
<p> Stimulate and Titillate</p><p>Seeing a hot car is like seeing a hot woman. Heart is palpitating, mouth is salivating, brain is thumping, legs are squirming, armpits are sweating, eyes are bulging, and the mouth is dropping in awe. Like the hot woman, the hot car has a definitive power to hold a man’s attention. If a movie has many cars racing, chasing, and destroying objects in their way, it is identified as a true action film. However, over time car chases have evolved from being a suspenseful way to support the plot into a meaningless over- the-top accessory for eye candy and a way to advertise a product. When action movies were introduced to Americans, a chase scene was always the attention-getter to grab audiences. First, men road horses in the early 1900s and then drove 250 horses in the late 1900s. The car chase gained its popularity in the mid-50s when it was endorsed by none other than James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause. Back in the day, the car chase had a strong impact because it was used as a means to toy with death (Harti). In Rebel, the car chase ends badly when a car goes off a cliff and haunts the survivors and the audience for the rest of the film (Harti). There was no big budget or major city involved, and thousands of anonymous extras were not running amuck while screaming until their ears burst. The car chase was an essential part of the film. In addition, the most notable car chase movies, Bullitt and The French Connection had great audience appeal because both of these movies toyed with the publics emotions and put them into the driver’s seat. In Bullitt, people felt that they were in a Disneyland simulation ride going 110 mph because that’s how fast the cars were actually going when the director filmed the scene. The French Connection scarred audiences to death by having a near fatal collision with a mother and a baby during its climactic car chase. In the late 70s, movies like Smokey and the Bandit and Steven Spielberg’s Duel added huge semi-trucks as another variable. In Duel, the car chase was the plot for the entire movie and created a way to identify the evil and the good. With only two main vehicles on the rode (an evil monster truck and Dennis Weaver’s car), the several camera angles made the movie portray that the evil monstrous truck was driven by a demonic force. This chase scene easily points out who to root for and creates a great intense terror whenever the monster truck is shot as if it was coming after you in real life. After these great movies, the car chase scene had a major epiphany: to destroy objects with no reason at all. In the movie, Death Race 2000 instead of an unpopular teenage game, the car chases turned into a death sport when the object of racing a car was to hit all of the pedestrians that were in the windshield’s view. The skateboarders and the people on crutches were bonus points. Following Death Race 2000, the streets of downtown Chicago were pummeled in The Blues Brothers where over 150 police cars were demolished repeatedly again and again and thrown into the movie as if they were Matchbox cars that were bought in bulk. Car chases like these are impractical and give the police a bad reputation. Following these two movies, the car chase scene has been marketed as means only for destruction. In the more modern movie The Rock, director Michael Bay used a Hummer and a cherry red sports car as a means to destroy San Francisco and in Die Hard: With a Vengeance, Bruce Willis drives a crazy taxi through Central Park. Car chase action movies have not just been a money maker for the movie studios, but to the car companies too. People bought the Trans Am and Charger after they starred in the Smokey and the Bandit and Bullitt films. These action movies became a 2 hour endorsement deal. There have been over 15 James Bond movies that have a new Austin Martin or BMW in each one and even the auto maker, Audi, advertised their new concept car in the movie I-Robot. Since the Model T came out in 1912, cars ruled the planet, and the car chase has ruled the film industry. Car chases hit a climax during the 1950s-1970s, but then turned into a shallow excuse to kill 15 minutes of time. The car chase is synonymous with the action film and has mutated from men with a conscious driving cars in a high intensity, emotional, hot pursuit rollercoaster into a superficial way to kill innocent people, annihilate huge objects, market a product to the American people so they can each be like a glamorized, Hollywood movie star. </p><p>Works Cited</p><p>Harti, John. Top Ten Car Chase Movies. MSNBC. 29 January 2005 <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6091432/></p>
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