Vanishing point
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Vanishing Point is a 1971 road movie starring Barry Newman, Cleavon Little, Dean Jagger, and an Alpine White 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T with the mighty 440/375 HP engine.
Vanishing Point is notable for its scenery from filming locations across the American Southwest and its social commentary on the post-Woodstock mood in the United States. It was one of the earliest films (following on the example of Easy Rider), to feature a rock music soundtrack. It is beloved by Mopar enthusiasts because it is one of the most significant movies ever to feature a classic Dodge muscle car. The film continues to be popular to this day and is considered a cult film.
Synopsis
Barry Newman plays a delivery driver named Kowalski who works for a car delivery service in Denver, Colorado. Flashbacks which appear throughout the movie hint that he has lost everything he has ever wanted and was reduced to taking the job as a delivery driver as a last resort. He is a Vietnam veteran, a former law enforcement officer, former race car driver, and former motorcycle racer. He lost his job as a cop apparently after being framed in a drug bust, in retaliation for his preventing his patrol buddy from raping a young girl. He had to give up his automobile and motorcycle racing careers after two near-fatal accidents. His girlfriend lost her life in a surfing accident.
As the movie opens, Kowalski is near the end of his chase by the California Highway Patrol. The movie then flashes back to Denver, where his journey began. He has just arrived in Denver with a car he is delivering, and asks for another assignment. His supervisor objects and insists Kowalski get some rest, but Kowalski insists on taking on another delivery that night. It is already after midnight and Kowalski is assigned to deliver a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T powered by a 440 V-8 engine to San Francisco. After stopping at a biker bar to buy some benzedrine and making a bet with the drug dealer over how long it will take him to make it to San Francisco, he is on his way and takes off at high speed out of Denver.
The police begin to give chase later that morning near Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Kowalski winds up being chased across the states of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, with the police unable to catch him. The chase includes actual footage from Rifle, Colorado, Thompson Springs, Utah, Green River, Utah, Austin, Nevada, Wendover, Utah, and Tonopah, Nevada. The film is notable for actually having been filmed in these locations the movie was set in, and as a result for featuring incredible footage of the desert and the small towns in the region during the pre-Interstate Highway era.
The whole way, Kowalski has his radio tuned to station KOW, which is broadcasting out of Goldfield, Nevada. Cleavon Little plays "Super Soul", the Afro-American disc jockey at the radio station. Super Soul listens to the police radio frequency and helps Kowalski evade the police by broadcasting information on the police whereabouts over the radio. With the help of Super Soul, who calls Kowalski "the last American hero" on his radio show, Kowalski begins to gain national attention as a cult hero among the counterculture during the chase. Bikers and hippies flock to Goldfield, Nevada where Super Soul broadcasts from, and to the towns along the way to wish Kowalski luck. Kowalski is helped by others including an old desert rat, and a Pentecostal sect. In the afternoon, Super Soul is physically attacked by a group of town folks and KOW is forced off the air. Near the California state line, Kowalski is helped by a biker and his nudist girlfriend who live in a shack in the Nevada desert. They give him more benzedrine and help smuggle him across the California state line where the police have set up a roadblock waiting for him that evening. By next morning, Kowalski has made it as far as Cisco, California, where with the California Highway Patrol in hot pursuit, he suddenly and intentionally runs into two bulldozers set up by the police as a roadblock, producing the fatal fireball sequence the movie is often remembered for.
Despite Kowalski's new cult hero status among the counterculture, he repeatedly shows he doesn't want that status during the movie; Kowalski is at heart a despondent blue collar worker. The viewer is left guessing why Kowalski suddenly decided to drive recklessly and evade the police across four states to his death. Kowalski himself says little during the movie. The only hints come from the benzedrine use suggesting a psychotic reaction, and the flashbacks scattered throughout the movie which suggest that Kowalski is a man at the end of his rope with nowhere left to go. His four-state chase is his way of going out with a bang, so to speak.
Barry Newman offers a different interpretation of the film's ending. In an interview printed in Musclecar Review (Mar 86, available [here]) he says "[Kowalski] smiles as he rushes to his death at the end of Vanishing Point because he believes he will make it through the roadblock." Presumably, Newman believes that a combination of Kowalski's drug-induced frame of mind and the blinding light from the bulldozer blades prevents him from seeing that he has no chance.
Alternate versions
An alternate version of the movie includes nighttime footage co-starring Charlotte Rampling as a hitchhiker, which fills in the gap between the evening when Kowalski is smuggled across the California/Nevada state line, and the next morning when he crashes to his death in Cisco. The current U.S. DVD release of Vanishing Point includes both the original version of the movie and the alternate version.Trivia
- Two of the songs on the soundtrack, "Dear Jesus God" which is playing when Super Soul is attacked, and "Over Me" which is playing when Kowalski crashes his car, are credited to "Segarini/Bishop." This is Bob Segarini and Randy Bishop, who were better known as the Canadian rock group The Wackers.
- The first ever recorded material by Kim Carnes appears on the soundtrack, credited as "Kim & Dave". Kim Carnes also wrote another song in the soundtrack performed by Big Mama Thornton.
- The license plate on Kowalski's Dodge Challenger is Colorado OA-5599. This license plate number has been highly sought after as a vanity plate ever since the film's release.
- A 1997 made-for-TV remake of Vanishing Point was shown on Fox TV. The remake also featured a 1970 Dodge Challenger, but otherwise recast Kowalski as a suspected militia sympathizer from Idaho, and replaced Super Soul with a libertarian talk radio shock jock. The remake got a mixed reception at best from fans of the original movie.
- The song playing as Kowalski is buying benzedrine at the biker bar in Denver is "I Can't Believe It" by Longbranch Pennywhistle. This song was omitted from the official release of the movie's soundtrack. Longbranch Pennywhistle featured J.D. Souther and Glenn Frey, both later of The Eagles. The biker bar location was in a seedy neighborhood on West Colfax Avenue in Denver.
- The car used in the crash scene at the end of the film is a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro instead of a Dodge Challenger.
- A big-screen remake of the movie in the near future has been announced. [link]
- The pop music group Delaney & Bonnie & Friends had a small role as a Christian music band, which included singer Rita Coolidge and singer/songwriter David Gates at the piano.
- Although Cisco is a real location in California, the Cisco scenes were filmed in Cisco, Utah, a ghost town near Moab. Cisco, Utah was also the location of some of the scenes filmed in Thelma and Louise, another road movie which has been compared to Vanishing Point.
- The film is often cited as an inspiration for the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash (better known as the Cannonball Run). Although the plot of the film has similarities to the race's premise, the first running of the Cannonball preceded the film. Organizer, Brock Yates, credits another contemporary road movie, Two-Lane Blacktop, as providing some inspiration for the race, however.
- The film was the inspiration for the 1997 album by Primal Scream, also titled Vanishing Point. In addition, a track from the album was named Kowalski after the character from the film; the track also featured samples of Super Soul's "last American hero" speech from the film.
- The film was the basis for Audioslave's 2004 music video "Show Me How to Live", which included members of the band in the 1970 Challenger travelling across the desert, following the plot of the movie.
- Kowalski plans to drive from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours. This would require an average speed of 85 miles per hour.
- A 1/25 plastic scale model kit of the Vanishing Point was produced by AMT, and re-released many times since. Although a good representation of the car can be made by the experienced modeller, the model utilizes a 440 Six-Pack, rather than a 426. NOTE: the vehicles used for filming included four 440 4-speed cars and one 383 automatic. There were no 426 Hemis used in filming, and there is no reference to the engine size in any dialog. The remake differs on this, and makes a point of the Challenger being powered by a 426 Hemi.
- A reference to the movie can be found on Guns N' Roses Use Your Illusion II album track "Breakdown". This is a spoken-word part, mimicking Super Soul's voice, in the end of the song, in which one of Super Soul's on-the-air monologues from the film can be heard.
Remake
There was also a significantly-altered Vanishing Point remake shown by Fox on TV in 1997, starring Viggo Mortensen.See also
External links
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