SuperVan (1977)

'Supervan' is one of the most jaw droppingly bad movies I've ever seen, and I mean that, more then once my jaw dropped. Not that 'Supervan' isn't without its fascinations, like a car or should I say van accident on the side of the road. Released months before 'Smokey and the Bandit' somehow 'Supervan' knew that it wanted to be that movie, there are CB radios, bumbling cops, a girl in trouble off the side of the road, and a single minded antagonist. Clint Morgan (Mark Schneider) is on his way to "The Second Annual Non-National Bicentennial Van Freakout" held around Halloween time near St. Joseph, Missouri and sponsored by Mid-American Motors. On the way he saves Karen (Katie Saylor) from some biker rapists and in process of so doing his beloved van "The Sea Witch" is chomped up in a car compactor. Clint then borrows the experimental proto-type 'Supervan' from his friend Bosley, a rouge employee of Mid-American Motors, and enters the solar powered, lazar equipped vehicle in "The Freakout" were he competes in competitions such as doing figure eights and seeing how far one's van can get up a steep and muddy incline.

Turns out Karen's father is T. B. Trenton (Morgan Woodward) the president of Mid-American Motors who wants to suppress the Supervan so that he can keep selling gas guzzlers to the van loving public. 'Supervan' was described in the Amazon summery as a "vansploitation classic" which implies the existence of other "vansploitation films", I thought this was a put on but turns out that "vansploitation" was a thing, it has it's own Wikipedia page, examples include the original 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' and an early Danny DeVeito film called 'The Van'. The movie hasn't much of a plot so chunks of time are devoted to various side characters, and a quasi cinema verta style examination of what I take to have been some real kind of van gathering. The movie is surprisingly  sexual featuring the requisite 1970's T&A, a wet T-shirt contest, a joke about pedophilia, and some extremely stereotypical homosexuals. The movie ends with a whip cream fight that is interrupted when someone broadcasts Mr. Trenton's sexual dalliance with a preacher's wife over the VA system at the RV park where 'The Freakout' is being held.

The extreme 70'sness and the utter strangeness of 'Supervan' frankly made it fascinating, I will have to rewatch. In fact I need to find a way to get ahold of the script, I want to read it to confirm that its real. The soundtrack, loaded with songs about van's is also surprisingly catchy. A 4 star 1 star movie.