, self-driving mysterious car that goes on a murderous rampage, terrorizing the residents of a small town.
The film was produced and distributed by Universal Studios, and was influenced by numerous "road movies" of the 1970s including Steven Spielberg's thriller Duel (1971) and Roger Corman's Death Race 2000 (1975). A spinoff sequel, The Car: Road to Revenge, was released on January 8, 2019, with Cox returning in the series.
Plot[]
Two cyclists riding through a canyon are followed by a mysterious matte black car down the road. At a bridge, the car proceeds to crush one cyclist against the wall and ram the other from behind, catapulting him off the bridge. A hitchhiker, hoping to get a ride, encounters the car and insults it after it purposely tries to run him down. In response, the car runs over him several times and leaves. The local sheriff's office, called to the first of a series of hit and run deaths, gets a lead on the car that appears heavily customized and has no license plates, as pointed out by Amos Clemens (R. G. Armstrong) after he sees it run over the hitchhiker.
That night, in an apparent bid to kill Amos, the car instead runs over Sheriff Everett Peck (John Marley), leaving Chief Deputy Wade Parent (James Brolin) in charge. During the resulting investigation, an eyewitness to the accident states that there was no driver inside the car, furthering Wade's confusion. Wade asks his girlfriend, Lauren (Kathleen Lloyd), who is a teacher at the local school, to cancel the upcoming marching band rehearsals for their safety. Lauren and her friend, the wife of Wade's deputy Luke Johnson (Ronny Cox), ask him to let them rehearse, to which Luke unwittingly agrees.
The car enters the town and attacks the school marching band as it rehearses at the local showground. It chases the group of teachers and students into a cemetery. Curiously enough, the vehicle will not enter onto the consecrated ground as Lauren taunts the purported driver that any of the townsfolk have yet to see. Seemingly in anger, the car destroys a brick gate post and leaves. The police chase the automobile along highways throughout the desert before it turns on them, destroying several squad cars and killing five of Wade's deputies in the process. Wade confronts the vehicle and is surprised to see that none of his bullets put a dent on the car's windshield or tires. After trying to open the door (it is revealed that the car has no door handles), Wade is knocked out by the car door when it opens by itself, and the car escapes. At the hospital, Wade is consoled by his remaining deputies and Lauren. He later offers to get her some spare clean clothes.
That evening, Lauren is picking up her things at home and talking to Wade over the phone when the car drives straight through her house and rams her. Luke suggests to a grief-stricken and maddened Wade the theory that it acted in revenge for the insults hurled on it by Lauren and notes that it apparently did not enter the cemetery because "the ground is hallowed," a biblical reference. Wade concocts a plan to stop the car by burying it beneath a controlled explosion in the canyons that lie outside of town. After discovering it waiting for them in his own garage, they are forced to carry out his plans post haste. He is pursued by the car into a mountainous canyon area where his remaining deputies have set a trap for the machine.
In a final confrontation, Wade and Luke stand at the edge of a cliff and bait the car into running straight at them, then jump aside as it goes over the cliff. As the dynamite detonates and rubble falls on the car, a monstrous, demonic visage appears in the smoke and fire of the explosion, shocking the deputies. Wade refuses to believe what the group saw in the flames, despite Luke's insistence.
The film concludes with the car prowling the streets of downtown Los Angeles, apparently having survived the crash.