Richard C. Sarafian's existential chase across the American West, the white 1970 Dodge Challenger at its centre and the cult that grew long after a weak release.
Vanishing Point is a 1971 Richard C. Sarafian film about a delivery driver who races a white Dodge Challenger across the American West. It grew from a modest release into a cult classic, admired for its chases, its soundtrack and its ambiguous ending.
Richard C. Sarafian directed this 1971 Anglo-American road picture, which casts Barry Newman as Kowalski, a disaffected former policeman and race driver. Its story of a single delivery run across the American West turned a modest release into a cult favourite. The film is best known for its white 1970 Dodge Challenger and an ending that has been debated by fans for decades.
What is Vanishing Point about?
Kowalski is a car delivery driver who arrives in Denver late on a Friday night to collect a white 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T. The car must reach San Francisco by Monday, but Kowalski takes Benzedrine pills at a biker bar to stay awake and bets his dealer that he can make the city by Sunday afternoon.
Flashbacks and a police file reveal more about him. Kowalski is a Medal of Honor veteran of the Vietnam War, a former race driver and motorcycle racer, and a former police officer who was expelled from the force after he prevented a rape by a senior officer. That history explains his refusal to stop, which sits at the centre of the film.
Police pursue him across Colorado, Utah and Nevada, and the car becomes a symbol of his freedom. When he is recognised by a blind disc jockey named Super Soul, who broadcasts on KOW from Goldfield, Nevada, the chase becomes a media event. People gather at the station, and Kowalski is hailed as the last American hero.
A white Dodge Challenger, a man who will not stop and a finish line that never arrives.
Who made Vanishing Point?
Malcolm Hart first developed the story, and he brought it to producer Norman Spencer at Cupid Films, a company run by Michael Pearson. 20th Century Fox agreed to distribute the picture, and the budget was raised from Bank of America in London. The project was designed as a film that had to be shot in the United States because of its story.
The screenplay was written by G. Cabrera Infante, a Cuban writer living in England, under the pseudonym Guillermo Cain. It was inspired by real incidents: one officer's fall from grace in San Diego, and a chase that ended with a man smashing through a police roadblock. Infante modelled Super Soul on the rock and roll singer The Big Bopper, and the script reflected the counterculture of the time.
Richard C. Sarafian turned down Robert Redford's Downhill Racer in 1969 to direct Vanishing Point, because he was drawn to the counterculture themes in the script. He had first wanted Gene Hackman for the lead, but studio executive Richard Zanuck insisted on casting Barry Newman, a relative unknown. The film also marked early major screen appearances for Cleavon Little and John Amos.
Which cars made the film?
The white Dodge Challenger was Zanuck's choice. He wanted to repay Chrysler for its long practice of renting cars to 20th Century Fox for $1 a day, and the film's stunt coordinator, Carey Loftin, liked the car's torsion bar suspension and its horsepower. Many of the other cars in the film were also Chrysler products.
| Vehicle | Detail | Role |
|---|---|---|
| White 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T | Five Alpine White cars lent by Chrysler | Kowalski's delivery car and the film's central vehicle |
| Challengers with 440 engines | Four cars with four-speed manual transmissions | High-speed chase and jump sequences |
| Challenger with a 383 engine | Three-speed automatic | Tow vehicle for the final crash scene |
| 1967 Chevrolet Camaro | Motor and transmission removed, packed with explosives | Towed into the bulldozers at the end |
The production prepared the cars with Max Balchowsky, who had also prepared the Mustangs and Chargers for Bullitt. The Challengers were not modified beyond heavier-duty shock absorbers for one car that jumped over a creek, and the sound of a supercharger was added in post-production even though none of the engines was supercharged. The cars appear in the film with Colorado plates.
Dust was a constant problem, and stunt drivers occasionally had to take parts from one car to repair another after jumps between highways and creeks. Newman later recalled that the 440 engines were so powerful that the car seemed to rear back when first put in gear.
How was the film shot?
Principal photography began in May 1970, with a planned schedule of 60 days. Financial trouble at the studio forced Zanuck to shorten the shoot by 22 days, so Sarafian chose not to film some scenes rather than rush the rest. The crew of 19 men spent long hours travelling to remote locations, filming for extended periods and searching for motels at night.
The cinematographer used lightweight Arriflex II cameras, which offered more freedom of movement. Cameras were mounted directly on the vehicles rather than filmed from a tow truck running ahead, and the cars were slowed on film so that they looked faster when projected. The cars were travelling at about 50 mph (80 km/h) during many of the shots.
The film was shot in Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California. Locations included Denver, Austin in Nevada, Cisco in Utah, Goldfield in Nevada, Tonopah and Wendover. Dean Jagger's scenes were shot on the Salt Lakes of Nevada, and the scenes featuring Cleavon Little were finished in under three days. Super Soul's radio station was filmed in Goldfield.
Newman drove some of his own stunts. In the scene before Kowalski crashes into the bulldozer, he performed a 180-degree turn on the road without the director's knowledge. The final chase was staged by Loftin, who pulled a Camaro packed with explosives into the bulldozers at high speed on a long cable.
How does the ending work?
The ending is the film's most debated moment. Kowalski drives toward a roadblock of two bulldozers at Cisco, and he smiles as he crashes into the blades and dies in an explosion. The moment has become one of the most discussed endings in car films. Newman later interpreted the moment as an escape, because Kowalski sees the light between the bulldozers as a hole to get through.
Sarafian described Kowalski as otherworldly, a figure passing through a temporary existence on his way to something else. For Newman, the ending was an essay on existentialism, with Kowalski driving for the sake of freedom and choosing his own meaning. Many viewers take the film as a meditation on freedom rather than a conventional chase.
The film's central mystery also includes a hitchhiker who has been waiting for Kowalski. In the UK theatrical version, a hitchhiker played by Charlotte Rampling offers him marijuana and says she has been waiting for him. She is gone when he wakes, and the scene is widely read as an allegory for death. Newman felt the scene gave the film an allegorical lift, but the studio feared that audiences would not understand it, and it was removed from the US version.
How did the film fare at release?
Vanishing Point premiered in January 1971 to negative notices. Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film had a point but got lost along the way. Variety said that many viewers would get car sick, and Larry Cohen dismissed it as calculated and tedious.
Robert Christgau was an exception. He placed the film fourth on his list of the year's best films, describing its virtue as visual rather than romantic. He recommended watching it under the influence of cannabis, which suggests the film was built for a particular audience from the start.
The film earned rentals of $4,250,000 in North America, and its Rotten Tomatoes score of 63% came from 76 reviews. The UK version ran 105 minutes with the hitchhiker scene, while the US version was cut to 98 minutes after that scene was removed.
Newman recalled that Fox had little faith in the film and released it in neighbourhood theatres, where it disappeared within two weeks. The film did better in the UK and Europe, which led the studio to reissue it in the United States on a double bill with The French Connection. Drive-in theatres made it a second-feature favourite, often paired with Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry.
A cult following built slowly, helped by a network television broadcast in 1976. Over time the film gained a reputation as a favourite of car fans and critics alike, and Steven Spielberg is among those who have named it one of their favourites.
What is the soundtrack like?
Sarafian hoped to score the film from the album Motel Shot by Delaney, Bonnie and Friends, but Fox's music department refused because it did not want to pay for the rights. He then suggested Randy Newman, and the studio refused that too. Jimmy Bowen, the musical supervisor, wrote three original songs after watching the film.
The soundtrack includes Nobody Knows, which was the first recording by Kim Carnes, credited on the album as Kim and Dave with her husband Dave Ellingson. Delaney, Bonnie and Friends performed a musical number in the film, and the album was released in the United States by Amos Records.
How has Vanishing Point influenced later work?
The film has inspired many artists. Edgar Wright named it one of his 1,000 favourite films and used it as inspiration for Baby Driver (2017). Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (2007) features a Dodge Challenger that resembles the car in the film, and the film refers to the picture by name.
Music has been a major route for its influence. The film's main theme is still used as an overture for Brazilian documentary programming, and New Order placed a track called Vanishing Point on its Technique album. Primal Scream named its 1997 album after the film, and a track called Kowalski samples the last American hero speech. Super Soul's speech was also incorporated into the lyrics of Guns N' Roses' Breakdown, which appeared on Use Your Illusion II in 1991.
The film was remade for Fox television, first broadcast in 1997, with Viggo Mortensen in the lead. The remake removed the mystical elements and gave the story a religious motivation, while still featuring a Dodge Challenger. In 2024 the Library of Congress screened a 4K restoration at the Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia.
