Killing Car (1993) User Reviews

Low Budget repetitive little flick

[sylvain gross · 4/10 · 27 August 2006]

I'm a moderate fan of Rollin's Movies in general ;the only exception is "La rose de fer" which i think is a very poetic and atmospheric movie and also a very underrated one. I saw "The killing car" yesterday and i've got to say it's:

1)Boring (in a non intelligent way)

2)Repetitive as hell

3)Very badly acted exception for the main actress (Which has a praticaly mute role... so we can't tell for sure if she can act or not) The entire cast looks like they have been hired from the porno industry

4)Mediocrely written, which is the main cause of points 1 and 2

5)Inferiorly directed ,notably in "action" scenes where the guns are dubbed with small size firecrackers

BUT this movie possess some kind of "entertaining energy" at times due to its somewhat "carnivorous" but most of the time efficiently fast editing ; it sometimes has a nice photography, the film is settled in Paris most of the running time but has certain scenes in NY ' so when the story become too tedious,we can relax our eyes on these rare but beautiful shots of these two cities.

Overall rating : 4/10 mostly for the photo and for this somewhat naive but entertaining (not all the time regrettably) energy feeling in it.

A Jean Rollin car killing movie.

[BandSAboutMovies · 3/10 · 10 December 2020]

Also known as Femme Dangereuse (Dangerous Woman), this Jean Rollin-directed movie is all about an Asian woman known as the Car Woman. This role was specifically written for model Tiki Tsang, who is actually Australian. Rollin worked on this film until he grew too ill to complete it, then edited it years later*.

The Car Woman kills throughout the film, leaving a toy car behind as a calling card for each murder. Literally the entire film is a series of episodes with people meeting Car Woman and getting killed, whether they are women who get an army of doomed prostitutes to help them, a boyfriend and girlfriend who end up shot and stabbed with a golden fork respectively or a photographer and her model in New York City.

You have to love that Car Woman cocks her gun every time she shoots it, which isn't needed after the first shot. It'd just waste ammo. This is what I think of when I should just be watching Jean Rollin movies and staring at all of the women, huh?

*It was shot on 16mm and originally intended for a direct-to-video release, although it did have a brief theatrical appearance in 1993. No usable print or negative of the film exists today, so what you get on video is what you get.

Such an abysmal film from a great director

[Stevieboy666 · 2/10 · 18 March 2019]

A beautiful Oriental woman embarks on a revengeful killing spree in Paris, leaving a small toy car at every murder scene. This could and should have been good but it seems that Rollin decided to make as bad a movie as possible. The first 15 minutes are taken up by the most absurd gunfight that I have had the misfortune to endure. The acting, script, continuity are all bad. Being a Rollin movie, however, means plenty of gratuitous female nudity. More of a thriller but the rumbling thunder on cue and a scene involving a scythe (a la Fascination) do lend KC some horror elements. Rollin is one of my favourite European directors, this effort sadly is a MASSIVE disappointment.

The French Make Crap, Too

[paul_d_day · 2/10 · 26 January 2012]

In America, at least, any film that's not in English holds a certain cache. If it's in French, it's assume the filmmaker must be doing something different or trying to make some clever intellectual point. That's not the case here. This film is the French Plan 9.

It opens early in the morning in a junkyard where the owner gets shot. Rather than call the cops, his girlfriend pursues the shooter trading gunfire. Standard stuff, right? Wrong. Someone else is actually *working* in the junkyard. And continues to work as the two shoot at each other. The girlfriend runs into a forest...full of prostitutes. The shooter follows. The chase proceeds to a carnival that's getting ready to open. Bullets fly. And, again, the employees just kind of watch as one by one everyone is killed. No one even bothers to register the gun battle going on or the bodies dripping blood down the ramps of the rides. Again, fine, it's fiction. Really, really bad fiction.

But then it jumps the shark. This must be a helluva battle with unlimited ammo and incredible stamina because, suddenly, it's night time. It's not that the lighting just looks bad, the script literally has the actors saying it's night time. Why? Because they end up in a graveyard and graveyards are spookier at night.

That's the first ten minutes or so of the movie and it goes downhill from there until the final reel when the reason for all of this idiocy is revealed. And the reason pushes credibility past the point of no return. But not in a good way. Not in a way that makes you consider questions of human nature and revenge. But in a way that makes you wonder how this thing got greenlighted and why you can see kind of see why some Americans hate the French.

Tiki Tsang!...

[azathothpwiggins · 7 July 2020]

Jean Rollin's KILLING CAR, stars Tiki Tsang as "The Car Woman", one of the most enigmatic, eerily seductive characters in any film. She's ruthless, relentless, and lethal. The opening junkyard scene, involving attempted car theft and murder, is both absurd and astonishing. This leads to the fast, desperate chase through a carnival, where she engages in a running gun battle with prostitutes. The car secured, she continues her murderous rampage. It's obvious that anyone who comes in contact with this woman is doomed.

The police are baffled, finding a toy car at each of her murder scenes. Why is she doing this? When one victim asks, "Who are you?", she replies, "I am not.".

Ms. Tsang gives off an aura of exotic danger like no one since Tura Satana!

BEST SCENES: #1- The "barn fight", featuring a scythe vs. pitchfork confrontation! #2- The "photo shoot" scene! #3- The "art dealers" sequence! This is Tiki Tsang's only movie, and she carries it from start to finish!...

Rubbishy crap from Rollin...

[poolandrews · 2/10 · 9 October 2006]

Killing Car starts at some French junk yard for cars (just check out all those ugly Citreon's) where a woman kills a guy & then chases his girlfriend who meets up with a load of prostitutes & they are all also killed by the mysterious lady. Said mysterious lady then goes on a killing spree across Paris only leaving a toy car behind as some cryptic clue for the police to figure out, but will they figure it out & put an end to her killing spree?

This French production was directed by Jean Rollin & those unlucky enough to be familiar with his other work, I count myself as one of those unfortunates, will not be surprised to learn that Killing Car is very short on plot & unlike a lot of Rollin's other work lacks much of the style & uniqueness he is known for. The story really is as bare bones as you can get, the lead lady who goes around killing people isn't even given a name & the character's are extremely poor with little dialogue & stupid illogical actions like when this woman cuts another woman's throat & the other woman simply shrugs it off & says it was just an accident, I mean I don't know about you but if someone cut my throat with a knife I wouldn't be treating it as an accident that's for sure. There's the usual Rollin nudity & a bit of lesbianism but virtually nothing in the way of violence or gore. In fact those looking for some surreal Gothic horror the like of which Rollin is best known for will be sorely disappointed as I'd say it's more of a Death Wish (1974) type revenge film than horror, there really isn't any horror elements in Killing Car & in case your wondering not one single person is killed by a car so you can add a misleading title to it's list of faults.

Director Rollin is probably best known for his surrealistic horror films & this is a definite departure from that. It doesn't particularly feel like Rollin but there are maybe a couple of scenes where his sense of style comes through. The action scenes & shoot-outs are very poorly choreographed & are frankly dull & unexciting. Forget about any blood or gore, a woman has a pitch fork stuck through her but that's it. As in most Rollin films the female cast members seem to like taking their clothes off but there's nothing erotic about it at all.

Technically the film is rough & was obviously very low budget. The IMDb lists the year 1993 next to the title yet on the crappy video generated titles during the film itself the year 1989 is listed next to the on screen title. Maybe it sat on a shelf for a few years, personally I'd have been perfectly happy for it have sat for many more years to come. The actors speak in French throughout the film so deciding on performances is difficult, the subtitles are functional enough but one doubts they are a literal translation.

Killing Car really is a very, very bad film & luckily for you it's pretty obscure & as far as I'm concerned it can stay that way. No story, no Rollin visuals, no horror, bad action scenes & no nothing really. One to avoid unless your a Rollin completeist, if such an animal actually exists...

Episodic, suffering from technical problems, but still worthwhile

[unbrokenmetal · 7/10 · 7 April 2007]

I expected that "Killing Car" would be somewhat similar to "The Sidewalks of Bangkok" from the same director, because both have a crime story and an Asian actress in the leading role. I found these 2 movies are quite different, though.

"Killing Car" falls apart into several episodes. We are introduced to a few people at a junkyard who are killed by a female assassin (Tiki Tsang) shortly afterwards. We are introduced to more characters who get killed, too. And so it goes on and on until we finally receive at least a bit of information what it all was about. I believe the audience would have been grateful to get more information about the characters at the beginning. Bereft of this, viewers may become a bit impatient after a while, when the movie jumps from New York to Paris and nobody knows why. If I may compare again, "The Sidewalks of Bangkok" provided a better story line.

"Killing Car" is meant to be bleak and gritty, but there's no denying that it suffers from poor technical quality in some scenes. Towards the end it seems the negative (16 mm, I suppose) was damaged, also the sound is not very professional in some places (the gun shots, noise of steps, a few dialogs). A good job was done on the editing, though. The speedy cutting in the chase scene at the fair makes the action more fluently, the surprise cut to the killer who hid in the clock (fans recognize a reference to other Rollin movies) provides quite a shock, and the variation of visual rhythm creating insecurity and fear in the scene where a girl is locked in the house and electricity is cut reminds me of the Italian giallo style.

The strongest point of the movie is Tiki Tsang whose only movie this is, unfortunately. She appears like an angel of death, radiating with charisma. When the photographer at the studio accuses her of acting like she was dead, she agrees in cold blood. On the other hand, she is very sexy in her dance scene, so not wooden by any means.

To cut a long story short, "Killing Car" is not one of the Top 5 Rollin films, because it lacks the poetic perfection of "La Rose de Fer", for example. Still it has strong moments like the killing at the photo studio when a playful pose turns into the real thing, so for me it was worth the time!

Dreamily gritty.

[parry_na · 8/10 · 12 July 2015]

Whilst I try not to be influenced by other reviews when watching a film, it's difficult to avoid the drubbing 'Killing Car' seems to have attracted, even from fans of its French director Jean Rollin.

There's no doubt that to enter into the often improbable fantasy world of Rollin's films, there is little to be gained nit-picking lapses in continuity or a lack of comprehensive story – if the film itself is a carefully constructed dream-scape, why dash it with issues limited to reality? 'Killing Car' attempts a kind of gritty revenge motif, and therefore exists somewhere in the real world, so the lapses in logic here are harder to overlook.

The radiant Tiki Tsang, in her only film, plays 'the car woman' – hers is the dream-state that floats through urban landscapes killing people – seemingly – inexplicably. So, when she is involved in a shoot-out at a functioning fairground, and no-one intervenes; when everyone she meets (be they photographers, prostitutes, antique-dealers) all happen to carry fire-arms that never appear to run out of bullets, it's hard, as a viewer, to look past this.

Still, if you are able to suspend disbelief to such an extent, then there is plenty to enjoy here. There are a couple of good twists towards the end – in fact, I thought there might have even been a third twist, but that was not to be. And Ms Tsang is very charismatic as the harbinger of death, whether she is staring into space on the boat where she lives, elegantly making her way through a junkyard or a city or simply looming over her next victim.

There is a school of thought that opines that Rollin films are highly regarded because they are French – if they were made in America, for example, they would just be dismissed as bad films. I'm not sure, perhaps there is truth in this – there is a (too) lengthy travelogue set in New York in the middle of 'Killing Car', which makes for picturesque viewing. There's no doubt though, when the action returns to the French rooftops, the atmosphere is served up in droves and provides, for me, the film's highlights. Perhaps Rollin was simply more confident filming in his native country, who knows? His cinematography is breath-taking on home turf, there is little doubt about that.

'Killing Car' is not quite the risible car crash some might have you believe!

[Weirdling_Wolf · 8/10 · 30 December 2020]

'Killing Car' (1989) sputters in rather enigmatically at the tail end of the 80s, while initially appearing to be quite some distance removed from, Jean Rollin's elegiac visions of surrealistic Gothic wyrd, I still found this starkly nihilistic thriller to be anything but the dour DTV misfire so many have claimed it to be. At this point in time it is pretty clear that, Jean Rollin is having some severe problems securing adequate finances for his exquisite phantasmagorical masterpieces as, sadly, 'Killing Car' looks decidedly sparse even by penurious Eurocine standards, all that being said, hopefully forgiving its severe budgetary limitations, what remains is some gloriously escapist Euro-crime schlock, supercharged with its very own oblique set of deliciously screwball B-Movie archetypes and their delightfully shadowy intrigues! Like fellow genre iconoclast, Lucio Fulci, some of the esteemed director's latter day films are often dismissed, with all too many 'critics' unfairly damning them as being cheap, demonstratively below par affairs, whereas, quite to the contrary, I can still readily appreciate the credible artistry abounding in these idiosyncratic, albeit far lower budgeted productions!

Writer/director, Jean Rollin's knowingly pulpy, pistol-happy 'Killing Car' is enjoyably ripe with, Dashiell Hammett allusions as his gun-metal cool, raven-haired avenging angel, 'The Car Woman' (Tiki Tsang) draws us uncomfortably close to her deadly odyssey deep into, Jean Rollin's crepuscular Parisian underworld. The lack of glossy production value fortuitously lends murky verisimilitude to her vengeful undertakings and to, Rollin's great credit, the bravura director effectively maintains this glacial existential milieu throughout the movie, which in lesser hands might simply be just another grubby exercise is gratuitously blood-squibbing, B-Movie revenge, and yet it is more than that, since there is an oblique suggestion of a supernatural, almost mythical gravitas to the beguiling Tsang's unflinchingly brutal slaying of all those nefarious, cowardly dregs that wronged her so egregiously.

For me, the inimitable filmmaker's doomy, dream-logic romanticism remains largely intact in this gritty, grossly maligned movie and, Rollin's rampant predilection for encouraging delectably nubile ladies to spontaneously disrobe is resolutely unbowed in his skewed approach to Godard's sacrosanct 'Girl & a Gun' filmmaking maxim! And it would be greatly remiss not to mention the truly exemplary score by previous Rollin collaborator, Philippe Bréjean which sonorously adds some much-needed burnish to the film's unlovely, rough-hewn veneer. 'Killing Car' is not quite the risible car crash some might have you believe, and I'm certain all those especially broad-minded grindhouse fans shall find the admittedly bumpy ride a remarkably stimulating one!

Poor Film from Rollin

[Michael_Elliott · 6 February 2010]

Killing Car (1993)

* (out of 4)

Extremely bad revenge flick about an Asian woman going around in an American car and killing countless people to she comes across. The woman doesn't speak a word and instead just goes up to her victims and shoots them. The police are baffled as to who is doing the killings and why. This French film is a really bad one and it's rather shocking to see something like this from someone like Rollin. That's not to say the director hasn't made some really bad films because he has but even his worse films at least contain some sort of style and that is missing here. The entire movie has a very cheap look and feel to it. The movie's budget appears to be just a few hundred and there's really not much of anything to recommend here. The reasons behind the murders is the main draw here as the director tries to keep the secret from start to finish and he does at least do this good. There are two twists at the end of the movie I think they both worked fine. It's getting to the twists that is the hard part. The movie features some of the worse acting this side of a homemade porn movie as all the performances here are really, really bad. Just check out the woman who is in her apartment building when the lights go out as she goes into a fit not knowing what's going on. This scene here was so poorly acted that I couldn't even get a laugh out of it. Tiki Tsang plays the killer and I'm not really sure what to think about her. She has the "look" of a silent killer but I wouldn't say that's enough to consider it a good performance. The movie contains some really ugly cinematography, a poor editing job and some really horrid death scenes that are so cheap you have to wonder what they were thinking. Fans of Rollin should skip this sucker all together unless you watch the first five minutes and then skip to the final five for the secret.