Crash! (1976)

One of my all-time favorite bitchy movie reviews suggests that Paul Verhoeven interpreted the title of his 1995 opus Showgirls as a command: Show girls! A similar critique could be made about Crash! At regular intervals throughout the movie, cars crash. Never mind that the story actually concerns a deranged older man’s efforts to murder his young wife, whom he blames for an accident that left him confined to a wheelchair. And never mind that the central gimmick of the movie is a weird supernatural keychain (yes, really) that somehow draws the woman into periods of demonic possession. Crash! is one of those bad movies that lacks the depth and imagination to properly service any single plot, so it overcompensates by tossing in several other plots, as if a steady barrage of vaguely connected story events will compensate for the lack of a central narrative. For viewers willing to embrace Crash! as an exercise in craptastic camp, the scattershot storytelling might work. For viewers seeking proper cinema, not so much. Embittered Marc Denne (José Ferrer) wants to get rid of his sexy wife, Kim (Sue Lyon). She’s not too fond of him, either. After she buys the demonic keychain at a flea market, Kim has a terrible car accident that leaves her amnesiac and disfigured. Enter studly Dr. Gregg Martin (John Ericson), who takes more than a professional interest in his new patient. Meanwhile, a driverless car roams local highways, killing people by causing fiery automotive wrecks. Eventually, these narrative threads converge thanks to ridiculous plot twists, leading to an entertainingly absurd climax: As the possessed Kim writhes in a sauna, she telepathically commands the driverless car to attack Marc, who zooms around his driveway in a wheelchair while blasting at the car with a shotgun. For a few laughable moments, Crash! is nearly as giddily dumb as another driverless-car shocker released the following year, The Car (1977). Until then, the movie remains stuck in neutral.

Crash!: LAME