A staple of the horror genre is to take everyday things and make them terrifying. And what’s more common in America than the automobile? So buckle up because today we’ll be looking at 10 horror movies about possessed killer cars.
Killdozer
This 1974 film is directed by Jerry London and based on a novella of the same name by Theodore Sturgeon. It takes place on a small island where a construction crew is working. That is, until a spirit-like being takes over a large bulldozer, right before going on a killer rampage. Can the workers defeat the possessed dozer in time to save their lives?
The Car
Elliot Silverstein’s 1977 film takes place in a quiet, small desert town. But when a seemingly possessed car starts to terrorize its citizens, the local sheriff may be the only one who can stop this mechanical evil.
Christine
Christine is a classic 1983 film directed by John Carpenter, from a script by Bill Phillips. It’s based on a novel of the same name released in the same year by horror icon Stephen King. Both tell the story of a nerdy, bullied teenager who buys a car from a stranger. But when strange things start happening, and people start turning up dead, all signs point back to there being something very wrong with his new ride.
Maximum Overdrive
Another movie based on work by King, only this time it’s inspired by the short story Trucks and the writer’s directorial debut. 1986’s Maximum Overdrive centers around a group of people who are trapped inside a gas station after every machine on the planet turns against humans. Why were they spared, you ask? Well, to pump gas into the possessed trucks, of course!
King later claimed he cannot remember making the film due to his issues with cocaine addiction at the time. The result was so critically maligned that King never directed again.
I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle
1990’s I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle is directed by Dirk Campbell, from a script by Mycal Miller and John Wolskel. When an occultist is killed by a motorcycle gang, the evil spirit he was summoning decides to inhabit a damaged bike. Eventually it’s purchased and restored, but it isn’t long before the bike seeks to exact vengeance on the gang.
Trucks
This 1997 film is also based on King’s short story Trucks, but directed by Chris Thomson. Like Maximum Overdrive, it tells the story of aliens passing through and seriously messing with Earth’s technology. As they park in a geostationary orbit over Nevada, they declare war, using unmanned trucks as weapons.
Super Hybrid
Directed by Eric Valette, from a script by Neal Marshall Stevens. 2010’s Super Hybrid tells the tale of a mysterious car that is brought into the Chicago police impound garage after a deadly traffic accident. However, the on-call mechanics are shocked to find out that the car has a mind of its own. But how can they stop a car that is 2 tons of reinforced steel with hundreds of horsepower behind it? The worst part is, it’s even clever enough to outwit humans.
Road Kill aka Road Train
Road Kill is a 2010 film directed by Dean Francis, from a script by Clive Hopkins. It centers around a group of teens who are menaced by a driverless train in the Australian outback. While we’ve seen plenty of brutality on, in, and around trains, one that is seemingly driven by pure killer instinct is new to us.
Rubber
Okay, so we are stretching our criteria a little with Quentin Dupieux’s 2010 film. This time it’s not the vehicle that is out for blood; it’s just the tire. All bets are off once the little piece of rubber that could discovers it has destructive psionic power. It decides to set its sights on a mysterious woman and will stop at nothing to get to her.
The Car: Road to Revenge
The only sequel on our list is 2019’s The Car: Road to Revenge, a very late follow-up to 1977’s The Car. This film is directed by G.J. Echternkamp, from a script he co-wrote with Michael Tabb and Matt Yamashita. It tells the story of an unscrupulous District Attorney who is savagely murdered. His killers decide to toss the body off of a building where he lands on a brand-new car. It isn’t long before the attorney and the vehicle are resurrected as one bloodthirsty entity.
There you have it, 10 films about killer vehicles or parts of vehicles. If you noticed, many of these plots center around revenge of some kind. Not just because it’s a well-worn motive, but because it speaks to some greater commentary seen in many of these movies. Most of these plotlines have some underlying focus on the way Americans live in a culture built around consumption and greed.
Why Killer Cars?
Maximum Overdrive is a pretty straightforward example of this idea. The humans in the film become so over-reliant on gadgets, cars, and technology that when ot all turns against them, there is nowhere to turn. Every place they go, they are just surrounded by more and more devices trying to kill them. And keep in mind this was made in 1986, when technology was a lot less pervasive than it is today.
This theme of greed is expressed in the environmental destruction we see in both Killdozer and Rubber. Killdozer is pretty straightforward; the construction crew is ripping up the land, so the bulldozer spirit responds. In Rubber, our main character is roaming around the desert, just blowing up and weaving around trash. While the tire’s origins are purposefully left unexplained, it more than likely was discarded along with all the other junk we see in the environment. (However, we acknowledge it could have also been brought to an isolated place by the people running the show to keep it from being discovered/harming too many people, animals, and things.)
Since cars themselves have been an environmental blight pretty much across the board, this kind of environmental messaging becomes all the clearer. Films like 2007’s Blood Car, excluded since the car doesn’t become possessed, center around a gas crisis. In this universe, it got so bad that no one can afford fuel, making cars a huge status symbol. One man is so desperate to find an alternative fuel source that he trades gasoline for human blood. Literally robbing living creatures of life to fuel a metal machine. Kind of like we are doing right now with fossil fuels and AI.
