The most destructive chase scene in movie history
In the age of CGI-assisted carnage, the practical car chase is becoming something of a lost art, meaning that there’s a distinct possibility that the single most destructive example in the history of cinema may never be bettered. While many would swear the record belongs to the unforgettable demolition derby of The Blues Brothers, the title actually belongs to the much lesser-known The Junkman.
Writer, director, producer, and star H. B. Halicki already knew his way around vehicular chaos, having helmed 1974’s original Gone in 60 Seconds, but he decided to take things to brand new heights when he began working on his next feature, which wouldn’t release until eight years later and was even rebranded as Gone in 60 Seconds II in some markets to try and capitalise on the popularity of his prior film.
The story is remarkably meta for what’s ostensibly a movie about nothing but wall-to-wall car chases, crashes, skids, sideswipes, and barrel rolls for the entirety of its 98-minute running time, with Halicki starring as Harlan B. Hollis in a self-referential nod to his past, previous, and future contributions to cinema.
Halicki headlines the cast as a filmmaker who ends up in a desperate battle to stay alive when a partner in his production company hires people to kill him. In The Junkman, Hollis is a semi-fictionalised version of the man himself, which not only finds him lamenting the opening scenes of Gone in 60 Seconds and his desire to reshoot them but also incorporates the production of the following year’s Deadline Auto Theft as part of its in-universe story.
In essence, Halicki plays a thinly-veiled autobiographical role that sees him dissatisfied with his previous film and shooting his next one at the same time – with the opening scene of Deadline Auto Theft being captured on camera at the beginning of the fictional The Junkman – which is more than enough to cause headaches if thought about for too long. Fortunately, a well-rounded plot and richly drawn characters weren’t the order of the day.
Instead, Halicki sought to pulverise as many cars as humanly possible, which he accomplished to the tune of a Guinness World Record. Anointed as the single “most destructive chase sequence in a film,” The Junkman takes the top spot as a result of “a chase sequence which involved the wrecking of over 150 vehicles including two Cadillac Eldorados, two Chrysler Magnums, numerous boats, trucks and motorcycles and two Pitts high-performance aeroplanes.”
Obliterating upward of 150 cars, boats, trucks, motorcycles, and planes in the space of a solitary set piece is remarkable, and that doesn’t even include the additional destruction caused across the rest of The Junkman‘s nonstop action beats, which aren’t interested in pausing to catch breath for even so much a single second before launching headlong into the next bout of steel-on-steel insanity.
