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BangShift Saturday Matinee: “The Junkman”, The World Record Holder For Wrecked Vehicles!


BangShift Saturday Matinee: “The Junkman”, The World Record Holder For Wrecked Vehicles!

I had to watch this entire thing twice, just so I could attempt to comprehend what was going on besides a Cadillac Eldorado getting beat on like there was no tomorrow. There’s a story, but unless you are a diehard H.B. Halicki fan, you won’t pay attention. There are exotic cars, but you’ll probably be too busy studying the everyday cars in the background scenes that you won’t even notice. The bad guys drive two of the strangest pursuit vehicles imaginable: one assassin, bearded and sporting a festive shirt, rocks a Dodge Magnum, while a 1970s makes a late 1970s Ford Thunderbird actually look kind of menacing. Or maybe it’s just the driver behind the wheel.

With H.B. Halicki’s Gone In Sixty Seconds, part of the draw that has earned the movie a place in the history books and the hearts of gearheads everywhere was that Halicki did real-world driving, real-world stunts and had real-world incidents. The train derailment, real. The incident when the Mustang is rear-ended by a Cadillac, real…the Mach 1 spun into a light pole at over 100 miles per hour and put Halicki on the injured list while he recovered enough to drive again. He ended up finishing the film off in a leg cast and with broken ribs. While actual action wasn’t uncommon for a car-based flick in the 1970s, Halicki was doing all of this on the thinnest of budgets (a total of $150,000) and it still holds up well. That flick has a 40-minute chase on it’s own, but The Junkman held a Guinness World Record for most cars destroyed in a film at 150. That has been since beaten by a few movies: Fast and Furious 5, The Matrix Reloaded, and Transformers 3, which killed off an almost unbelievable 532 vehicles. Well, that would be unbelievable if it wasn’t for the fact that they were all flood cars.

With The Junkman, Halicki once again was pulling triple-duty as the writer, director, and the main talent of the film. The cars were his, the properties were his, and just like before, the action was legitimate. Halicki nearly bought the farm when one of the planes, piloted by Tony Ostermeier, crashed into the Eldorado. When the Thunderbird drives off of the cliff, the interior shot is actually from the moment Rita Rickard flipped the car.

It’s an orgy of car action mired in Halicki’s ability to self-promote. But until two days ago, I’d never seen this flick, and if absolutely nothing else, it’s a great view for someone who wasn’t around at the time to look back at the average cars of yesterday. There were plenty of them shown!


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