GeorgeBarris Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Quick, what do H. B. Halicki and Louis B. Mayer have in common? They both went "from junk cars to movie stars" as the poster for The Junkman put it; both were scrap merchants who got into the film business. Wrecking shop owner turned auteur Halicki's homebrewed hit Gone in 60 Seconds led the 1999 remake by Dominic Sena, who reputedly worked on the original The Junkman as a camera man. The Junkman, the follow-up to the original 1974 Gone in 60 Seconds, is an even more extravagant car-cruncher. It's a film that makes Tarantino's great car chase in Death Proof look like an also-ran. (QT refers to this original by having Kurt Russell's character keep a row of sunglasses on his dashboard, just like Halicki did.) The Junkman is an all-out demolition derby with Hoyt Axton providing the vocals, a co-starring role by a pet pig named Farah and a finale with the Goodyear Blimp buzzing the Cinerama Dome. As the price of a gallon of gas reaches the inevitable $5 mark, let us return to this uniquely decadent actioner.

This much we know: "The James Dean Death Car" – the 1955 550 Porsche Spyder bought by Dean's buddy (and future Batmobile creator) George Barris – disappeared without a trace about three years after the fatal 1955 crash that claimed the iconic 24-year-old Rebel Without A Cause star's life. The mangled body of the car was on a "They Never Made It Home From The Prom" kind of tour when it disappeared (its "cursed" parts were brokered). What we don't know is where it has been since, who took it, why and now, why an Illinois car museum is offering an unheard-of $1,000,000 reward for the legendary car's twisted skeleton. The Volo Car Museum is hoping to have it to show for the 50th anniversary of Dean's death on September 30, 2005.

I don't mean to sound like some hippie whiner, but dude - WTF? At least Volo could scale back the reward and pledge a matching donation to hurricane relief or something. And why the hell do we celebrate the anniversaries of famous deaths, anyway? I mean, it would be one thing if James Dean had subjugated Europe during World War II, but he was no Wicked Witch. He was born on February 8, 1931 - that's the day we should be celebrating. Yes, marking death is a way we affirm our own life, but enough with the gallows profiteering already. This kind of fetishistic scrapbooking is just icky, post-mortem star-schtupping.