Introduction: Although there are many different kinds of chase (or rescue) film scenes, the most frequent type of film chase is the car chase. It is almost always between a protagonist/hero (or criminal) and the police (or authority figures), with more than a few vehicles involved in the most spectacular examples. The fast-moving scenes of the car chase, typically found in action films, very often feature high-speed maneuvering, crashes, and point-of-view perspectives to enhance the action. For variety, tanks, semi-trailer-trucks, snowmobiles, buses, and other unusually large vehicles have been employed. Having the characters move from one vehicle to another or fight atop the accelerating vehicles adds to the excitement.

The films with car chases are marked by this icon:

Note: The films that are marked with a yellow star are the films that
"The Greatest Films" site has selected as the 100 Greatest Films

Duel (1971)

Steven Spielberg's early made-for-TV movie, about a mild-mannered, distressed traveling salesman (Dennis Weaver) in a small Plymouth Valiant who was relentlessly pursued by a faceless, psychotically-angry driver of a 40-ton, semi-truck tanker.

The French Connection (1971)

This was another incredible, hair-raising sequence of unbelievable car-chasing: New York detective "Popeye" Doyle's (Gene Hackman) 90 mph car pursuit (in a hijacked civilian car: "Police emergency: I need your car") of a suspected drug dealer in a hijacked elevated subway train above him; during the chase, he - among other things - half-collided with another car, dodged a mother and her baby carriage, and side- swiped a delivery van, all the while furiously honking the car's horn and frantically switching from his brake to accelerator.

Two Lane Blacktop (1971)

A low-budget film in which two car-obsessed vagabonds challenged a stock 1970 Pontiac GTO to a cross-country race against their cool, customized, primer gray 1955 Chevy coupe hot rod. The Driver (singer/composer James Taylor) and The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys) raced against middle-aged, glib "G.T.O." (Warren Oates), with The Girl (Laurie Bird) picked up as a sassy hitchhiker, at his side.

The Seven-Ups (1973)

This film featured a heart-pounding, tire-squealing, ten-minute chase sequence through city streets and busy intersections (and onto city sidewalks with spectacular images of smashed vendor fruit crates); in one segment, both cars careened through a street filled with screaming schoolchildren, and later the cars went airborne during downhill pursuit; both cars also crashed through a police barricade set up at the entrance to a bridge; the chase was between two Pontiac vehicles driven by: tough NYC detective Buddy Manucci (Roy Scheider) in a beige 1973 Pontiac Ventura Sprint Coupe in pursuit of two criminals (Richard Lynch and stuntman Bill Hickman) in a black Pontiac Grand Ville; the chase eventually emerged outside NYC in open country, where the bad guys rode closely in front of a Greyhound bus and blasted Manucci with a shotgun when he started to pass - causing his car's hood to detach; the exciting sequence ended with the violent and crushing impact of the Ventura Sprint Coupe into the rear-end of a parked 18-wheeler trailer truck - causing the possible decapitation of Manucci - although he ducked and avoided serious injury. [This car chase mirrored the ones in Bullitt (1968) and The French Connection (1971).]

Vanishing Point (1971)

After driving from San Francisco, California to Denver, Colorado, pill-popping Vietnam Vet, and former race car driver Kowalski (Barry Newman), a courier, bet a friend that he could retrace his route with a customer's new vehicle in double-time (in about 15 hours). Police chased the bennie-popping, ex-cop anti-hero in his souped-up, white 1970 2-door Dodge R/T Challenger (with a 440 cubic inch V8) across Utah and Nevada's Death Valley toward his destination - accompanied by a rock-soul soundtrack and directions broadcast on the radio from blind disc jockey Super Soul (Cleavon Little).

Westworld (1973)

The chase sequence at the film's finale was spectacular - when the villainous, glitchy cyborg gunslinger (Yul Brynner) in black relentlessly pursued a desperate Martin (Richard Benjamin) across the entire Westworld-Delos amusement theme park.

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974)

In this 'B' level car-chase film, washed-up stock car/NASCAR racers Larry Rayder (Peter Fonda) and Deke Sommers (Adam Rourke) robbed a small-town grocery store manager (Roddy McDowall) of $150,000, and then fled in a 4-dr. 1967 Chevy, and along the way picked up spunky, sexy and slutty Mary Coombs (Susan George) for the ride in another vehicle - a souped-up fluorescent yellow-green 1969 Dodge Charger R/T with a 440 cubic inch V-8 engine, sporting prominent black side striping; patrol car trooper Hanks (Eugene Daniels) in Car #10 (a 1972 Dodge Polara 440 V-8) and Sheriff Everett Franklin (Vic Morrow) in a helicopter maniacally pursued them across dusty rural roads amidst fruit trees in California, incurring some close-calls and smash-ups - the patrolman's "hot pursuit" was stopped by a falling telephone pole; the film featured an explosive and fiery finale when Larry, Deke and Mary crashed into a moving freight train, as Larry boasted: "Ain't nothin' gonna stop us!"

The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)

In one of the film's best sequences, James Bond (Roger Moore) robbed a jazzy red AMC Hornet from a dealership in Bangkok, Thailand, drove it through the showroom's glass windows, and onto the streets of the bustling city, in order to rescue his inept fellow agent Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland). In a most impressive car stunt (accompanied by a laughable, cartoonish slide whistle sound), Bond's vehicle made a spectacular, Evil Knievel-like, 360-degree, mid-air, corkscrew-turning loop-jump over a broken bridge (and river) and landed upright on its tires on the other side. His passenger, J.W. Pepper (Clifton James), exclaims: "Wowee!"

[This scene would be semi-reprised in A View to a Kill (1985), when Bond (also Moore) would drive a car through the streets of Paris, until it was reduced to just the front half!]

Death Race 2000 (1975)

A futuristic, campy film with one long, Trans Continental Road Race chase sequence involving customized high-performance funny cars, led by a disfigured, dark and brooding, leather-jumpsuited Frankenstein (David Carradine) and rival Machine-Gun Joe Viturbo (Sylvester Stallone). The cult classic's tagline illustrated the brutal sport of killing pedestrians for points: "In The Year 2000 Hit And Run Driving Is No Longer A Felony. It's The National Sport!" Women were worth 10 points more than men; teens were worth 40; toddlers under 12 were worth 70; anyone over the age of 75 was worth 100. Even a retirement home wheeled out some of its elderly for "Euthanasia Day."

The Blues Brothers (1980)

In one of the film's earlier scenes, there was an incredible jump over an open drawbridge [the 95th Street bridge] ("This car's got some pickup"), then a spectacular chase through an entire indoor shopping mall in the Chicago area [the former Dixie Square Mall] - when cool ex-con, renegade musicians named the Blues Brothers - who were "on a mission from God": Joliet "Jake" Blues (John Belushi) and Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd) wearing black suits, hats, and shades, were pursued by state police in their Bluesmobile (a converted 1974 Dodge Monaco police cruiser sedan), with dozens of crashes through store windows (J. C. Penney's, Toys R Us, etc.) - that sent shoppers fleeing; then in the last half hour of the film, they sped 106 miles in their car toward downtown Chicago while pursued by lots of squad cars, with a maniacal chase that reportedly had the largest number of car crashes in film history; one police car ended up crashing into the back of a freight truck ("We're in a truck!"); at the conclusion, the two - driving at 120 mph at times - plowed their vehicle through a flock of pigeons and a crowd of pedestrians and into the lobby of the Richard J. Daley Center municipal building at Daley Plaza; once they reached their final destination, their car literally collapsed and completely fell apart after they stepped out of it. [Mack Sennett's The Keystone Kops short films were an inspiration for this film.]