Paul (Joey Travolta) is an ace driver and at times an illegal and freelance racer, while Nick (Vittorio Mezzogiorno) is a wizard of mechanics, they form a perfect team of auto racers. By winning a rigged race and Paul had to leave victory to a rider of a team in the pay of a gangster named Wronsky (Ricardo Palacios), our friends are forced to temporarily erase circuits; to get away the wrath of Wronsky and his henchmen (Sal Borghese). Then the reckless drivers get involved with the usual gang of goons who proceed to make their life painful . Along their risked adventures they meet Janice Johnson (Ana Obregon), an antiques dealer, who falls in love for Paul. Thing go wrong when the three of them go to the house of the wealthy Kirby (John Steiner) and his snooty butler Gershwin.
Formula thriller with noisy action , thrills , crisply edition , tension , intrigue , and loads of noisy races. A routine thriller dealing with the relationships between three friends: Joey Travolta, Vittorio Mezziogorno , Ana Obregón in the world of car racing competitions, accompanied by other prolific secondaries in a large number of Spag Westerns and other Latin sub-genres. The main duo Joey Travolta and Vittorio Mezzogiorno are threatened by a mobster not to participate in the car tournament called the 'Race of the Dead', but the stubborn pair are determined to compete at any cost. The picture was unevenly written by four screen writers: Marco Tullio Giordana, Massimo De Rita, Concha Espina and Margheritti himself, being regularly shot by Antonio Margheritti in his peculiar style .Antonio was considered to be one of the best Italian craftsmen , making a nice career, shooting all kinds of genres. Here he delivers frenetic action, suspense, thriller and violence enough along the nail-biting flick. There is a good stuntwork with risked races , pursuits and cars jumping here and there.
This is a mostly Italian film, in the early 1960's Italians made movies about Gladiators known as Peplum or Sword and Sandals , then they made Spaghetti Westerns , then Spy Movies , Gothic Horrors , War Flicks , Giallo Slashers , Crime Trash Epics or Poliziotto , Sex comedy , Rampaging Shark thrillers , Star Wars ripoffs , and eventually Racing Movies . This Car Crash(1981) belongs to car races sub-genre in which protagonists competing in dangerous circuits trying to force each other off the road, combined with a threatening mobsters subplot . Stars Joey Travolta as a brave racer whose role gets involved in problems when he's blackmailed along with Vittorio Mezzogiorno as the sympathetic expert on car mechanics. And there're various familiar faces, habituals of the prolific Italian and Spanish sub-genres of the sixties, seventies, and eighties, such as Ricardo Palacios, John Steiner, and the eternal secondary and stuntsman Sal Borgese. A nice cast in this one doing their bit , but the story is rather small scale and slightly dull and tiring in parts . It makes up for the excellent races taken from real competitions , though the car crashes are lousy stock footage , as well as the exciting climax final of the movie. And with some hilarious use of miniatures (of which the director was an expert with continuous use in his films, as well as explosions) and scale models of toy cars jumping over trains or cliffs.
It contains atmospheric and colorful cinematography by cameraman Hans Burmann. Likewise , catching and moving musical score in the Eighties style, composed by means synthesizer, including some songs at the time .The motion picture was average but professionally directed by terror/action/adventure expert Antonio Margheritti, and it displays some failures and flaws . Antonio was assisted by his son : Edoardo Margheriti who usually served as second unit filmmaker . Antonio often used pseudonym Anthony M Dawson, he was born in Italy 1930 and passed away in 2002 . Italian writer director of horror and exploitation films, a former university engineering student who began shooting in 1956 . Antonio directs with ordinary aplomb and being especially known for films as ¨Yor, Virus¨ and ¨Horror castle¨. He was specialist in model-making, optical effects , FX, miniature as floods, scale models and explosions . He directed all kinds of genres such as wartime : ¨The last hunter, Tornado, Codename Wild geese, Der Commander, Command Leopard¨ . SCI-Fi : ¨War of planets , Planet of the prowl, Criminal of the galaxy, Yor the hunter from the future, Treasure planet¨ . Spaghetti Western as ¨Joko, Dynamite Joe, The stranger and the gunfighter, Take a hard ride, Ghosts go west, Joe implacable, God said to Cain¨ . Terror as ¨Virgin of Nuremberg, Cannibal Apocalypse, Alien from deep, Flesh for Frankenstein¨. Action : ¨Operation Goldman, Indio, The squeeze, Cyberflic¨. Rating Car Crash(1981) : 4.5/10. Average but acceptable and passable, at times.
