Used Cars (1980) Columbia/Comedy RT: 113 minutes Rated R (pervasive language, violence, nudity, brief sexuality) Director: Robert Zemeckis Screenplay: Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale Music: Patrick Williams Cinematography: Donald M. Morgan Release date: July 11, 1980 (US) Cast: Kurt Russell, Jack Warden, Gerrit Graham, Frank McRae, Deborah Harmon, Joe Flaherty, David L. Lander, Michael McKean, Harry Northup, Michael Talbott, Alfonso Arau, Al Lewis, Woodrow Parfrey, Andrew Duncan, Dub Taylor, Claude Earl Jones, Dick Miller, Betty Thomas, Cheryl Rixon, Wendie Jo Sperber, Marc McClure. Box Office: $11.7M (US)
Rating: ****
Why did the uproarious comedy Used Cars die at the box office? That’s an easy one. It had the misfortune of being released around the same time as Airplane, The Blues Brothers and Caddyshack. It didn’t help that Columbia moved its release date up by a month after successful test screenings. In short, it got lost in the shuffle. In the four decades since, it developed a strong cult following and deservedly so. It’s HILARIOUS! I’d even call it a comedy masterpiece.
The date October 3, 1983 has special significance. It’s when I saw Used Cars for the first time. We had just gotten Cinemax and it aired late one night. I wanted to see it when it came out, but there was no getting around the parental R-rated movie block. I snuck downstairs to the basement family room and watched it. It was totally worth the effort.
Directed by Robert Zemeckis (I Wanna Hold Your Hand), Used Cars centers on the bitter rivalry between two used car dealerships located across the street from each other in Mesa, AZ. They’re owned by brothers whose relationship is akin to Cain and Abel. Jack Warden plays both Fuchs brothers, Roy and Luke. Roy, a true SOB, owns the successful Roy L. Fuchs Pre-Owned Automobiles while younger brother Luke, a kindly old man with a heart condition, runs the less successful New Deal Used Cars. Luke’s top salesman is Rudy (Russell, The Thing), a slick fast-talking sort with aspirations of running for the State Senate. His co-workers include superstitious Jeff (Graham, The Annihilators) and hot-tempered mechanic Jim (McRae, 48 Hrs).
When Roy learns his lot is to be demolished to make way for a new freeway exit, he devises a scheme to get rid of his brother and inherit ownership of his lot. He sends one of his mechanics, ex-demolition derby driver Mickey (Talbott, First Blood), to cause Luke to have a fatal heart attack by posing as a customer and talking him on a wild test drive. The old man dies, but fast-thinking Rudy enlists the others in covering up his death in order to prevent Roy from inheriting and shutting down the lot. They bury him right there on the lot in his old Edsel and concoct a story about a spontaneous fishing trip to Miami. What they didn’t count on was Luke’s estranged daughter Barbara (Harmon, Bachelor Party) coming for a visit. Now Rudy has the added task of keeping the truth from her.
The funniest scenes in Used Cars are the one showing the lengths to which Rudy and his cohorts will go to in order to attract customers to the failing lot like airing illegal commercials on TV. They hire two electronic geniuses, Eddie and Freddie (McKean and Lander, aka Lenny and Squiggy from Laverne & Shirley), to hijack the signal and broadcast a live commercial during a football game. It should be explained that Jeff vehemently believes red cars are bad luck. It’s this belief that causes things to go haywire. The female model ends up topless on live TV. Naturally, the lot is crawling with customers the next day. Later, they jam the Presidential address with another live commercial, this one showing Jeff destroying cars on Roy’s lot in the guise of “Marshall Lucky” who blows “the living s*** out of high prices”. It’s my favorite scene in a comedy with a lot of great scenes.
I haven’t even gotten to the climax yet. It starts with a trumped-up charge of false advertising. In order to prove they do indeed have “a mile of cars”, Rudy buys 250 junkers from a sleazy car dealer (Arau, The Wild Bunch) and brings in 250 driver’s ed students to drive them to the lot. A convoy can mean only two things in a movie like Used Cars, vehicular mayhem and a chase between the bad guys and good guys. It’s a great sequence! I’d expect nothing less from writers Zemeckis and Bob Gale who penned the vastly underappreciated WWII farce 1941 the year before. In addition, Steven Spielberg (Raiders of the Lost Ark) and John Milius (Conan the Barbarian) serve as executive producers. With a pedigree like this, how can Used Cars be anything but great?
Russell, starring in his first R movie, proves himself a gifted adult performer. He’s perfectly cast in Used Cars. Rudy is a gifted liar. You know exactly what to think when he flashes that smile and says “Trust me.”, that popular phrase uttered many times by used car salesmen and politicians. DON’T YOU BELIEVE IT! Warden does a great job in both roles. It shows great versatility on his part that he can play a kindly old man and a mean old bastard in the same movie. He gets off some of the movie’s best (and crudest) lines. Upon learning that he might lose his car lot, he angrily complains “It used to be when you bought a politician, that son of a bitch stayed bought.” Personally, I’m fond of “I know where the f*** Miami Beach is, dummy.”, “Now aren’t you a little big to be playing in the f***ing mud?” and “What are you, a f***ing parrot?” That last line was reportedly ad-libbed by Warden after he became angry at Graham for repeating Russell’s lines.
McRae gets off some good lines too. When it’s mentioned that he turned a fire hose on a group of nuns picketing outside New Deal, he says “I knocked them mother f***ers right on they [sic] asses too.” Harmon is pretty good as the inheritor of New Deal and Russell’s eventual love interest. Al “Grandpa Munster” Lewis shows up as the tough hanging judge presiding over the false advertising case. It’s not a huge role, but it’s always nice to see him in action. There’s also a clever dog named Toby who knows some neat tricks like pretending to get run over in order to guilt customers into buying cars.
I originally characterized Used Cars as a slob comedy in the vein of Animal House, but it’s really not. It’s more of a black comedy, a dark satire of the cutthroat, oft-corrupt used car business. It features unscrupulous characters engaging in dishonest business practices. Instead of silly college hijinks, we get dirty tricks like murder and concealing a dead body. These are things that aren’t ordinarily funny, but Zemeckis has a talent for putting a humorous spin on them.
The best word for Used Cars is outrageous. I laughed a lot. It should be mentioned that it’s also extremely profane. A guy I knew in my teens told me there weren’t ten clean words in it. He was almost right. These characters sure love to use the f-word. Why is this any different from the Judd Apatow comedies starring Seth Rogen and his pals? In movies like This Is the End, they’re saying f*** just to say it. I swear the actors had a contest going to see who could say f*** the most times (often in the same sentence). The swearing in Used Cars doesn’t feel gratuitous. The writers know how to use profanity effectively. I’d imagine this is how characters like these talk to each other. In any event, some of the dialogue is positively priceless. It’s funny too.
Okay, so Used Cars is definitely dated with its references to President Jimmy Carter, Iranian terrorists, inflation and Radio Shack. That’s part of the appeal. It’s fun to look back and remember how different things were in 1980. Me, I’m fond of a time when strippers disco dancing on tops of cars to boost sales didn’t create an avalanche of controversy. I’ll just come right out and say it for all the good it will do. Used Cars does NOT need to updated, rebooted or remade. It’s a product of its time and should remain that way. It’s extremely funny and the same joke is rarely as funny when retold. JUST LEAVE IT THE F*** ALONE! ‘Nuff said?
