Turns out ol’ Buddy Ebsen can’t follow a road that isn’t paved in gold bricks. Perhaps encumbered by his unruly eyebrow hair while cruising down the freeway, Ebsen veers out of his lane, causing a catastrophic traffic crisis one might call a Smash-Up on Interstate 5. This made-for-TV disaster movie sure did.

As California Highway Patrol cop Robert Conrad (Palm Springs Weekend) narrates, the July 4 holiday mishap involves 39 vehicles, forcing 14 people to declare independence from the surly bonds of earth. After the crash, Smash-Up jumps back in time two days in an attempt to invest viewers in the various drivers’ and passengers’ lives before the fickle hand of fate did its due diligence.

The soapy story threads include Vera Miles (Psycho) navigating L.A. single life despite looking like Nancy Reagan; a biker gang with Lolita herself (Sue Lyon) just one pair of leather pants away from passing as a PTA mom; and a young couple on the lam after knocking over a grocery store. As one of Conrad’s fellow officers, future U.S. Marshal Tommy Lee Jones turns in what may be his finest acting ever since the role requires smiling.

You know people tuned in to ABC’s Smash-Up on Interstate 5 just to see the titular demolition derby. Hopefully they switch channels after those initial minutes, because that’s a mere preview of the full, fucked-up mishap awaiting at film’s end. Cars and trucks collide, flip, fly, go willy nilly and so on, as do stuntmen’s rag-dolled bodies.

Director John Llewellyn Moxey (Circus of Fear) is no Hal Needham — see the latter’s Death Car on the Freeway for a superior primetime fender-bender — yet Smash-Up is excitingly shot and skillfully edited where it counts, with a stunningly affecting mix of slow motion and pauses. Buckle up! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

After a decade of directing such saucy shorts as For Men Only, Pete Walker finally cracked the hourlong barrier with the Carnaby Street crime caper The Big Switch.

One night, professional ad exec and unprofessional blue-eyed fuckboy John Carter (Sebastian Breaks, The Night Digger) leaves a London discotheque with a lovely bird (Erika Raffael, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush). They head to her pad for a proper shagging. Whilst Carter first goes ’round the corner to grab some cigs for post-coital smoking, she’s shot dead by a hitman hiding in her shower. Talk about a case of the blue balls, mate — when Carter finds her body, no wonder he touches the gun left behind and vamooses without phoning the authorities.

Which is exactly what local gangster/club owner Mendez (Derek Alyward, Walker’s School for Sex) counts on. He blackmails Carter into a secret assignment with a beautiful model named Karen (Virginia Wetherell, Walker’s Man of Violence). Neither Karen nor Carter have a clue what they’re in for — and I ain’t telling, either — but they hope it doesn’t involve their deaths.

This sleek, quick pic is a real fanny-slapper, like a men’s pulp paperback come to life. On cheap paper, those hard-charging, easy-bedding heroes could trot through formulaic exploits dozens upon dozens of times. The Carter character could have fronted an equal amount of adventures, yet went no further.

I enjoyed Walker’s first true feature from start to its photo finish, a marvelously fun sequence that places its climactic chase and shootout within a boardwalk arcade and ghost train attraction. After the baddies are dispatched or discombobulated, the po-po show up and invite Karen and Cater to the station for a cuppa tea.

“Sounds groovy,” Karen says earlier in the film, to which Carter coldly replies, “It is.” They may as well be talking up The Big Switch. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.