Filmsite's Greatest Chase Scenes in Film History

Edwin S. Porter's early silent western classic, with fourteen primitive scenes, comprised a narrative story with multiple plot lines.

It contained prototypical elements that have been repeatedly copied by almost every western - a train holdup with six-shooters, a daring robbery accompanied by violence and death, a hastily-assembled posse's chase on horseback after the fleeing bandits, and the apprehension of the desperadoes after a showdown in the woods.

D.W. Griffith's monumental technical masterpiece of epic film-making (although decidedly racist) included an exciting conclusion involving the KKK's race to restore order. The Klan on horseback were summoned, assembled and gathered for reinforcement. Ben Cameron (Henry Walthall), "the Little Colonel", led the Klan to the rescue of white womanhood, white honor, and white glory, in a 'head-on' tracking shot.

It was an intense, action-packed, stupendous, last-minute rescue finale, a thrilling climax - interweaving the siege on the cabin, the chaos in Piedmont, Elsie Stoneman's (Lillian Gish) fate at the hands of Silas Lynch (George Siegmann), and the onrushing rescue by the Klan. During the rescue, the most famous sequence in the film, excitement was heightened by shots of the Klan alternating with shots of the endangered Elsie - the film exhibited masterful parallel editing.

This film was memorable for the last minute, climactic scene in which David Bartlett (Richard Barthelmess) chased after cast-out love interest Anna Moore (Lillian Gish) who had fled into a blinding snowstorm. She fainted on one of the ice floes in the midst of an icy river, with her hand trailing into the freezing water. As the ice thawed the next morning and broke apart ("the great ice-break"), her lifeless form was caught unconscious on moving ice-floes and was swept downstream toward a precipitous waterfall.

David nimbly jumped from ice block to ice block to try to reach her before the ice jam gave way - rushing to the falls. As Anna regained consciousness, but started to sink into the frigid water at the edge of the falls, David scooped her up and saved her, running perilously upstream on unstable blocks of ice to reach the shore.

This chase comedy was written and directed by Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman, and filmed with a huge budget for its time ($400,000). It was memorable for its strong story-line of a single, brave, but foolish Southern Confederate train engineer Johnnie (Buster Keaton) doggedly in pursuit of his passionately-loved locomotive ("The General") and the blue-coated spies who had stolen it, AND the woman he loved.

Each half of the film was predominantly composed of two train chases over the same territory. Each scene in the chase of the first half had a counterpart in the film's second half.

In the first chase, Johnnie pursued his stolen locomotive taken to the North by the Union forces. In the second half, the Union spies chased Johnnie in his re-possessed General back to the South.

The film concluded with a climactic battle at a river gorge, with the dramatic crash of the pursuit train into the Rock River in the film's most spectacular scene.

The John Ford western had a spectacular, climactic hair-raising, dangerous stunt (a horse-leap and coach-slide) during the stagecoach chase across the alkali flat by Apache Indians. One of the Apaches (Enos Yakima Canutt, a famed stuntman) leapt from his mount alongside the moving stage onto the galloping lead horses of the stagecoach's team (a stagecoach was pulled by three pairs of horses: the lead, the swing, and the wheel teams).

As he tried to grab the reins of the lead horse to control the stagecoach, Ringo (John Wayne) shot at him with his rifle from over Buck's shoulder. The Apache was struck and fell down among many sets of thundering hooves. He hung onto the rig's shaft or tongue (the projection on the bottom front of the wagon that connected the vehicle to the horses) while dragging along the ground.

Then, after being shot a second time, the Apache warrior let go and slid between the wheels of the moving coach - the six horses and the stage's carriage rolled right over his prone body. The camera panned back to show that it wasn't a stunt dummy - the wounded Indian rolled aside and climbed slowly to his knees.

This W.C. Fields film concluded with a memorable, zany slapstick, getaway car chase scene, reminiscent of the silent Mack Sennett Keystone Kops films. Egbert Sousè (Fields) was taken as hostage by a bank robber, used as a shield, and forced to drive a getaway car.

Following in three other chase cars through the city and country were the local police, the bank president, and a representative from the movie company. It was a superbly-timed chase - the cars zoomed and circled around, barely avoiding crashing into each other or other obstacles in the path.

The getaway car careened through streets, over ditches (over the heads of ditchdiggers), around curves and up a mountainside, missing collisions at every turn with the pursuit vehicles. An unruffled Sousè gave non-chalant comments about the traffic and scenery. As his car started to fall apart, he joked: "The resale value of this car is going to be nil after you get over this trip." When asked by the thug in the back seat to give him the wheel, Egbert matter-of-factly pulled it off the steering column and gave it to him. When the rear tires started falling off, he calmly stated: "That's what I thought - going to be very dangerous."

The robber was struck by the bough of a tree as he stood up and the car came to rest at the edge of a steep precipice. Sousè mumbled: "Have to take the boat from here on anyway." The unconscious thief was apprehended, and Sousè was a hero once again for thwarting another heist.

Future "King of the B's" Roger Corman served as the producer and writer (and bit actor) in this inferior John Ireland-co-directed action film - the first film for American International Pictures (then known as American Releasing Corporation or ARC).

It starred John Ireland as escaped murderer Frank Webster who met and kidnapped attractive blonde society girl Connie Adair (Dorothy Malone) at a roadside diner. He also took her late-model Jaguar XK120 sports car with her for his flight to Mexico - participating in an international sports car rally from California to across-the-border.

The title rights to this film were used for the 'remake' sequel - The Fast and the Furious (2001).

Director Arthur Ripley's b/w noirish, low-budget B-film from a story written by the film's star/producer Robert Mitchum, advertised itself with the apt tagline: "You'll Need Shock Absorbers!"

As part of his vanity project, Mitchum also wrote the film's theme song Ballad of Thunder Road ("Thunder was his engine and white lightnin' was his load..."), and his real-life look-alike son James played a role as his younger mechanic-brother Robin.

This definitive film (a cult drive-in favorite) was about transporting or running moonshine from the Appalachian Mountains area of backwoods rural North Carolina (Rillow Valley) and Harlan County (KY) while pursued by US Treasury (T-men) agents, including Troy Barrett (Gene Barry). Interference was also provided by ruthless crime syndicate city boss Carl Kogan (Jacques Aubuchon) from Memphis, Tennessee, who was threatening to consolidate all of the "action" of the local moonshine-bootleggers.

Sleepy-eyed, cigarette-smoking, disillusioned tough-guy Mitchum played the romanticized but anti-hero role of a returning Korean War veteran named Lucas "Luke" Doolin, who resumed helping in his father Vernon's (Trevor Bardette) family business of bootlegging. He was a transporter ("those wild and reckless men") illegally carrying moonshine alcohol on the road to Memphis, in his souped-up 1950 gray stock-car Ford coupe with a modified 250 gallon tank in the trunk (carrying moonshine worth $1400), and an oil-slick device in the rear to waylay pursuers. He refused to bow to either the federal agents or to Kogan and quit his ways ("Why don't I quit breathin'?...I want to stop the clock, turn it back to another time in this valley that I knew before").

Bachelor Lucas was involved with two females (teenaged hillbilly Roxanna "Roxie" Ledbetter (Sandra Knight) and Memphis nightclub singer Francie Wymore (Keely Smith)) in the romantic subplots, but it was the few fast-driving road chases, usually at night, that were the highlight of this film. [The bootleggers' cars were actually sourced from the local community.]

Evading stakeouts and roadblocks, government treasury agents (revenuers) driving Chevys, other moonshine competitors and organized crime gangsters/racketeers, were only some of the challenges, as Lucas dared Barrett: "you've got to catch me - if you can." In one attempt after his 1950 Ford was car-bombed by Kogan's men, he blasted his new 1957 Ford (with Tennessee plates) at 90 mph through a Treasury inspection roadblock consisting of two vehicles.

The film's inevitably-deadly and tragic conclusion found Luke in one final run into Memphis after an intense crack-down, in which the daring and head-strong transporter was pursued by one of Kogan's henchmen. Driving alongside, Luke flicked his cigarette at the driver through his open window, causing the thug to careen off the side of the road. But then his own car was sabotaged by a T-agent nail-strip, and his car overturned and crashed into a utility station - killing him. Barrett provided Doolin's epitaph as electrical sparking occurred: "Mountain people. Wild-blooded, death-foolish. Yeah, that was Doolin, alright. He was a real stampeder."

In the film's closing scene without dialogue, Robin returned to Roxie and took her hand, as a long stream of car headlights signaled Luke's body being brought back to the valley (the "Whippoorwill" song was reprised on the soundtrack).

[The film had glaring continuity errors - i.e., in the opening car chase, Mitchum rolled his black car on its side, but then in the next shot, the vehicle appeared undamaged, and as he returned home, the car changed from black to white! And when Doolin visited Kogan in Memphis, he pulled up in front of an Asheville, NC pharmacy. However, the influential film was the impetus and inspiration for many car-crash "good-ol' boy" films in the 60s and 70s.]

The film has been most heralded for its classic, memorable and spectacular 11-minute chariot race scene around a central divider strip composed of three statues thirty feet high, and grandstands on all sides, rising five stories high. The battle between the competitors was highlighted by a series of close-ups of the action. One by one, Messala (Stephen Boyd) eliminated the other drivers in the ferocious race, shattering their chariots.

The climactic ending to the race occurred when the chariots of arch-rivals Messala and Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston), in hateful rivalry toward each other, ran neck-and-neck and slashed at each other. At one point, Ben-Hur's horses jumped over a crashed chariot, throwing the hero (stuntman Joe Canutt, son of famed stuntman Yakima Canutt) high into the air, yet he landed on his feet. Messala tried to destroy Ben-Hur's chariot by moving close with the blades, but as the wheels locked and he lost one of his wheels, Messala's chariot was splintered. He was dragged by his own team, then trampled, and run over by other teams of horses. Defeated, he was left bloody in the dirt, his body broken and horribly injured.

One of the most iconic chase sequences involved the exciting escape attempt by Allied POW loner "Cooler King" Hilts (Steve McQueen, but performed by stuntman Bud Elkins) - he sped away from the Nazi prison camp by vaulting a stolen German motorcycle over a six-foot barbed-wire prison fence at the Swiss border.

The amazing race-for-his-life chase scene by the Man (a naked and unarmed safari tour leader/guide) (Cornel Wilde) as six tribe warriors give him a head start of 100 yards into the bush, in this adventure/chase film set in 19th century Africa co-directed by Cornel Wilde and Sven Persson.

One of the screen's all-time best car chase sequences (at up to 110 miles per hour) was a 10-minute sequence filmed with hand-held cameras up and down the narrow, hilly streets of San Francisco as police lieutenant Frank Bullitt (Steve McQueen) chased after criminals in his car through hazardous intersections.

Bullitt's car was a Highland Green, 1968 four-speed Ford Mustang Fastback GT (California yellow-on-black license JJZ 109) powered by a 390/4V big block engine, in pursuit of a black, 1968 four-speed Dodge Charger 440 R/T. The classic chase ended when the bad guys lost control and crashed into a gas station - with a fiery explosion.

[Continuity errors in the sequence included an oft-viewed green VW Beetle, and the 6 hubcaps that fell off the Charger's wheels.]

This film had a climactic, well-choreographed car chase in Turin, Italy after an audacious heist of $4 million in gold bullion by Charlie Croker (Michael Caine). It involved three Mini Cooper S's (patriotically painted red, white, and blue). The Italian police were in hot pursuit as the little Cooper S's drove up and down stair-steps, through a shopping plaza, via sewers and over the rooftops and a reservoir for their getaway. They even completed a lap on the Fiat's famous test track in Turin. Remade in 2003.

In the first Herbie film, starring the self-aware, intelligent 1963 Volkswagen Beetle named "Herbie," the small VW became a race car. The famous car would star in four theatrical, chase-filled sequels in 1974, 1977, 1980 and 2005 (the last starred Lindsay Lohan in Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005)) and a TV series.

There were a number of exciting chase scenes in this sixth James Bond film, with the 007 agent played by George Lazenby for the only time. As Bond escaped from the SPECTRE head Ernst Stavro Blofeld's (Telly Savalas) mountaintop headquarters Piz Gloria, he was chased downhill by a multitude of machine-gun wielding thugs on skis. Two of the henchmen fell to their deaths from a steep precipice when Bond ambushed them. [The ski chase would be reprised in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).] The pursuit continued into the small valley village, where Bond met up with love interest Tracy (Diana Rigg), and she rescued him driving her red Cougar, leading to an exciting car chase from there and onto the snowy race track of a stock-car race. After the demolition derby on the track, the pursuing car overturned and exploded, although everyone survived.

The next morning, there was another downhill ski chase after Bond and Tracy. Blofeld caused an avalanche which engulfed and killed three of his own men and Tracy was also partially buried and taken prisoner.

The final chase scene was Bond's pursuit of Blofeld downhill on racing bobsleds. Bond was blown off his bobsled by a thrown hand-grenade. They engaged in a brutal hand-to-hand fight when Bond jumped onto the back of Blofeld's bobsled - and the SPECTRE chief was severely injured when he became snared and entangled in the low-bough of a tree, breaking his neck in the V-shaped branch (Bond: "He's branched off") - but he survived!

In this seventh Bond film, but the sixth and final official Bond film with Sean Connery as James Bond, the 007 agent was pursued throughout the film by competing diamond smugglers and henchmen. The trail of diamonds, being smuggled out of South Africa through Europe and eventually to Los Angeles (and Las Vegas), was part of a world-domination scheme devised by SPECTRE villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Charles Gray). Everyone who touched the diamonds was becoming a victim.

Bond eventually teamed up with co-conspiratorial diamond smuggler, seductive Tiffany Case (Jill St. John), when she finally realized that each link in the smuggling pipeline had been killed, and she was the next target.

When they came upon a billionaire entrepreneur's remote Las Vegas desert facility, Willard Whyte's Tectronics factory involved in Blofeld's plot, Bond was discovered to be an intruder, and was forced to steal a Moon-buggy from a simulated moonscape used for testing. He crashed through the security gate and evaded pursuing cars through the rough desert terrain. He then stole one of the three-wheeled Dirt-bikes from Whyte's security guards following him, to return to the facility's entrance where Tiffany was awaiting him.

After they drove back to Las Vegas that evening, they were pursued in Tiffany's red 1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1 by the alerted local police. After weaving through the neon-decorated fronts of the casinos on the Strip and causing multiple crashes/pileups in a parking lot, they eventually escaped when Bond steered Tiffany's car onto two-wheels down a narrow alleyway.

Director Steven Spielberg's feature-length film debut was this low-budget picture shot in less than two weeks (it was an ABC-TV "Movie of the Week" offering originally) - adapted from Richard Matheson's short story published in Playboy Magazine.

Mild-mannered, distressed traveling salesman David Mann (Dennis Weaver), an LA electronics vendor, was driving in his red 1970 Plymouth Valiant, when he was relentlessly pursued on a rural California highway road by a demonic, killer diesel-engine truck (a 1955 Peterbilt 281 towing a tanker trailer).

The greasy, grungy truck (with a FLAMMABLE warning) was driven by a hidden, faceless psychopathic driver (wearing cowboy boots) (stuntman and character actor Carey Loftin), although the truck itself personified a person (front window eyes, headlight pupils, front grill nose, front fender mouth, etc.). The driver exhibited stalking and many kinds of 'road rage' behaviors:

loud-honking
pursuit
blocking maneuvers during attempts to pass
tailgating and chasing at high speeds
car-bumping, in one instance to force the Plymouth into a moving freight train at a railroad crossing
attempted collisions

During Mann's last-stand confrontation with the monstrous homicidal truck, he gunned his overheated engine and proceeded to ram the truck - diving out at the last second. The explosive crash sent the truck (in slow-motion) over a cliff into rocks below. Mann stared at the burnt wreckage, as the credits rolled.

This film has probably the most intense chase sequence ever filmed - it was an incredible, hair-raising scene of unbelievable car-chasing. New York detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Best Actor-winning Gene Hackman) drove 90 mph in pursuit (in a hijacked civilian car, a 1971 Pontiac Le Mans: "Police emergency: I need your car") of a suspected drug dealer in a hijacked elevated subway train above him in Brooklyn (the BMT West End line).

During the chase, he - among other things - half-collided with another white car at an intersection, was clipped or side-swiped by a delivery van/truck, dodged a mother and her baby carriage (and crashed into garbage), all the while furiously honking the car's horn and frantically switching from his brake to accelerator.

In the low-budget film, 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.

After driving from San Francisco, California to Denver, Colorado, pill-popping Vietnam Vet, and former race car driver Stanley 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 Challenger R/T (at 375 hp with a 440 cubic inch V8 Magnum) 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).

In this Euro-thriller crime-heist, Kirk Douglas (as ex-con safe-cracker Steve Wallace) wanted to commit the perfect crime -- by defeating a fool-proof safe in Germany and absconding with its $1 million dollars.

In the midst of the heist was a destructive car-chase between Mafia lieutenant-hitman (Romano Puppo) and circus gymnast Marco (Giuliano Gemma) - before the days of special-effects and CGI. During the dare-devil pursuit, one car pushed another backwards down steep stairs, both cars crashed into and crunched a third-car between them, and while the two cars were side-swiping each other, a third car being towed atop a truck next to them landed on top of their two cars, etc. The chase ended when one of the two wrecked cars became stuck on a rising drawbridge, and crashed backwards into a steel wall, killing its driver.

[In terms of continuity errors, the two-door 1957 Plymouth changed into a 4-door 1960 Dodge Dart!]

It seems that every Bond film has some version of a spectacular chase sequence.

In this 8th film, the 007 agent (Roger Moore in his first Bond film) escaped from the clutches of villainous Dr. Kananga's (Yaphet Kotto) thugs at his Louisiana processing/packing facility (disguised as a crocodile farm). He fled in a high-powered Glastron speedboat powered by an Evinrude outboad motor into the nearby Louisiana bayou. Kananga's thugs (summoned from another dock) also pursued in high-powered speedboats at the start of the extended pursuit sequence. The local redneck Sheriff J. W. Pepper (Clifton James) was in the middle of arresting henchman Adam (Tommy Lane) for speeding on a strip of land, when Bond's speedboat did a leap into the air over the Sheriff's car before landing back in the water.

One of the thugs' errant boats plowed into the Sheriff's car, and another ended up in a swimming pool when Bond decided to ditch his boat (when it ran out of gas) on land and steal another one. Adam escaped and drove to a Ranger station where he stole the speed-boat belonging to the Sheriff's brother-in-law Billy Bob to join the pursuit. Bond's boat briefly skidded on the bank and passed a wedding ceremony, but the boat behind him crashed into the reception tent. Adam was left as the sole pursuer by water.

Multiple wrecks occurred when both boats crossed the highway in front of four state police cars involved in the chase. After Adam was blinded by Bond with a mixture of chemicals thrown into his face, his out-of-control boat collided with a docked derelict ship and exploded.

This underrated 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, renegade 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).]

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.

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 Bell Jet Ranger 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!"

Freebie and the Bean has since been voted as one of the most mindless, sloppy, wantonly-destructive car-chase films of all-time. The film's title referred to the names of two wise-cracking, bigoted, violent San Francisco buddy cops-detectives in this prototypical, un-PC action-comedy:

amoral, unorthodox and crazed driver Freebie (James Caan)
hot-tempered, by-the-book "Bean" (Alan Arkin), a Latino family man, who suspected his wife (Valerie Harper) was having an extra-marital affair

In their pursuit of mobster Red Meyers (Jack Kruschen) in a blue car, there were a number of damaging car wrecks, pedestrian injuries and/or casualties, destruction of public property, and harmed innocent bystanders - including members of a marching band in a parade. [It was a West Coast version of The Seven-Ups (1973) from a year earlier.] The many crashes foreshadowed those that would come later in The Blues Brothers (1980). The memorable chase concluded on the elevated Embarcadero Freeway. Their cop car lost control and crashed from the over-pass into the 3rd floor of an apartment building next to the freeway, and landed in a bedroom where there was an elderly couple watching television. After the two cops crawled out of the wreckage, Freebie phoned the precinct to send out a tow-truck to Apartment 304: "It's on the third floor." The elderly man reacted as the cops left his apartment: "Television is getting too violent."

In another insanely hectic chase scene that involved crashing cars, crumpled fenders, destroyed sidewalk stands, a motorbike, a van, and scores of pedestrians, Freebie became frustrated by snarled wreckage (including an overturned truck with chicken coops), so he hijacked a red motor-dirt bike from its rider and chased after the van. He drove down a sidewalk filled with people, steered over the tops of stalled cars, and then did 'wheelies' as he took a short-cut through a park, and careened through an art fair - toppling a giant-sized set of dominoes. The chase finally concluded with Freebie jumping off the motorbike just before it sailed off a second story building to the street below, where the van had crashed moments earlier.

This low-budget independent cult classic told about a gang of professional car thieves, including undercover insurance investigator Maindrian Pace (director/writer/star H.B. "Toby" Halicki) who made a bid to steal 48 cars (involving Mustangs, Cadillac limousines, and Rolls-Royces) for a South American drug lord. It included an almost 40-minute car-chasing finale (in a 98 minute film) that allegedly took seven months to film, involving a yellow (and black striped) 1973 Ford Mac 1 Mustang (nicknamed 'Eleanor'), and ending up with 93 car wrecks through five L.A.-basin towns (including Long Beach) in an exciting police pursuit sequence. There was also a spectacular 30-foot jump over a prior car-wreck that cleared 128 feet.

[Followed by two sequels, The Junkman (1982) and Deadline Auto Theft (1983). Remade by producer Jerry Bruckheimer in 2000 with Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie as Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), with its final car chase, a 1967 Shelby Mustang GT500 being pursued by black BMW 5 Series police cars.]

In one of the film's best sequences, James Bond (Roger Moore) robbed a jazzy red AMC Hornet Hatchback 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, kidnapped fellow agent Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland).

After missing a turn in his pursuit of villain Scaramanga's (Christopher Lee) bronze, black-roofed two-door AMC Matador, in a most impressive car stunt (accompanied by a laughable, cartoonish slide whistle sound), Bond's vehicle made a spectacular, Evel Knievel-like, 360-degree, mid-air, corkscrew-turning loop-jump or roll-over above a broken, half-fallen bridge and landed upright on its tires on the other side of the canal. His passenger, redneck Louisiana Sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James), who was sitting in the car and demanding a demonstration test drive before being taken on the chase, was tossed into the back seat and exclaimed: "Wowee! I never done that before!" Bond replied: "Neither have I, actually."

[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!]

This futuristic, campy film featured 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."

This cult-classic martial arts, Bond-ripoff film featured a massive, destructive car chase that was a predecessor to the Mad Max films.

The Gumball Rally was an illegal car-race comedy about a New York-to California competition with quick cars (featuring an ultimate duel between a Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona and a Ford 427 Shelby Cobra). Also it featured wacky characters, i.e., Raul Julia as a narcissistic, Ferrari-loving Italian named Franco, and thick-headed cop Roscoe (Norman Burton).

One of the many Duel (1971) imitators, this film featured a demon-possessed Lincoln Mark III that terrorized all those who came into contact with it.

Directed by career stuntman Hal Needham, this immensely profitable redneck-cop comedy chase film starred Burt Reynolds as a moonshine trucker (Bo, the "Bandit" Darville), Sally Field as runaway bride Carrie (nicknamed "Frog") - who was picked up by Bo, and Jackie Gleason as her prospective father-in-law and as Texas Sheriff Buford T. Justice ("Smokey").

The film's premise was about a $80,000 prize-bet - to drive an 18 wheel tractor-trailer rig full of bootleg Coors beer about halfway across the USA (from Georgia to Texas and back) in 28 hrs. flat. Bo would serve as "blocker" interference in a super-charged black Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am, while co-star Jerry Reed served as Bo's truck-driving buddy Cledus "Snowman" Snow - and he sang the popular theme song on the soundtrack: "Eastbound and Down" - ("East bound and down, loaded up and truckin', we're gonna do what they say can't be done..."). Cledus was also noted for the expression: "Boogity, Boogity, Boogity!" Bandit 1 and Bandit 2 were the CB-handle names for the two main vehicles, while the law was represented with the handle of "Smokey Bear."

[Followed by a lesser sequel, Smokey and the Bandit II (1980) and an even worse, Reynolds-less Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983).]

In the spectacular pre-title credits opening sequence, Agent 007 James Bond (Roger Moore) was pursued by four machine gun-wielding Russian KGB agents in an exciting ski-chase down a steep slope in the Austrian Alps.

To escape them, Bond (stuntman Rick Sylvester) skied off a precipice-cliff -- and remarkably, a parachute (with a Union Jack flag pattern) emerged above him.

In the opening scene, the existential hero simply named the Driver (Ryan O'Neal) stole a prospective client's 4-door Mercedes V-8 Sedan and then auditioned his skills. He showed the three terrified bad guys how talented he was as a freelance, ace getaway driver/wheelman for bank heists.

He plowed through a cramped, underground parking garage and narrow alleyways in LA to demonstrate his prowess and prove that he was worth every penny of his high-priced fee.

The film had three spectacular car chase sequences as well (including a night-time chase through LA).

In a film filled with stunts and daredevil challenges, a car driven by stuntman Sonny Hooper (Burt Reynolds) drove through a collapsing factory (and barely missed its falling chimney) and made a rocket-propelled leap over a 456' chasm over a river where a bridge used to be before it collapsed.

In the final hour of this 11th James Bond film, agent 007 (Roger Moore) ventured to the Amazonian jungle in Brazil, where he was pursued in his armored Glastron Hydrofoil Speedboat on the Tapirape River by henchman sent by villainous billionaire industrialist Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale). They launched an armed attack on his craft with explosive depth charges. From the rear of his boat, Bond deployed mines, blowing up one boat and killing three thugs.

As he raced forward, two other boats joined in the pursuit - one held steel-toothed Jaws (Richard Kiel) who was wielding a machine-gun. Bond then launched torpedoes from his speedboat, and destroyed a second boat with three men onboard.

When Bond's speedboat approached the massive Iguacu Falls, he escaped death when he launched himself from his speedboat onto a hang glider that was deployed from the craft's roof - and he soared away to safety. Jaws (with two other thugs) in the last boat crashed over the falls.

Cool ex-con, renegade musicians named the Blues Brothers - who were "on a mission from God" - were siblings, who both wore black suits, hats, and shades:

Joliet "Jake" Blues (John Belushi)
Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd)

In one of the comedy 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 they 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.

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 death-defying chase that reportedly had the largest number of car crashes (demolition derby style) in film history. One police car ended up crashing into the side 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 had 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.]

Here was another chase film from Hal Needham (similar to his earlier The Gumball Rally (1976)), featuring a cross-country, car-crashing road-race from Connecticut to Southern California with the tagline: "You'll never guess who wins."

The race was based upon the real "Cannonball Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash." With Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, Jack Elam, Jamie Farr, Farrah Fawcett, Jackie Chan, Roger Moore, Ratpackers Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin, and more.

[Followed by Cannonball Run II (1984) and Speed Zone (1989).]

The most classic of the chase scenes was a desert chase scene in which Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) raced after a speeding truck by mounting a horse and overtaking the vehicle. He leapt onto the vehicle, forced his way into the cab, tossed the guard from the passenger seat, kicked out the Nazi driver onto the road, and took control of the wheel. As he drove, there were some hair-raising attempts of Nazi guards in the back of his truck to oust Indy from the wheel. He was weakened when one guard shot him in the left arm. The last remaining guard reached the truck's cab from above. Indy was tossed through the windshield and ended up hanging from a hood ornament in the front of the fast-moving truck. When the ornament bent and cracked off, he grabbed onto the grill. The grill bars snapped one by one as Indy clung to the fender of the front tire. To avoid being rammed in the back of the car ahead, Indy lowered himself under the truck's engine where he clung tenuously beneath the vehicle.

He (oftentimes stuntman Terry Leonard) made his way between the vehicle's wheels to the truck's rear wheel axle - he even was dragged behind the truck while attached by his bullwhip. Eventually, he pulled himself forward and lifted himself up onto the rear of the truck, crawled alongside and back in to the cab, and jumped into the driver's cab. Angered, he threw the driver out through the already-broken windshield. [This stunt paid homage to the stunt performed by Yakima Canutt in Stagecoach (1939) - see above.]

Another famous "chase" scene was in the opening sequence, with an escape from a trap-laden ancient South American temple, including a rolling gigantic spherical boulder, and Indy's subsequent getaway from Rene Belloq (Paul Freeman) and the Hovitos tribe by running to an awaiting airplane.

This post-apocalyptic film was the sequel to the grim revenge/action film Mad Max (1979). It featured a spectacular, 12-minute chase sequence in the finale, in which "Mad Max" Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) in a semi-trailer fuel-oil MACK truck-tanker was pursued and viciously attacked at breakneck speed by a convoy of bizarre vehicles, souped-up cars and motorcycles, and a marauding savage band of punkish desert vandals wearing hockey-like masks.

During the hot chase across the outback, the nomadic warriors flung grappling hooks at the truck, and arrows were shot from crossbows while pursuers lept from vehicle to vehicle. Even a fire-bombing gyroplane hovered above the action. The climax occurred when the 40-foot tanker crashed into Lord Humungus' (Kjell Nillson) car -- also killing Wez (Vernon Wells), who was clinging to the front fender of the tanker -- and the giant tanker (filled with sand) rolled over onto its side.

Earlier in the film, Mad Max drove a super-charged Ford Falcon XB Coupe.

[This film was followed by Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985).]

This cult horror film contained the famous scene in which the evil red 1958 Plymouth Fury named Christine chased one of Arnie Cunningham's (Keith Gordon) bullies, gray-sweatshirted and overweight Moochie Welch (Malcolm Danare), into a narrow alleyway and crushed him into a wall.

In this Jackie Chan martial-arts action film, a long fight and chase scene featured a foot chase, cycling through crowded, narrow Hong Kong alleyways, a climb up a flagpole, and climaxed with a climb up a clock-tower with a duel and classic plunge from the top by director/actor Chan himself as Navy Master Sergeant Maillong, known as Dragon. The three-story fall was broken by various awnings and other projections along the way.

[The film contained a tribute to Harold Lloyd's Safety Last (1923).]

The last film in the first Star Wars trilogy featured the famous chase scene in which Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) battled with Imperial Stormtroopers on flying "speeder bikes" at breakneck speeds through a dense forest on the planet Endor.

Director Taylor Hackford's film-noirish drama was most notable for its 2 and 1/2 minute impromptu car chase (or street race) along LA's Sunset Boulevard (about 18 minutes into the film), between two open-topped cars: a red 1983 Porsche 911 SC Cabrio (driven by Jeff Bridges (as aging football player Terry Brogan)) and a black 1982 Ferrari 308 GT Quattrovalvole (driven by James Woods (as nightclub owner Jake Wise) with a white dog in the passenger's seat).

Remarkably for a car chase in which they weaved in and out of dense traffic and through intersections, there were no wrecks or damage done to either vehicle. At the start of the race, Jake taunted: "Let's see if you still got balls, Terry."

This sequel contained a thrilling roller-coaster-like chase in which Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), American singer Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) and Indy's young sidekick Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan) were chased by cultish Thuggees in underground mine-shaft carts, including a tense tug-of-war with Short Round suspended over a lava flow between two carts.

Also, there was the climactic "bridge" scene in which the heroes were pursued onto a rope bridge and surrounded by Thuggees and the villainous high priest Mola-Ram (Amrish Puri) -- Indiana Jones growled at Mola-Ram: "Prepare to meet Kali... in hell!" and then cut the bridge.

James Cameron's original Terminator film featured the suspenseful scene of the unrelenting pursuit of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) by the killer cyborg from the future, the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) in a stolen police car, through an underground parking lot and then onto the public highway.

Later in the film, they were also chased by the Terminator riding a motorcycle and shooting at them with an assortment of weapons. Their truck crashed and ended upside-down, while the Terminator's bike also crashed - and the indestructible cyborg was run over by a tanker-truck, but was able to revive and commandeer the oil truck to continue the chase, until the truck was blown up.

In this film was the memorable scene in which Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) created a makeshift skateboard ("It's a board with wheels) from a little boy's scooter and evaded bully Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson) and his gang chasing him on foot and in their car by hanging onto the back of a pickup truck.

He eventually caused them to crash into a manure truck (they screamed "Shit!" as they crashed into it, in this PG-rated film, and Biff vowed: "I'm gonna get that son of a bitch") -- this scene would be referenced, with variations, in the next two sequels.

In one of William Friedkin's greatest films, a most- and well-remembered car stunt and chase sequence was the one in which undercover US Treasury Secret Agent Richard Chance (William L. Petersen before CSI) drove his tan Chevrolet up LA's 710 freeway exit ramp directly into multiple lanes of oncoming traffic - and at top-speed near-missed every one of them - yet caused the jack-knifing of a tractor-trailer!

(One astonishing shot was an over-the-shoulder driver's POV shot of the entire freeway, showing the oncoming cars from far ahead.)

In this action/comedy by director Peter Hyams, two wise-cracking Chicago cops, Ray Hughes (Gregory Hines) and Danny Costanzo (Billy Crystal) (in a Yellow taxi with bullet-proof windows, and two innocent passengers, a priest and a nun) chased after cocaine-smuggling drug lord Julio Gonzales (Jimmy Smits) in a black Cadillac limousine.

The pursuit began at the airport and traveled on the interstate, and then through the city streets, as Gonzales ordered his driver: "Do whatever you have to do to get us outta here, OK?" The limo crashed through a railroad crossing, and sped along the train tracks, and then mounted onto the rails as both cars entered a tunnel. The vehicles barely avoided a head-on collision with one of the CTA's Red Line subway trains, and Danny reported by radio that they were on the city's elevated train tracks: "Pursuit has left the interstate, now we're on the L."

Eventually, Julio's limo crashed into another train on another subway line, and their car was flipped over, although they escaped just before impact. Surveying the damage, Danny quipped: "Why weren't we on that track?" Ray shouted back: "Oh, now you're gonna criticize my driving?" Danny responded: "It's just that you get to do all the dangerous stuff, and I get to parallel park."