The Ultimate List of Films for Carmageddon!

Stay off the streets and stay in with a movie…that takes to the streets.

Los Angelenos are aflutter with impending chaos. And, if you don’t live in Los Angeles, you probably don’t understand. (I live here and I’m not sure I fully understand.) But this weekend (July 15-17), the City of Los Angeles has gotten it in its mind to shut down the 405 Freeway, one of the central lifelines for the (frankly absurd) amount of traffic that hits Los Angeles on a daily basis. This means that, functionally, no one’s going anywhere this weekend and the entire West side of Los Angeles is going to be choked off by the cold, unrelenting hands of the Los Angeles DOT.

Naturally, this has become a bit of a cultural meme (surely confusing anyone who doesn’t live in Los Angeles) dubbed by internet pun genii as “Carmageddon.” It has spawned newspaper editorials, comedy bits, viral videos and the eponymous Twitter hashtag #Carmageddon. In the hysteria, you’d be forgiven for thinking this might be the actual apocalypse.

Our advice: don’t leave your house. Stay in. Watch a movie. (That last bit is always our advice.)

So, at the suggestion of friend-of-the-site Denise Fondo (Hi, Denise!), the afternoon drive traffic anchor at KNX 1070 Newsradio, we dove deep into the guru recommendation pool to come up with a list of the ultimate car films to accompany your weekend at home and away from the stress of the near-apocalyptic gridlock. A lot of them responded. If you ignore all of those responses (posted below) and wanted to only pick one or two (I recommend the double, always, in every circumstance) films based upon guru recommendations your best bets are:

• Christine (recommended by 6 different gurus)
• Le Weekend (4 votes)
• Two Lane Blacktop (4 votes)
• Vanishing Point (3 votes)
• Grand Prix (3 votes)

There are some obvious choices missing from this list (Mad Max and Road Warrior only got two votes each), but that’s probably why they’re missing, right? Enjoy programming your weekend with car movies.

Let’s roll on with all the full results of our poll for the curious among you.

Allison Anders

• Alice In The Cities
• Five Easy Pieces
• Kings Of The Road
• Paper Moon

Peter Bogdanovich followed the success of Last Picture Show with this deliberately retro thirties-style portrait of a depression-era con man and the little girl he may be passing off as his daughter. Ryan O’Neal has the Adolphe Menjou part and his daughter Tatum plays the Shirley Temple role.

• Red Line 7000
• Thunder Road

Robert Mitchum stars (and sings!) as an Appalachian moonshiner out to bamboozle the Feds. Little noted at the time, this proved to be a hotrod classic over time. Filmed on location in Asheville North Carolina. This trailer is a textless one created for overseas use.

• Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows (which she sang the praises of at the TFH live event!)
• Le Weekend
• Two Lane Blacktop

Allan Arkush

• Death Proof
• Dirty Mary Crazy Larry
• Freebie and the Bean
• Christine
• Vanishing Point
• Death Race 2000

The recent big-budget “re-imagining” of Paul Bartel’s tacky but wacky original lost all the subversive wit and cartoonish outrageousness that made the property a drive-in cult classic in the first place. He’s not in the trailer, but The Real Don Steele steals it as a crazed sportscaster.

• Grand Prix
• The Cars That Ate People
• The Road Warrior

John Badham

• Herbie
• Duel
• Bullitt
• Christine
• Vanishing Point

Roger Corman

• The Fast and The Furious (1955)
• Grand Theft Auto

Ron Howard’s smashing, crashing directorial debut is a family affair with relatives, friends and co-workers pitching in to provide producer Roger Corman with one of his most successful car crash drive-in movies ever. Allan and Joe worked behind the camera on this one, along with a lot of other New World regulars both on and offscreen.

• Death Race 2000
• Grand Prix

Joe Dante

• The Wild Angels

The counterculture goes mainstream in this emblematic Vietnam-era classic. There would have been no Easy Rider without Roger Corman’s controversial but popular Hell’s Angels movie, which set the trend for a plethora of drive-in biker pictures over the following decade. Peter Bogdanovich contributed some second unit direction as well as tinkering with Chuck Griffith’s screenplay.

• Drive, He Said
• It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World 

Luca Guadagnino

• Christine
• Pink Cadillac
• Stage Coach

Jack Hill 

• Pit Stop (in Crash-O-Rama!)

Dan Ireland

• Driving Miss Daisy
• Christine
• Grand Prix
• The Yellow Rolls Royce
• Hot Rods From Hell
• The Cars That Ate People
• The Long, Long Trailer
• Bullitt

John Landis

• The Blues Brothers

Josh Olson

• Mad Max
• The Road Warrior
• Freebie and the Bean

Richard Rush’s buddy/cop action comedy made hardly a ripple in its theatrical release (although there was a short-lived 1980 tv series), but over the years it’s developed a cadre of hard-core followers, not least of which is Mr. Olson. This pan-and-scan trailer is one of the dullest and least representative we’ve ever run here at TFH.

Johnathan Kaplan

• White Line Fever

Michael Peyser

• Le Weekend
• Two Lane Blacktop
• Christine
• The Yellow Rolls Royce
• The Long, Long Trailer
• Two For The Road

Howard Rodman

• Electroma
• Heart Like a Wheel
• The Driver
• The Grapes of Wrath
• The Great Race
• Tucker
• Used Cars
• Winning

John Sayles

• Two-lane Blacktop
• Thunder Road
• Mad Max
• Citizens Band
• Taxi Driver

Bernard Herrmann’s pulsating final score propels one of the great New York movies, which brilliantly captures a time and place that has largely disappeared. But the dark corners of Paul Schrader’s disturbing screenplay are illuminated by Martin Scorsese’s intensely affecting collaboration with star Robert De Niro in perhaps his greatest role. This lost the Best Picture Oscar to…Rocky.

• Hell’s Angels on Wheels
• Eat the Peach

• Boys on the Side
• Corvette Summer
• Damnation Alley
• Falling Down
• Thelma and Louise
• Car 54, Where Are You?
• American Graffiti
• Motorama

These are our suggestions. What are yours?