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Shelley Hack; George Hamilton; Doris Day; Barbara Rush; Peter Graves
One of the most incredible pieces of filmed entertainment to ever grace television screens, Death Car on the Freeway is nasty, ambitious, and peppered with more fabulous cameos and crashes than Cannonball Run (it’s no real surprise that director Hal Needham would go on to direct both Cannonballs).

The improvement that Death Car makes on other wacky road movies is this: there is an Anchorwoman in Peril. Yes, Final Angel Shelley Hack switches to Final Girl as a newswoman fighting sexism in the workplace even as a man in a van (the “Freeway Fiddler”!) is running women off the freeway to fiery deaths all over Los Angeles. Boasting an alarming prominence of feminist sentiment for a TV movie (pre-Lifetime, that is) and some commentary on the media and violence that are still quite timely today, this film shocks as it entertains, and looks FABULOUS every step of the way.

Extra points for featuring an impressive supporting cast of lesbianic women (come on – Dinah Shore as a tennis pro? Barbara Rush as a “confirmed bachelorette”?) and a midway Freudian analysis of the killer that has to be seen to be believed (the fact that the lady shrink may as well be reading a definition of a homosexual male should not be overlooked). Must-see!!