'Used Cars' At 40: How The Cynical Black Comedy Became A Preview Of The Reagan Era

Robert Zemeckis’ “Used Cars” opens with a slow, patient push-in on a man tinkering around under the dashboard of a used car, eventually achieving the goal of rolling back its odometer. He’s whistling “Hail to the Chief” as he works; the opening title music that follows is a rousing rendition of “Stars and Stripes Forever.” The messaging here is not subtle: America, circa 1980, is a used car lot. Appropriately enough, at the year’s end, it would elect a used car salesman President.

“Used Cars,” which was released forty years ago this week, is a fascinating object in film history – a way station of sorts for its director, its writer, and its star. It was Zemeckis’ sophomore directorial effort, following 1978’s “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”; he co-wrote both films with his partner Bob Gale, and the pair also penned Steven Spielberg’s 1979 bomb “1941.” But Spielberg didn’t hold that against them; he was a longtime booster of the pair, serving as executive producer for “Hand” and “Used Cars” (on the latter, he’s credited alongside John Milius, who co-wrote the story for “1941”). Five years later, Zemeckis, Gale, and Spielberg would reteam for “Back to the Future,” the film that finally allowed Zemeckis and Gale to make their own names.

But until then, it felt like the “Jaws” director was holding his friends aloft; “1941” was a mess of its own, but even “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and “Used Cars,” which received mostly positive notices, failed to connect with audiences. From our perspective, particularly when compared with their later hits, it’s not hard to see why. “Back to the Future,” while terrific, is firmly rooted in the idealistic nostalgia of the Reagan era; Zemeckis’s later “Forrest Gump” stakes a mostly conservative stance on America’s past.

“Used Cars,” on the other hand, is deeply cynical in its worldview, and pitch-black in its comedy. Its characters are crass, rude, and nasty; much of its plot is motivated by corpse disposal. Jack Warden stars in a dual role as the twin Fuchs brothers, whose used car lots are located directly across the street from each other, and whose employees spend their days plotting various dirty tricks to steal the other’s customers and one-up their promotions. Rudy Russo (Kurt Russell) works for Luke Fuchs, the gentler of the two brothers, but Rudy makes up for Luke’s kindness by telling any lie and making any promise to move a vehicle.

Roy Fuchs, across the way, is as ruthless as Luke is decent, and wants his brother dead so he can get his hands on his lot and life insurance money. So Roy hires a stunt driver to take Luke out on a harrowing “test drive,” inflaming his brother’s heart condition and killing him. (When Luke returns to the lot, Rudy is trying to pull the old “My boss is gonna have a stroke” bit with a customer – and Luke bursts in, doing just that.) To keep Roy’s hands off the lot, Rudy and his co-workers bury Luke’s body themselves, claiming he’s gone off to Florida for a vacation.

And with that, the picture is off and running. The overall sense of chaos can overwhelm the fact that Gale and Zemeckis wrote a tightly constructed, clockwork screenplay. It’s staged like a shaggy, undisciplined screw-off comedy in the mold of “Caddyshack” or “The Blues Brothers” (which beat it to theaters by a month and also culminates in a giant car chase). But in contrast to those loosey-goosey productions, all the pieces here fit, and smash together in the film’s cacklingly ingenious conclusion.

So why wasn’t “Used Cars” the kind of giant hit that would later define its director and his co-writer? Part of it is a question of approach; though plenty funny and clever, it is also, like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and (especially) “1941,” kind of exhausting. The script and staging are so big and broad and noisy that after a while, it feels like they’re aiming less to make you laugh than beat you into submission; Zemeckis and Gale would eventually learn to tame that style and make it go down smoother.

But in retrospect, its cheerful sleaziness and unapologetic amorality may have been its ultimate undoing. It was released in 1980, but its sensibility is firmly in the ‘70s. Everybody in it is a scumbag, except for Luke – who dies a few minutes in, and is subsequently buried, excavated, and burnt to a crisp – and his long-lost daughter, who by the end of the film has learned to lie and cheat like the rest of the boys. (It must be noted that Russell, whom we’re catching in the midst of his turn from rosy-cheeked Disney teen to John Carpenter’s go-to grizzled lead, is having a great time playing an absolute sonofabitch.)

In Reagan’s America, however, such implicit sneering at the “working class” was no longer allowed, and their dirty tricks would not be cheered – even as the administration’s rampant deregulation did far more damage. In fact, in one fascinating scene, Zemeckis and Gale seem to predict this turning tide, when Roy airs a TV spot shaming Rudy and company as smut merchants, the kind of chest-thumping puritanism that the Moral Majority would use as political capital throughout the decade.

Zemeckis and Gale learned their lesson. The commercial failure of “Used Cars” nearly ended their careers; Zemeckis wouldn’t direct again for four years when he had a surprise hit with “Romancing the Stone.” That film’s success – and the increasingly untouchable value of the Spielberg name – finally put “Back to the Future” in front of cameras the following year, with Zemeckis directing and co-writing with Gale, and Spielberg again credited as executive producer. The films have some common elements – the specter of Middle Eastern terrorists, a big climax hinging on automobile speeds and split-second timing, great dogs in supporting roles.

But ultimately, it’s a very different kind of movie: less manic and more optimistic, full of characters you like and problems they can solve. And one of its biggest laughs comes when Marty McFly tells 1955-era Doc Brown that Ronald Reagan is President of the United States in 1985. Brown is incredulous; how could that TV pitchman possibly be President?