Comet, that is indeed a very cool story! The original movie was a fabulous movie I thought. The remake - pretty lame. RIP Barry Newman - and I remember watching his TV show "Petrocelli." I liked that - his wife was a real hottie in that show too. I always liked his acting style.
There are two trailers floating around. There may have been more, I don't know. Both are edited quite differently. One has Yellow Titles, the other has white. One refers to the car as a "Dodge Challenger" the other, simply as "Challenger". Both however mention it's supercharged. I often wonder though, if that were just street speak for "Hopped up", because by 1970, "hopped-up" referred to something else. Although, in the movie itself, Kowalski mentions: "It's hopped-up to do 160".
Yea a 3/4 509 cam 2 Daytona AFBs recurved distributor running on AV gas, those media guys didn’t know what an engine was. But it sounded real hip!
Re: RIP Barry Newman
[Re: BDW]
#3148943 06/05/2304:32 PM06/05/2304:32 PM
This might be heresy, but my god, that has to be 1 of the worst movies ever made! If it wasn't for the Challenger it's a complete zero.
Oh well, now I've seen it.
You wanna see a BAD movie from that time period? Watch the original Shaft. OMG its PAINFUL!!!!!!!! Theres a scene in a police chiefs office. An office with no windows. Nothing on the walls. A desk and file cabinet. They keep zooming in on a coffee cup. There is literally MINUTES of dead air silence!!!!!!! I'll never get that waste of time back. Then watch the modern version. We are so spoiled by the action, animation, high tech production. I actually watched both to compare the new and old movies. Never again
R.I.P. Barry. The original is a classic, but when released, it was not very popular. The other characters in the movie are great as well. Cleavon Little aka Super Soul was perfect. The old man who handled snake's, and lived in the desert, was great too. Kowalski got the last laugh in the end, since he never got caught by the fuzz!
RIP Barry! Everytime that movie was on television, my 70 Challenger R/T 383 Magnum 4 speed car would get the balls beat out of it trying to imitating the full throttle speed shifts! I finally destroyed the clutch doing it!
R.I.P. Barry. . The old man who handled snake's, and lived in the desert, was great too. !
The desert rat was played by Dean Jagger, great actor. Also the General in White Christmas.
Dean Jagger was in quite a few old movies - not "B" movies either - very big box office movies. He was a great old Hollywood type.
Does anybody have the video that Motor Trend filmed in 2009-ish era where they took a NEW Challenger for Barry to evaluate? I tried to find it on YouTube, but could not find it. I tried the old Motor Trend link & the link was no good anymore. This was an awesome video!
Not one mention of the young lady on the mini-bike yet? Dang, some ya'll must be gettin' old!
I have the British version on DVD, it has the directors comments, great history!
Maurice Unger of Cupid Productions also bought a 1970 Challenger T/A new off the lot well before the movie debut.
May Barry Newman Race In Peace.
The Challenger T/A was the car Maurice showed to Richard Sefarian and asked him what he thought about using the car in the movie. He said what do you think about using this car as the star vehicle in the movie, I can get lots of them. Who could possibly forget the naked girl on the bike! Chrysler Executives were appalled by all the drug use and nudity in the film and completely disassociated themselves from the film after seeing the first private screening of the film. The cars from the film were rumored to have gone to the proving grounds and were most likely destroyed after being analyzed. None have surfaced to this day. A proving grounds employee said that he remembered seeing a trailer load of beat up white 70 Challengers there.