This week's Trailers From Hell movies are about cars, in one fashion or another. We do not recommend drinking and driving - of course - but, once you are home, unscrew the cap on something mechanical for your viewing pleasure. You can take it out of the brown paper bag first, but don't bother with a glass.
1976's Car Wash was reportedly filmed at an actual car wash in L.A.'s Westlake neighborhood, at Rampart and 6th, a street corner now populated by strip malls, laundromats and a HoHo Chicken. There's a 7-Eleven nearby, where you can probably find a suitable "bum wine" to go with the impoverished motif of the film. However, if you are trying to steer clear of pop bottles, here's a wine for your dirty car. Dirty and Rowdy Wines makes a Petite Sirah - a powerful grape which is strong enough to make a great bum wine, by the way, if it weren't so expensive.
The 1977 horror film, The Car, made a villain of a '71 Lincoln Continental - six years before Stephen King would do the same with a '58 Plymouth Fury. The Car is a mean and murderous machine, but what really sets off the CHP is that it has no plates and the windows are tinted too dark. The seemingly driverless car, for some reason, has it in for the little hick town that apparently makes dust for export to the rest of the world. In the trailer, the car does more horn honking than the second person in line when the light turns green. In the end, the car gets its comeuppance from a ruse that would make Wyle E. Coyote green with envy. Continental Wines is a New York liquor store, and the many Lincoln wines are all midwestern bottles with a log cabin on the label. To get the proper classic car connection for this film, Los Angeles car buff Peter Mullin makes wines from his family vineyard in Italy. The bottles are adorned with vintage automobiles that look a lot less dangerous than the '71 Lincoln.
The star car in 1977's Grand Theft Auto is a Rolls Royce, which takes the sort of beating throughout the film that is usually reserved for a demolition derby. Uh, spoiler alert … there is a demolition derby. The Rolls carries a young couple as they elope to Las Vegas, where there will be plenty of time for wine. There are now more Master Sommeliers in Sin City than in any other city in the world, so getting a recommendation shouldn't be a problem. Ordering that wine in a restaurant, as someone who looks a lot like Opie, means you'd better have your ID with you. For the Rolls Royce, only a Dom Perignon Champagne will do. At least at first. As the wear and tear on the vehicle mounts, you'll be looking for something cheap, in a box. Nowadays people know GTA as a game, and in the recent edition, GTA V, there is a virtual wine called Costa Del Perro - coast of the dog - but you can only have that wine virtually, as a player in the game. There is a Spanish Rueda wine called El Perro Verde - the green dog - but that seems like straying too far away. A tip of the headset to the late L.A. legend The Real Don Steele, who has a role in the movie as - wait for it - a radio DJ.
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