Movie Review: Killing Cars

Killing Cars a.k.a Blitz 

Starring: Jürgen Prochnow, Senta Berger, Agnès Soral, Daniel Gélin, Stefan Meinke, Peter Matic, Bernhard Wicki, Osman Ragheb, William Conrad, Axel Scholtz, Marina Larsen, Klaus Mikoleit, Wolf Gaudlitz, Oliver Rohrbeck, Uwe Hacker, Willie Richter, Dieter Kursawe, Richard Süssenguth, Rene Hennig, Georg Tryphon, Heinz Hoenig, Jörg Koch, Marjorie Lewis 

Director: Michael Verhoeven 

Futura Film, Sentana Filmproduktion 

West Germany, 1986. 

This movie can be found in Fuel Injected Films 20 Movie Collection by Mill Creek Entertainment. 

Ralph Korda (Jürgen Prochnow) street races at night with his sunglasses coolly on. His real profession is car designer. He refuses some business deals and drives away giving a lift to a random hot girl. In addition to being a playboy and working as a sub-contractor for BAG car company, he also manufactures stuff like ping pong balls. 

Ralph Korda

Von der Mühle

Worldcar

BAG company plans to build a new factory demolishing a local youth club. Punk rockers demonstrate and riot. Police batters hippies with batons. Ralph has designed an electro-chemically powered Worldcar (a modified Albar Sonic) but there are still problems with overheating power accumulators. Someone spies the project and steals the accumulator files. Ralph suspects the BAG company and his superior Von der Mühle (Bernhard Wicki). Von der Mühle denies taking them, it is BAG CEO Dr. Hein (Peter Matic) who took them for "rechecking". He opposes the Worldcar project so Ralph threatens to leave the project. 

Dr. Hein

Aspiring street musicians

The punks vandalise some parked cars. Thief Schulz (Uwe Hacker) steals Korda's papers. He and shady businessman Kellermann (Daniel Gélin) try to sell the papers. Hein's secretary Marie Landauer (Senta Berger) tells that Hein is about to do some business with Arabian Sheik Al-Atassi (Osman Ragheb). Marie has an one-sided crush on Ralph. Then there is a random accident with lorry and the punks. This encourages them to torch cars. 

Marie Landauer

Kellermann

As Hein is ripping Ralph off, he finally gets enough and tries to take the test car. Ralph considers selling Worldcar to Kellermann instead. Also American Mr. Mahoney (William Conrad) in interested about the car. Reporter Violet Blum (Agnès Soral) says that Kellermann is an evil arms dealer. But as a fanatic environmentalist Violet wants to ban all cars. The punks get more violent and steal the test car and everyone blames Ralph. Eventually punk Niki (Stefan Meinke) and Violet help him to find the car. After that there is a shootout and still couple more double-crosses. Maybe the ping pong business is safer after all.

Violet Blum

Niki

The movie is directed by Michael Verhoeven, who is son of German director, actor and writer Paul Verhoeven who is NOT the more famous Dutch director. The movie begins with cool 1980s music video aesthetics. Then it turns into a messy tale of industrial espionage. Just about everyone tries to dupe unlucky Ralph. Mixing in some oil barons, bumbling security guards, environmentalists and anarchists does not improve clarity. William Conrad is wasted here, in addition it was confusing that he looked a bit like Uwe Hacker in some scenes. The movie has some elements as German detective series, but everything is overstretched and feels just pointless. 

Rating: Bad