Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)

Become a Patron!

A tow truck driver decides to make a movie that teaches us a master class on how to boost cars. Someone knows way too much about stealing cars here.

So along the same vein as Miami Connection, Deadbeat by Dawn, and The Room a guy who doesn't have any training or experience making movies uses his dubious personal funds to make his dream project - a movie. That's what H.B. Halecki did here. But he made a movie about what he knew - stealing cars. Ol' H.B. or Tobey by his friends, had a successful tow truck company which to me says he repossessed a lot of vehicles and so made a movie about breaking into cars and moving them without any one knowing. 

Sadly, car thieving instructional videos aren't very exciting. That's the front 5/8s of the film. There's an attempt to church it up a little with a little bit of ADR comedy and you know how that always goes. There was no script for this movie and so that just makes a pile of movie. Its just scenes spliced together in no meaningful or predetermined manner. That's kind of important and there's a reason. If you don't have forethought in your film, you've just got a pile of movie and that doesn't work. Seriously, Tommy Wiseau makes better movies.

However, one can just go to the chase scene that lasts 40 minutes. The stunts are incredible and incredibly dangerous. They're not really stunts when they are real and you're just filming carnage though. But even then, it gets stale. They are long nonsensical sequences of cops getting Eleanor surrounded and then he gets away until the next location where he's surrounded again. I'm sorry but H.B. isn't Hal Needham. You STILL NEED TO HAVE FORETHOUGHT IN YOUR SCENES!!! The Eleanor sequence has a smatter of amazing moments but is stuffed around a bunch of boring. 

I'm sorry to those who think this is great (including our own Sam) but the story of making the movie is way more exciting and interesting than the film itself. Its the most exciting boring movie ever. Like a cocaine Valium.

Individual Ratings:

Over the top action:
Cheesy effects:
Horrendous acting:
Laugh-out-loud-ability:
Ridiculous stunts:
Gratuitous nudity:
Memorable one-liners:
Nonsensical Plot:

Riffability:

Overall Ratings:

Good Movie Quality:
Bad Movie Quality: