Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry : Odyssey Home Ent. DVD released 13th October 2014.

 

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Starring: Peter Fonda, Susan George, Adam Roarke, Vic Morrow and Roddy McDowall.

Two NASCAR hopefuls, driver Larry Rayder (Fonda) and his mechanic Deke Sommers (Roarke), successfully execute a supermarket heist to finance their jump into big-time auto racing. They extort $150,000 in cash from a supermarket manager (McDowall) by holding his wife and daughter hostage.In making their escape, they are confronted by Larry’s one-night stand, Mary Coombs (George). She coerces them to take her along for the ride in their souped-up 1966 Chevrolet Impala. The unorthodox sheriff, Captain Franklin (Morrow), obsessively pursues the trio in a dragnet, only to find his outmoded patrol cars unable to catch Larry, Mary, and Deke after they ditch the Impala for a 1969 Dodge Charger.

As part of the escape plan, Larry’s vehicle enters an expansive walnut grove, wherein the trees provide significant cover from aerial tracking, and the many intersecting roads making road blocks ineffective. The trio evades several patrol cars and a specially-prepared high-performance police interceptor.Believing they’ve finally beaten the police, Larry and company meet their doom when they randomly collide with a freight train.

The film isn’t just another car chase movie of the 70’s. It’s the car chase movie that borrows heavily from films like, ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, ‘Bullitt’ and ‘Vanishing Point’ then mixes them up in such an original way that, ‘Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry’ becomes the 70’s car chase movie, that eventually influenced more popular films of the same genre like, ‘Smokey and the Bandit’, ‘The Blues Brothers’ and Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 ‘Death Proof’.