Hick Flicks by Von Doviak Scott

Author:Von Doviak, Scott
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: McFarland Publishing
Published: 2004-11-30T06:00:00+00:00

9

Fender Benders

“It’s aimed directly at the market of country kids—it just isn’t for grown-ups.”—Charles B. Griffith, director of Eat My Dust!

A number of factors contribute to the popularity of NASCAR racing, but let’s get real: for many fans, it’s all about the carnage. That’s why the most popular night at the track is demolition derby night. After the track is cleared following the final race, the speedway fills with junker cars with nothing to lose. Their only goal: to crush the competition. The last car with its engine still running wins the derby.

It’s another uniquely American phenomenon, an event that must seem unimaginably decadent to societies where car ownership is a privilege of the upper class. But what the hell, these heaps have to be put out of their misery one way or another, so why not allow them the opportunity to go out in a blaze of glory?

The influence of the demolition derby on contemporary American movies cannot be overstated—though it can be, and has been, mourned at great length. Another probable influence on the fender bender genre is the highway safety film. That’s right, those instructional shorts with titles like Mechanized Death and Wheels of Tragedy that you had to watch in driver’s ed class. Chock full of grisly accident footage, lingering on disturbing images of bloodied and battered drivers barely clinging to life, and charred husks that used to be human beings, these cautionary reels are no doubt buried in the subconscious of every car crash auteur who ever took his driver’s test.

The big problem with these movies (from an aesthetic standpoint, at least; the moral qualms raised by them are a much stickier matter) was that they were all aftermath, no action. Obviously, cameras were not rolling when the actual accidents occurred; the best these films could offer up in terms of action was footage of planned automobile crashes using test dummies. In this sense, they were like porno movies consisting only of scenes in which naked couples loll around in bed, smoking cigarettes.

* * *

Car chases have been a staple of the movies since the beginning, but the Seventies car chase flick has its roots not in hixploitation, but in urban cop movies like Bullitt (1968) and The French Connection (1971), pictures that are cited to this day whenever the subject of great movie car chases arises. For producers of low-budget exploitation fare, the popularity of the driving scenes in those films was a wake-up call. Why not eliminate all but the bare essential story, motivation and character development, and create movies that were almost nothing but car chases?

Again, the parallel with pornography is irresistible. Structurally, both genres adhere to the same rhythmic ebb and flow; Debbie Does Dallas and Eat My Dust can both be broken up into ten-minute increments, each of which follows an identical arc. There is a bit of dialogue, usually the minimum necessary to convey whatever feeble exposition needs to be gotten across. (There is an implicit understanding that no one really cares; this is simply a formality.

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