Gone in 60 Seconds(1974)

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

Over the course of trying to complete the order of 48 cars for the South American drug lord, two of Pace’s (H.B. Halicki) team members – Atlee (George Cole) and Corlis (Ronald Halicki) – get a white Cadillac Eldorado as part of the order. However, when they bring it into Pace’s garage, they, Pace, and everyone else there soon discover that the car contains a large amount of heroin stashed in places all throughout it. Pace orders Atlee to take this car back to where he and Corlis found it, but Pace’s new brother-in-law, Eugene (Jerry Daugirda), protests his decision, thinking that they ought to sell the heroin themselves and make a tidy sum. Pace eventually tells Eugene that they will discuss this matter in the morning, but early the next morning, Pace and another team member, Stanley (James McIntyre), take the Eldorado out to a secluded piece of land without Eugene’s knowledge, where Pace dumps gasoline all over it and then sets it on fire with a road flare, destroying both it and the drugs.

Later on, Pace and his team successfully fill the contract, with all of the cars safely stashed in a warehouse at the Long Beach docks for pickup. Unfortunately, with just a few hours left until the deadline, Pace finds out from his wife, Pumpkin (Marion Busia), that the 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1 – nicknamed “Eleanor” – that he earlier procured is not insured, so he is going to have to go out and find another one. Just then, Eugene confronts him and angrily demands to know where the Eldorado is, so Pace admits to him that he burned it. Eugene then tries to rough him up for that, but he easily overpowers Eugene and knocks him to the floor. Pace then tells Pumpkin that he will return the Eleanor they have, but only because he knows of another one parked in the parking garage of the International Towers in Long Beach. Sometime after Pace leaves his garage with Stanley to return the Eleanor and get the other one, Eugene decides to get revenge on him by making an anonymous call to Sgt. Hawkins (John Halicki) of the city police and telling him to put a stakeout at the International Towers if he wants to catch those involved in the car theft ring.

Pace and Stanley reach the International Towers, unaware that undercover cops are watching the place, and when the cops notice the car they came in, they run its license plate number and discover that it is not on file. Pace decides to go into the garage on foot to find Eleanor, in parting telling Stanley that he will contact him over their walkie-talkies if he finds her, and if he does, then he can take off and leave him here. Pace soon locates the Eleanor and breaks into it, and after letting Stanley know about it, Stanley does as instructed and leaves the property for elsewhere. Pace then drives the Eleanor outside, but when he stops for a few moments to shut off the car’s alarm, the undercover cops take notice of this and call for backup. Just as Pace is about to resume his getaway, he takes notice of the cops in their car, and realizing that he has been discovered, he quickly gets behind the wheel and speeds off, with the undercover cops and additional police cruisers pursuing him.

Pace proceeds to lead the police – local, county, and state – on a very long chase through six cities (which takes up 40 minutes of the movie’s runtime), creating all kinds of mayhem and directly or indirectly causing a lot of cars to crash and people to get injured. Though he manages to lose the cops in the end, the Eleanor has sustained too much damage from the chase to be sold, leaving him no choice but to try to find another one somewhere else. Fortunately for him, he randomly spots another Eleanor going through a car wash, so he pulls into the business and tells one of the attendants to give his car a wash while claiming that all of the damage done to it was due to inattentive parking attendants. He then approaches the lady who owns the undamaged Eleanor and – pretending to be the manager of the car wash – tells her that she needs to come to the manager’s office because they need to re-wash her car, and he promises to bring it back there for her once they’re done. After she goes, he hops into the car and drives into a parking spot, where he switches out the license plate for a different one and changes his disguise before resuming his getaway.

A short time later, a few police officers in their cruisers spot the damaged Eleanor rolling out of the car wash, and the woman who owns the undamaged Eleanor has just fainted in the arms of the real car wash manager upon seeing the damaged one, thinking that it is hers. The police go onto the property and find and arrest the manager (since his natural appearance matches the description of Pace’s previous disguise), and around the same time, Pace has just pulled up to a police checkpoint. Luckily for him, the police there receive word about the apprehension of the “suspect” at the car wash, so Pace is allowed to continue on his way. The movie then comes to a close, and we are left to assume that Pace got the Eleanor down to the warehouse in time for the drug lord to pick up all the cars.