Smash-Up on Interstate 5

[Vermin Boy]

Anyone heard of this movie? My dad says he remembers seeing it on TV in the 70s, and that it's the worst movie he's ever seen.

[Squishy]

Oh yeah, "ABC Tuesday Night Movie" or some such, waaaaaaay back in 197...4? I'm getting too old to remember anymore...

Hokum about a series of unconnected dramas that all finally come together in a multi-car pile-up. In the grand disaster movie tradition: WHO WILL SURVIVE?!? The stories I remember involve an elderly couple (one facing cancer and suicide), some teenagers rebelling and going on a violent crime spree, and a trucker's ill-fated romance with a career woman... Naturally, typical Hollywood irony and justice is doled out in the end, pretty much as you'd expect.

Good--not great--for Crummy Movie Night.

[TammyL]

Yes oh yes  one of the late night movies I know i was too young to be staying up for and watching back when they would put those on TV. It starred Robert Conrad as a sheriff or something. The old man had a heart attack and it caused a chain reaction that involved I believe 105 cars and trucks or so. The teenagers on a violent spree shot and killed the deputy who's wife had just given birth to their first child. And true to fashion on a Hollywood bad note, she finds out that he has been killed and in a scratchy screamy voice proclaims"but he never got to see the baby". What Hollywood thinks they are doing to make a good movie.

[Squishy]

One of Tommy Lee Jones' early ones, by the way; 1976, not 1974.

I just found the really long Japanese title, which translates as: "Thirty-Nine Vehicles! The Largest Collision In History! HIGHWAY PANIC!" Hee hee hee. (I don't know whether the number of vehicles is correct, though.)

[Squishy]

http://disasteronline.tripod.com/Movies/suoif1976.html

A little more info, another alternate title. No one seems to agree on the number of vehicles involved.

[TammyL]

I went back and watched the movie, or at least tried to when the power went out due to a storm, there were aboput 40 or so cars from what I saw. I had thought that there were like 105 cars, but that number was in reference to the location of the accident from what I was at least able to watch. Sorry for the earlier mistake. A young Tommy Lee Jones at that but as far as facial features go has not really changed much except for getting older.