Vehicles: A Chevy Malibu, a Mercury Grand Marquis, a freight train, a Peterbilt 352 semi
Custom features: Someone yelling, “You’re going the wrong way!”
With his career in free fall, onetime wunderkind William Friedkin (The Exorcist) decided the only option was reverse for the centerpiece chase scene in his superb L.A. noir. Friedkin topped the automotive thrills and spills of his Oscar-winning The French Connection by forcing star William Petersen to drive headlong into L.A. freeway traffic for a full six minutes. Reckless, gleefully irresponsible and totally off the hook.
Car chases are simple, right? There’s one car in front, another behind, they speed along, and bingo: blockbuster gold. That may be true if all you’re after is yet another unmemorable action scene. But if you want something that will go down in movie history, you have to try a little harder. From car-versus-plane smackdowns to psycho robots in semis, these are 10 of some of the wildest, most destructive scenes of automotive mayhem in cinema history.
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