10 Crazy Movie Car Explosions

Image via Complex Original

The first car exploded on celluloid in 1914's The Great Adventures of Slipshod and Angus. Alright, that's not the title of an actual movie. But movie car explosions have become so routine that they may as well have been happening on film for the better part of 100 years. Sometimes cars explode in movies for no apparent reason at all. Other times, you can blame the mob. What you can't blame is us, because we're setting you up with the absolute greatest movie car explosions of all time. Feel the burn. 

RELATED: 50 Cool Cars Seen in Movies

10. The Godfather (1972)

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It's The Godfather, and we get that, but c'mon—this clip is pretty damn hilarious out of context.

9. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

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Though Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2's "Garbage Day" is generally acknowledged as the most absurd audio/visual creation in the annals of '80s horror, this explosion from the same film is a strong candidate for the No. 2 spot. Witness the graceful ballet of a car's radiator spewing smoke after receiving a bullet to the grill, then flipping over after colliding with some convenient manhole construction, and finally coming to rest on all four tires. Then it blows up. It blows up real good.

8. Goldfinger (1964)

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Something of a gold standard for car explosions that logic can't account for, the flame-bursting in Goldfinger involves a car exploding just before it collides with anything substantial. Every man a king, every car a Pinto.

7. Speed (1994)

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Though Speed's most eye-rolling moment is, without question, the great leap across the unfinished highway gap, the sight of the bus colliding with a 747 measures high on the charts, too. In a more perfect world, Sandra Bullock's career would've been on the bus as it immolated, leaving us to grow old in a world without The Blind Side. Which is terrible.

6. Ronin (1998)

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Sometimes cars explode when driven off a highway by a more aggressive driver, and sometimes they explode after Bobby De Niro climbs through the sunroof toting a rocket launcher.

5. Casino (1995)

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Casino is a terrible movie. Even the excellence of a Scorsese quick-cut montage set to the Stones' "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" is savagely eclipsed by Sharon Stone, who leaves teeth-marks around the edges of the screen, bitterly chewing the scenery apart. There are plenty of other missteps in this utterly unnecessary snore-fest, and we should have seen all of them coming from the start; Casino opens with an explosion that sends a dummy flying through interminable shots of blooming fire. It's silly, but memorable.

4. Death Wish 3 (1985)

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In the distant future, when we've developed technology that makes cars obsolete, entire generations of people will be convinced that all cars must've been Pintos. And it's all thanks to films like Death Wish 3. Jump ahead in this video to 1:03:47 for impossible fire.

3. Invasion U.S.A. (1995)

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For instant ridiculousness, just add Chuck Norris. This is the filmmaking equivalent of a mathematical proof.

2. Ong Bak (2003)

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Do you know what a tuk-tuk is? If you watch this scene from the new Thai action classic Ong Bak, you'll get an education in the auto rickshaws that are common in so many Eastern, developing countries. These three-wheeled vehicles, more go-cart than car, explode massively after a lengthy chase between the film's hero and some anonymous villains.

1. Vanishing Point (1993)

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That this film, in some ways the prototypical muscle car movie, is a cult classic is obvious from its Wikipedia page plot summary. Here are a few gems: "Kowalski is a...Vietnam War veteran...Haunted by the surfing death of his girlfriend, he now thrives on adrenaline." "A blind African-American disc jockey, Super Soul, listens to the police radio frequency and encourages Kowalski to evade the police. Super Soul seems to understand Kowalski." "Near the California state line, Kowalski is helped by a hippie biker, Angel, who gives him pills to help him stay awake."

Convinced?

The film is famous for its chases, but the ending offers an incredible example of a ridiculous car explosion. Spoiler alert! At the film's end, Kowalski suicides by driving his car into a police roadblock made up of two bulldozers. Death by explosion via great speed and bulldozers makes this ridiculous (in an awesome way), but for the truly ridiculous aspect you'll need to put this climax in slow motion. If you look closely, you'll see that, in the final seconds, the crashed car is a 1967 Chevy Camaro, not the 1970 Dodge Challenger the film has so romanticized. Oops.