Stuntman Mike: You’ve seen a movie where a car gets into some smashup there ain’t no way in hell anybody’s walking away from?

Pam: Yeah.

Stuntman Mike: Well, how do you think they accomplish that?

Pam: CGI?

Stuntman Mike: (laughs) Well, unfortunately Pam, nowadays more often than not, you’re right. But back in the all-or-nothing days, the Vanishing Point days, the Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry days, the White Line Fever days? Real cars smashing into real cars, and real dumb people driving them.

This exchange from Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino’s contribution to the homage-laden Grindhouse,, sums up the idea behind the collection of films in our featured summer series: a salute to the glory days of movie stunt driving in Hollywood features, before the era of computer generated imagery.

There’s something essentially cinematic about the chase sequence, and there’s nothing quite like the thrill of watching a well-shot and well-edited one. The more unusual the location and the more believably dangerous the action is, the more our pulses are likely to join in on the racing. Filmmakers since the silent era have understood this, but our series begins with the original moonshine running movie, Thunder Road (1958), a time when American automobiles had just gotten bigger, and the screens had become wide enough to accommodate them.

Some of the performers featured in these action classics are true movie icons: Robert Mitchum, Steve McQueen, Peter Fonda. But the real stars are the spectacularly talented stunt drivers and, of course, the cars themselves: McQueen’s Ford Mustang in Bullitt; the Dodge Challenger R/T in Vanishing Point; and the countless number of Cook County, Illinois, police vehicles in The Blues Brothers.

And cars aren’t the only things on wheels you’ll see racing and crashing on the Dryden’s screen this summer. We’ve included a special “Truck Night” double feature of White Line Fever and Duel, the little movie that made cinephiles first aware of a young director named Steven Spielberg. David Carradine battles an army of “destructocycles” in Deathsport, and Fonda uses his vacation Winnebago to wage war against a score of satanists in Race With the Devil. (Although it’s not an American movie, you probably should also know about the spectacular moped and car chase through the Paris Métro in Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva, screening August 22 & 24).

The series and our summer calendar end with a screening of the complete Grindhouse, featuring the sublime and witty Death Proof; evidence that there’s still a smart way to have real cars smashing into real cars. –Jim Healy, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, Motion Picture Department

Screenings:

Thursday, July 3

7 p.m. Trailers on Wheels! & at 8 p.m. THUNDER ROAD

(Arthur Ripley, US 1958, 92 min.)

Sunday, July 6 | 7 p.m.

THE BLUES BROTHERS (John Landis, US 1980, 130 min.)

Thursday, July 10 | 8 p.m.

BULLITT (Peter Hyams, US 1968, 113 min.) & bonus Steve McQueen

footage!

Thursday, July 17 | Double Feature

7 p.m. DEATH RACE 2000 (Paul Bartel, US 1975, 78 min.)

8:30 p.m. DEATHSPORT (Allan Arkush & Henry Suso, US 1978, 82 min.)

Thursday, July 24 | Double Feature

7 p.m. THE DRIVER (Walter Hill, US 1978, 90 min.)

8:45 p.m. VANISHING POINT (Richard Sarafian, US 1971, 107 min.)

Thursday, July 31 | 8 p.m.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION (William Friedkin, US 1971, 104 min.) &

chase sequence from The Seven-Ups (US 1973, 10 min.)

Thursday, August 7 | Truck Night! Double Feature

7 p.m. DUEL (Steven Spielberg, US 1971, 90 min., Digital Projection)

8:45 p.m. WHITE LINE FEVER (Jonathan Kaplan, US 1975, 92 min.)

Thursday, August 14 | Double Feature

7 p.m. THE LAST AMERICAN HERO (Lamont Johnson, US 1973, 100 min.)

9 p.m. A SMALL TOWN IN TEXAS (Jack Starrett, US 1976, 95 min.)

Thursday, August 21 | Double Feature

7 p.m. RACE WITH THE DEVIL (Jack Starrett, US 1975, 88 min.)

8:45 p.m. DIRTY MARY, CRAZY LARRY (John Hough, US 1973, 93 min.)

Sunday, August 31 | 7 p.m.

GRINDHOUSE (Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, US 2007, 191 min.)