Gone in 60 Seconds ( 1974 ) is an enjoyable mess

Blender Dumbass
September 23, 2025

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Watching the Nicolas Cage and Jerry Bruckheimer remake made me extremely curious to see the original Gone in 60 Seconds. And let me tell you that, the film is impressive when it comes to the shier production value H. B. Halicki ( writer, producer, director and star ) put into this film. But on the other hand the film is very hard to follow.

The whole movie holds on the car stuff. If not the car stuff, the film would have been completely incomprehensible. The script is, frankly shit ( people claim there was no actual script and they just basically winged the whole movie ). The acting is wooden. And the scene direction is so absurdly obnoxious that half of the time you're just wandering what the actual fuck is going on. And then the car stuff begins. Or more like, the main event of the film, the chase scene that takes half of its runtime, begins. And the film suddenly becomes brilliant.

The remake, even though not the best film ever made, is far more legible than the original film. But it is partially because the remake was done by movie professionals. While the original was actually done by a car thief. Or at least those were the rumors. Halicki managed to put together 150 thousand dollars, and using that money, make the longest chase scene in history? He must have stolen some of those cars.

In you think Tom Cruise is crazy, think again. Halicki performed his own stunts in this film, including getting into real accidents and then using the footage in the film, to add production value. He badly hurt himself doing the jump stunt. And then died trying to out-perform himself making a sequel to this movie, which was never finished.

You could say that the Bruckheimer remake was a soulless attempt at capitalizing on this old crazy movie made by a crazy person, who died for it. But the fact of the matter is, one of the executive producers on the remake was indeed Denice Shakarian Halicki, the widower of this crazy person, trying to preserve his legacy. And trying to make more people understand his struggle with "Eleanor".

Speaking of "Eleanor" which the film presents proudly in the very beginning as "Starring Eleanor". Eleanor, for those of you who don't know, is the bad omen car of the main character in Gone in 60 Seconds movies. In the remake it is a 1967 Ford Shelby GT500. In the original it is a 1971 Ford Mustang, which kind of looks similar. In both movies the main character has a lot of trouble with Eleanor. And in both movies Eleanor is ultimately used for the main chase of the film. A chase that starts due to bad luck caused by Eleanor herself.

That scene though, where the film says "Starring Eleanor" was interesting. What we see is, our main character driving his car all cool and amazing towards a train-wreck which J. J. Abrams references in Super 8 ( it was a real train-wreck that Halicki used as a background for production value, which is the same sort of thing the characters of Super 8 do for their in-film movie project ). That scene... that scene starts with him driving his car. And the shot is through the windshield of the car, onto the road. And what do we see? We see a row of sun-glasses arranged on the panel above the steering wheel. You know what it makes me think? It makes me think Kill Bill was the final "Fuck you" of Quentin Tarantino when it comes to working for Jerry Bruckheimer.

What am I fucking talking about? Well... Quentin tries to become a film-maker. So he writes True Romance. He tries to pitch it, but the best he can do is to sell the script. Fine... maybe he can make a smaller script, that may actually land him a directing job. That True Romance script, though, is being picked up by Tony Scott who makes the movie in 1993. Tarantino loves Tony Scott's film. And Tony Scott likes Tarantino's writing. So they work again, after Pulp Fiction on Crimson Tide, where Jerry Brukheimer together with Tony Scott, hire Quentin to touch up the dialogue, because Quentin's dialogue is the shit.

A year later, Quentin is brought in again. Not to write a movie, not to direct a movie. He is brought in to touch up a script for a yet another Jerry fucking Bruckheimer film, that he didn't write and that he doesn't direct. In fact Michael Bay directs it. This probably sets off some ego-bomb in Quentin's chest, which prompts him to call bullshit, and quit this stupid job. Making Jackie Brown in the process. Then in 2000 Jerry Bruckheimer remakes Gone in 60 Seconds. And Tarantino being a film-nerd that he is decided to fuck with Jerry Bruckheimer. And puts a duo of stupid detective cowboy characters in his film Kill Bill. One of which arrives to the crime scene in a car, which just so happened to have on panel above the steering wheel, a carefully arranged row of sun-glasses, shot in the exact same way as in the original 1974 version of Gone in 60 Seconds.

But that doesn't stop there either. Few years after that Tarantino remakes Gone in 60 Seconds himself as 2007's Death Proof. Where a group of girls steals the fucking Eleanor, to then get into a brutal car chase with Stuntman Mike. Who just so happened to have his own Eleanor. Where the structure of the film loosely follows the structure of the 1974 film. Trying to be this terrible, incomprehensible B-movie up to the point the big chase scene starts. And I kid you not, Tarantino, being a fucking smart-ass, puts the due of his stupid detective cowboy characters into this movie too. And by extension ( due to the connection between the 2 Grindhouse films ) into Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. If that is not Quentin's "Fuck you" in Jerry's face, I don't know what it is.

Halicki made a messy film. But he made a messy film that a lot of people to this day still fucking respect.

Happy Hacking!!!