LoC #132 Top 112 Road Movies / Journey Films

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MILE 74

Finding Nemo ( 2003 )

Studio: Pixar / Disney
Director:Andrew Stanton

11 Points, 1 List, #15 Pac-Man

TRAILER

A child Clownfish named Nemo wanders too close to a fishing boat and is captured in a net, ending up in a tropical fish tank in a dentist's office in Sydney.  His father, Martin, sets out on an epic journey to find Nemo, with the aid of Dory, a blue tang suffering from short-term memory loss.

Andrew Stanton Had been one of the writers of Toy Story. With the success of that film, Stanton pitched the idea  for Finding Nemo, remembering back to his childhood the tropical fish tank in a dentist's office, and how he felt sorry for them because he thought they wanted to return to their home in the ocean. Pixar was sold on the film, but only because they liked the idea of using the latest in CGI technology to animate an underwater movie. It took another five years to develop the script, during which he co wrote the scripts for the next three Pixar films, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc.. It became yet another box office hit for Pixar and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Stanton would later write and direct the 2016 sequel Finding Dory

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MILE 73

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back ( 2001 )

Studio: Dimesion / Miramax
Director: Kevin Smith

11 Points, 2 Lists, #18 Stethacantus

TRAILER

After finding out a movie is being made of Bluntman and Chronic, two superheroes a local cartoonist had based on them, but they are not being paid for the film, they go on a road trip to Hollywood to stop the film from being made.


This was the fifth film in the New Jersey Trilogy which began with Clerks in 1994. Smith had originally intended it to be an actual trilogy of stories taking place in New Jersey consisting of Clerks, Dogma and Chasing Amy. After the low budget independent film Clerks was picked up by Miramax for distribution and became a minor hit, he began the script for Dogma. Universal wanted to do a film with him, but did not like the pitches for either Dogma, which was to be a film that poked fun at religion,  or Chasing Amy, which was to be a film about a Lesbian. So he pitched them a typical teen comedy called Mallrats that was to be Animal House in a mall, and they greenlit it. Having second thoughts about Dogma as everyone in the industry told him the subject matter was too controversial for any studio to produce, he decided that Mallrats would be the second film in the trilogy, and Chasing Amy would finish the trilogy out. Smith had not intended the characters of Jay and Silent Bob to be in any further films, but put them in Mallrats as part of the pitch to Universal. Mallrats bombed at the box office, earning about $2 million on it's $6 million budget. Miramax agreed to finance Chasing Amy, and during production was impressed that Smith kept the budget down to $250,000, so offered to finance Dogma. With the possibility that Dogma would actually be made, Smith rewrote a scene where a waiter tells a story about his ex-girlfriend Amy, to Silent Bob telling the story. He had not planned for Jay and Silent Bob to appear in Chasing Amy, but now that Dogma was to be made, wanted them in a scene so they could set up that they were going to Chicago, which was a plot point in Dogma.  By now Smith was committed to having the Jay and Silent Bob characters appear in all the New Jersey Trilogy films. Chasing Amy made $12 million, and got some early Oscar buzz ( although no nominations  resulted ). Miramax flipped Dogma to Lion's Gate, and on a $10 million budget, earned $44 million. Jay and Silent Bob, who were minor characters in the first two films, and only one scene in the third, were now among the main characters of Dogma. In 2000 ABC asked for and got an animated primetime series based on Clerks which featured Jay and Silent Bob. It was cancelled after two episodes aired. By now the Jay and Silent Bob characters were very popular, and Dimension Films, still owned by Miramax, asked for a Jay and Silent Bob movie. Smith saw this as a way to finally end his trilogy. Meant to be the final Trilogy film ( the name of Smith's independent production company ) before he moved on to bigger films. Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back was made specifically for the  View Askew fanbase, and brought back many of the characters from the previous films. Part of the plot dealt with Suzanne the Orangutang, which had appeared at the end of Mallrats as a joke saying her story was for another film, and fans had been asking about ever since. On a $22 million budget, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back earned $33 million. It was the perfect end to the trilogy, ending with God herself closing the book on the Trilogy in the final post credit scene.

....That is until Jersey Girl. Expected to be a hit film, it was a critical failure and only broke even with it's budget. Smith was so devastated with the failure that he decided to make another Trilogy film. By now the films being called The View Askewaverse as it could no longer be called a trilogy. Clerks II did well with critics, and earned a respectable $29 million over a $5 million budget. Smith would return to the View Askewaverse three more times with Jay & Silent Bob's Super Groovy Cartoon Movie!, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot which was a direct sequel to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and Clerks III. Currently a sequel to Mallrats is being developed. Jay and Silent Bob have also appeared in other media. They were in Scream 3 in a scene that crosses over with a scene in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, making the Scream films within the same cinematic universe. They also appeared in an episode of The Flash that Smith directed. This does not just mean that the View Askewaverse is within the Arrowverse, but as shown in the crossover television event Crisis of Infinite Earths, the Arrowverse shares the same multiverse with the 90sl Flash series, the 60s Batman series, Smallville, Lucifer, the Tim Burton Batman films, and the DCEU.

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MILE 72

The Great Outdoors ( 1988 )

Studio: Universal
Director: Howard Deutch

12 Points, 1 List, #14 RVRII

TRAILER

Chester  Ripley wants to take his family on a trip to a lakeside cabin, just as he did when he was a kid. But his family's idyllic vacation is ruined by the unplanned arrival of his sister-in-law and her obnoxious husband Craig who invite themselves and their family along on the trip once learning about it.


This was yet another John Hughes scripted film that was both a disappointment both with critics and at the box office, but would go on to become popular on home video, becoming successful enough that there was both an attempt at a remake starring Kevin Hart, and a sequel starring Aykroyd to be called The Great Outlaws. It was directed by Howard Deutch, who had directed two music videos, Billy Idol's Flesh For Fantasy and Billy Joel's Keeping The Faith when Hughes hired him to direct Pretty in Pink. He then directed Some Kind of Wonderful for Hughes before this film. In a bizarre example of the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon come to life, this movie is connected to Ferris Bueller's Day Off via the John Hughes film She's Having A Baby, witch came out before this film, and in a ending credits cameo introduced John Candy and Dan Aykroyd's  character for this film. She's Having A Baby also had a cameo with Matthew Broderick as Ferris Bueller. She's Having A Baby starred Kevin Bacon. Both Dan Aykroyd and John Candy are in several of the films in this LoC, perhaps more than any actors. Not giving away any films that are still to come up, here are just a few of the road films or travel films either Ackroyd or Candy were in that were not on anyone's lists. Speed Zone, Into The Night, Boris and Natasha, Spies Like Us, Wagons East and Driving Mrs Daisy.

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MILE 71

Dead Man( 1995 )

Studio: Miramax
Director: Jim Jarmusch

12 Points, 1 List, #14 Charles Castle

TRAILER

Accountant William Blake heads to the West from Cleveland for a promised job, and ends up in a shootout that results in the death of the other man, and a bullet in Blake's chest that is slowly killing him. On the run from the law, he is taken under care by a native American named "Nobody" who is a fan of the poet William Blake, and believes the wounded William Blake is one in the same. Together they head towards the Pacific Coast, leaving a trail of dead lawmen and bounty hunters.


This is actually one of my favorite films. One I probably would have put on my own list had I remembered it as a travel film. And yet, I can't do much of a write up on it because there is nothing about it's production online. I am pretty sure most Jarmusch movies are made up as they are being filmed. Although this one, which is one of the only Jarmusch movies with an actual plot, seems to have needed a script.  What little trivia exists is that this was Robert Mitchum's final film. That it was the second movie Neil Young composed the soundtrack for. The first being Where The Buffalo Roam in 1980. And that the character "Nobody" showed up again in another Jarmusch film, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai in 1999, played by the same actor.

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MILE 70

Bolt ( 2008 )

Studio: Walt Disney
Director: Chris Williams & Byron Howard

1 List, 12 Points, #14 Pastor of Muppets

TRAILER

Bolt, a dog performer in a television series where  he plays a dog with super powers, accidentally ends up shipped in a box to New York City, and has to make the 2,000 mile journey back to Los Angels. Only one problem. Bolt thinks he actually does have super powers.

The addition of a cat and hamster who join him on his journey makes this the only example in this LoC of a lost pet epic journey film. And there are a lot of them. Films about pets separated from their owners, usually lost on a camping trip, who make an epic cross country journey back to their home. And the weirdest thing is that this has actually happened several times. There have been countless news stories of lost pets who made epic journeys back to their homes. Movies about pets going on epic journeys goes back to Lassie Come Home ( 1943 ). Based on the novel of the same name, and the first in what would become a successful Lassie franchise with many films and a few television series.  Of course  most of these were about Lassie rescuing some idiot kid that gets himself trapped in the woods somewhere, leaving the perilous journey plot in the first film. Walt Disney himself made one of these movies in 1963 called The Incredible Journey, this time featuring two dogs and a cat. It was remade by Disney Studios in1993 as Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, in response to the growing home video success of the annoying Japanese film The Adventures of Milo and Otis ( American dubbed version released in 1989 ). While both Disney films were live action, the remake had something the original didn't. Voice overs of the pets talking to each other. It lead to the sequel Homeward Bound II: Lost In San Fransisco in 1996. Bolt would seem to have begun as a parody of the lost pet epic journey film, although in Animation this time. It began under the direction of Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, who in 2002 made for Disney the successful Lilo & Stitch. An early version of this film called American Dog was near completion in 2006 when Disney bought Pixar. Seeing as American Dog would use CGI animation much like the Pixar films, Disney asked the Pixar executives to take a look at it and add their expertise. They screened a work print and were horrified.  Sanders and DeBlois had gone overboard with such plot elements as a radioactive cookie-selling Girl Scout zombie serial killer. The Pixar executives made several demands for things too intense for children to be removed, and the directors refused. Disney executives had greenlit their film, knew all the crazy things they had planned to do in it, and  so they refused to remove those elements just because the Pixar guys thought it would frighten children. So, the Pixar guys had them both fired from Disney. That studio's loss was Dreamwork's gain. A rival to Pixar with their own CGI animated films such as the Shrek franchise, they immediately hired Sanders and DeBlois, who in turn created for Dreamworks the How To Train Your Dragon and Crood  franchises. American Dog was handed to two other directors, and after two years, reworked into Bolt.

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MILE 69

Paper Moon ( 1973 )

Studio: Paramount Pictures
Director: Peter Bogdanovich

12 Points, 1 List, #14 Edward J Grug III

TRAILER

During the Great Depression, a con artist  named Moses agrees to take a recently orphaned nine year old girl named Addie to her aunt's house in Missouri, but only  so he can steal the $200 the family of the man who caused the accident that killed Addie's mother had given her.  Addie quickly realizes Moses has taken and spent money meant for her, and threatens to expose him to the police unless he pays her back. He eventually agrees to pay her, and together they pull off small cons as they travel together across the country.

John Huston wanted to adapt the 1971 novel Addie Pray into a feature film, and had Paul Newman and his daughter Nell signed to act as Moses and Addie. However, Paramount decided they wanted Peter Bogdanovich who had just directed the successful comedy What's Up Doc?. Once Huston was off the film, Newman's  quit. Bogdanovich asked Ryan O'Neil, who he had just worked with on What's Up Doc to take over the role of Moses. Ryan asked hit ten year old daughter Tatum to take over the role of Addie. Despite no former acting experience, Tatum delivered a performance good enough to win  the Academy Award for best supporting actress. at the time the youngest to ever win any Academy Award. She suddenly had a film career, with her next movie being The Bad News Bears two years later.

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MILE 68

Detour  ( 1945 )

Studio: PRC Studios
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer

12 Points, 2 Lists, #16 Charles Castle

TRAILER

A piano player named Roberts  hitchhikes to California to propose to his girlfriend. He is picked up by a gambler named Haskell, who is heading to California to bet on a horse. When Haskell dies of a heart attack  , Roberts decides to hide his money and take his identity, car and money. However, he picks up a female hitchhiker who turns out to know Haskell, and decides to blackmail Roberts.

Cant really write anything about this film's production, because what little exists of it's production turned out to be bullshit. The director, Edgar G Ulmer, was known for being a prolific and stylish auteur despite working mostly on extremely cheap low budget films, mostly for the poverty row studios. Ulmer claimed Detour had been shot in six days. however, records show it was more like 14 days, and Actress Ann Savage claimed it was more like a month's worth of shooting. Also, it was reported to have a budget of just $20,000, but later revealed to have been over $100,000. The script was based on the novel of the same name by Martin Goldsmith who proceeded to turn his book into a script, which helped get him into the screen writing business. Moving on to bigger studios after the success of Detour, he would eventually earn an academy award nomination for the script for The Narrow Margin in 1952. Detour was both a critical and financial success, which was unusual for the Poverty Row studios. These were the small studios only capable of producing low budget B films, which included Producers Releasing Corporation ( PRC ), Monogram Pictures and Republic Pictures. Ironically, despite being small  and capable of just low budget films shown in grindhouse theaters, they were the only actual movie studios still within the boarders of Hollywood during Hollywood's so called  Golden Age. The major studios like M.G.M., Paramount and 2oth Century Fox had all moved to larger property in other towns, often just outside of Los Angeles itself, Remembered mostly for cheap westerns, it was amazing any Poverty Row studio could produce something like Detour on such a low budget.

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MILE 67

Million Dollar Mystery ( 1987 )

Studio: De Laurentiis Entertainment Group
Director: Richard Fleischer

13 Points, 1 List, #13 Pastor of Muppets

TRAILER

Wow. This plot seems familiar. A man wanders into a diner, has a heart attack, and just before he dies, tells the people there that he has stollen $4 million dollars, and that the money is hidden in four different locations, each which is o or near a bridge. The  people immediately jump into their cars and race each other to be the first to find the money.

If you think this movie sounds like a rip-off of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. then you are correct. Just Imagin It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World if instead of casting  the best known screen and television comedians in the world, you had a cast of comedians who maybe once did something on cable. Among the actors who are actually familiar in this so called "all star cast" is Rich Hall, who  was a cast member for a year in both Fridays and Saturday Night Live and wrote the Sniglet books, Kevin Pollak who's career had not taken off yet, Eddie Deezen  who got second billing, And Tom Bosley who played the father in Happy Days and got star billing, despite being the guy who drops dead in the first five minutes of the film. Those four are the only real celebrities in this movie. Very little effort seems to have been mad casting this film, or finding a decent writer. Rudy De Luca was a co-writer for some of Mel Brooks lesser films, and had previously written the scripts for two of the worst comedies of the 80s, Caveman and Transylvania 6-5000. It did have a decent director. A very decent director. Richard Fleischer began his career during Hollywood's Golden Age, and among his film credits were 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Doctor Dolittle, Fantastic Voyage, Tora! Tora! Tora! and Soylen Green. For the past few years he had been working for Dino De Laurentiis production company  on such films as Amityville 3D, Conan the Destroyer and Red Sonja. This movie finally drove him to retirement. The premise came from production company owner Dino De Laurentiis, who claimed he was inspired by seeing  a line in front of a store for lottery tickets, but more likely came from the direct to video movie Treasure! In Search of the Golden Horse, a rather lame movie about a girl trying to fid a golden horse statue someone stole form her room. The producer of that movie claimed it contained clues to where an actual golden horse statue was hidden somewhere in the United States. And if the clues in the movie were not enough, there was also a story book you could buy with additional clues. No one ever found the horse, and  the producer was accused of lying about a hidden horse, although he maintained the horse was so well hidden that no one found it by the deadline of 1989. Using a similar trick, De Laurentiis wanted to do a film which had clues to an actual treasure. During the film only three of the four hidden stashes of million dollars is found, and the audience needs to put the clues together to find the fourth million dollars, which is hidden somewhere in America in a Glad garbage bag. Glad was involved with the film, as it ends with one of the characters breaking the fourth wall and  informing the audience that the clues could actually be found in specially marked bags of Glad. Yep, you didn't need to see this film in order to find the million. It also explains how they even got Tom Bosley. At the time he was the pitchman for Some movie reviewers even published the clues found on a card inside of the bags so no one would need to sit through such a bad film, which included "The answer is right in front of your face" and "The tired and poor will really need this".


Hey, wait a second. Right in front of your face? Tired and poor? And a bridge could also mean....
HOLY SHIT! I know where the bag of million dollars is!, I'm going to be rich! And I didn't even have to see this stupid film! Screw you guys! I don't have to do this anymore! I'm going to be a millionaire! Goodbye suckers! I'm off to find a million dollars!....................................

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...............um.....sorry about that. Turns out someone did figure out the clues already. In fact, a few thousand people guess the clues before opening day via the card in Glad products. So the winner was decided by a lottery. A 14 year old girl named Alesia Lenae Jones. Also, if you read the clue card had in bold letters a disclaimer that said that the million was not actually hidden anywhere in the country, but rather contestants were supposed to guess the location and win the prize. Glad included the disclaimer in response to the nationwide damage caused by Treasure! In Search of the Golden Horse as treasure hunters everywhere dug holes, toppled statues  and smashed walls where they thought the horse may be hidden. I probably should have read the disclaimer before I took that boat to Liberty Island.  The clues were that the  location was the bridge of the nose of the Statue of Liberty. So if you are alarmed when you see in the news that some vandal has just smashed a hole in the nose of the Statue of Liberty, just remember it wasn't entirely my fault. Tom Bosely is mostly to blame.  De Laurentiis thought that a movie with clues to a million dollar give-a-way would make the film a box office hit. Instead, it earned barely less than a million. And that money immediately went to pay off Alesia Lenae Jones. The budget was $10 million, which ruined the  De Laurentiis production company and put it out of business for good. Once again, sorry about what I said earlier when I thought I had just won a million dollars. I guess it is back to the LoC.

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MILE 66

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 ( 2022 )

Studio: Paramount Pictures
Director: Jeff Fowler

13 Points, 1 List, #13 Pac-Man

TRAILER

Sonic, a hedgehog that runs really fast, has to find a mystical emerald McGuffin before the villainous Dr. Robotnik gets his hands on it. And I don't know... runs down the street collecting golden hoops?  I only remember the game.

I am not sure why this film made the LoC and not the first movie. Was it a case of where the sequel was much better than the first film, like with Godfather Part II? Was there no road in the first movie disqualifying it for his LoC? Or was this a case of being forced to see it in a theater because the kids wanted to see it, thinking "Hey, that was  surprisingly entertaining.", but then not bothering to see the first film? Whatever the reason, this was on someone's list, and not the first movie. Not really anything to say about the production. They basically adapted a video game to film and hied Jim Carrey to play the villain. The director has only directed this and the first Sonic film. To of the screen writers have only worked on direct to video films, including those later National Lampoon films. The third writer, John Wittington, co-wrote scripts for the Lego movies before this. Sonic the Hedgehog originated as a home video game for the Sega Genisis to prove it's superiority to the NES as it was capable of rendering backgrounds faster , allowing for a character that ran really fast. It soon became Saga's mascot. I have never seen the Sonic films myself. All I know of them was that fans of the video games were complaining about the CGI design of Sonic, and were especially harsh about it's teeth. I may get these films as they are possibly considered superhero films, and would belong in my collection. Every now and then they appear on Wikipedia's superhero movie list, and are removed from that list by moderators within a week.

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MILE 65

Trafic( 1971 )

Studio: Variety Distribution
Director: Jacques Tati

13 Points, 1 List, #13 Stethacantus

TRAILER

Mr. Hulot is a designer of a gadget filled camper car which his company wants him to take to the auto show in Amsterdam.

Comedian Jacques Tati created the Mr. Hulot character in 1953 for the film Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot a.k.a. Mr. Hulot's Holiday, His previous film, Jour de fête, featured Tati as a mailman in a small village named François. When Jour de fête was a success, everyone expected Tati to make another film featuring his François character. However, Tati insisted that he had told the story of François. In fact, he had told the story twice as Jour de fête was a remake of the short L'École des facteurs, extended to feature length by adding the plot of the village hosting a traveling fair. Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot followed a group of vacationers at a seaside resort, and Hullot was the disruptive guest who's bumbling caused havoc. Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot was a bigger success. Unlike the mailman character, Hulot was an everyman who's story had not been completed in a single film. So he made a second film with Hulot, the touching Mon Oncle which won him the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. He began work on Film Tati No. 4, the working title for a script about a traveling magician who adopts a impoverished teenage girl. Quite possibly inspired by Carlie Chaplin's Limelight, Film Tati No. 4 was to star his own daughter as the girl the magician adopts. It was also to be a break from his Hulot character, introducing a third character called The Illusionist. However, he came up with a new idea for a film about tourists visiting Paris only to end up  being shuffled to modern markets and clubs which were identical to ones all over the world instead of to Parisian landmarks like The Eiffel Tower. It was Tati's comment on globalization, where countries we gradually loosing their unique identities to modernization. Film Tati No. 4 was abandoned , and the tourist film was expanded to be about a 24 hour period in a modern section of the city of Paris, with many other characters in addition to the tourists. One of those characters was Mr. Hulot. Unable to shut down a section of Paris for what would be a several month shoot, Tati decided to build a massive set that would be several city blocks, as well as the interiors of various buildings. Eventually released as the movie Playtime, the production cost Tati and his investors a fortune. It ended up bombing, and Tati not only lost all of hi money, but ended up millions in debt.

Four years later, and eager to get out of debt, he agreed to do a television movie for Italy, which was given a theatrical release when the character of the car designer became Mr. Hulot. Trafic would become the final film appearance of Mr. Hulot. He would make another television film for Swedish television that was also eventually given a theatrical release called Parade ( 1973 ) where he played himself performing his comedy routines in front of a audience. in 1982 Tati was working on yet another film to be called Confusion which was to feature the pop group Sparks, and was to open with Mr. Hulot getting electrocuted during a live television show.  However, he died of a pulmonary embolism shortly after the script was completed.

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MILE 64

It Happened One Night ( 1934 )

Studio: Columbia Pictures
Director: Frank Capra

13 Points, 1 List, #13 Edward J Grug III

TRAILER

A heiress on the run from her father who wants to break her up with her intended husband, ends up on a bus with a reporter who blackmails her into giving him an exclusive on her story. The bus breaks down and they end up hitchhiking together across country. And since this is a romantic comedy, you can guess what happens next.

Samuel Hopkins Adams was an investigative reporter known as a Muckraker who exposed business corruption at the turn of the  Century. His article The Great American Fraud exposed that the pharmaceutical industry had several medicines on the market that not only didn't  do what they  claimed they did, but were harming the patients who used them. The article lead directly to the formation of The Food and Drug Administration ( the FDA ).  In his spare time, Adams wrote fiction. Nine movies between 1925 and 1946 were based on his stories. It Happened One Night was based on one of his short stories Night Bus. It became the first motion picture to sweep all the major categories at the Academy Awards, winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay. But it is known today for what has become the single most remembered scene in motion picture history. While hitchhiking, Claudette Colbert is able to get a car to stop by lifting her skirt and exposing her leg. Initially Colbert refused to do the scene, saying it was unladylike. However, when director Capra attempted to do the scene anyway with a body double, Colbert became outraged, and with a change of mind, agreed to do the scene.

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MILE 63

Cars ( 2006 )

Studio: Pixar / Disney
Director: John Lasseter

13 Points, 2 Lists, #14 Pac-Man

TRAILER

On his way to compete in an important race, racecar  Lightning McQueen is arrested in a small town and ordered to repair a road he had damaged.

The trouble with doing a writeup for these Pixar cartoons is that they have no real production history. They all have the same writers, and are original stories, meaning there is no book they were based on. Director John Lasseter gave various inspirations for the script, but it seems to actually be heavily inspired by the classic Tex Avery cartoon One Cab's Family. Since I can't find anything on this film's production worth writing here, perhaps I should talk about some of the other sentient vehicle films that could have made someone's list but did not, aside from the sequels to this film. Disney had another popular racing car prior to Lightning McQueen called Herbie the Love Bug who has been in seven live action films to date, beginning with The Love Bug in 1968, and continuing with Herbie Rides Again ( 1974 ), Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo ( 1977 ), Herbie Goes Bananas ( 1980 ), Disney's The Love Bug ( 1997 ) and Herbie: Fully Loaded ( 2005 ).  Not Disney but Disneyesque was the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, released the same year as the first Herbie film. And then there was the one shot television film Knight Rider 2000 which was meant to be a pilot for an Knight Rider reboot series that never happened. Moving on from hero cars to evil cars, thee was the 1977 horror film The Car about an evil hell possessed driverless car that travels the roads of California running people over. Another killer devil car was Christine ( 1983 ), directed by John Carpenter and based on a Steven King novel. Steven King himself  directed Maximum Overdrive ( 1986 ) about killer trucks taking over Earth. And if an entire vehicle is too much, then there is the French horror film Rubber ( 2020 ) about a tire that rolls around the streets  causing people to explode with its psychic powers.  I guess I should also mention The Transformer movies, although they are robots, not sentient vehicles, and they are very loosely connected to road movies as they are not on the road that much. I should also probably mention the part robot-part car-part killing machine called Crimebuster, which was the highlight of the otherwise lackluster Andy Kaufman comedy Heartbeeps, which fully qualifies as a road film.

[Pak-Man]

I am not sure why this film made the LoC and not the first movie.

And as the person who submitted the list, neither am I. It definitely qualifies, but for some reason when I was putting it together, I remembered Sonic 2 and just moved on, completely forgetting that the first one qualified as well.

[Edward J Grug III]

We watched Traffic quite recently - well after the list was submitted. It might well have made it if I'd made it later.