Smash Up On Interstate 5 – 1976
Director
John Lewellyn Moxey

Writers
Robert Presnell Jr
Eugene Price,
Trevor Dudley Smith – Novel – Expressway

Starring
Sian Barbara Allen
Jeff Chamberlain
Robert Conrad
Bonnie Ebsen
Buddy Ebsen
Herb Edelman
David Groh
Barry Hamilton
Harriet Hilliard
Scott Jacoby
Tommy Lee Jones
Joe Kapp
Sue Lyon
Vera Miles
Donna Mills
Terry Moore
David Nelson
George O’Hanlon
Joel Parks

Review by Noel Baily

Interesting little time capsule
Inarguably dated now, as evidenced by the vehicles themselves, the flares, hair-do’s and music, SMASH UP ON INTERSTATE 5 is a reasonably faithful reconstruction (disaster-movie style) of the events leading up to the true-life pile up not so many years earlier.

Better than average script give the cast of well known actors and actresses something to work with. Robert Conrad, still looking the part of Jim West plays the police patrol officer most closely involved in the fifty car collision. Tommy Lee Jones, also a cop, looks like a youthful long haired refugee from WOODSTOCK and Buddy Ebsen is well, Buddy Ebsen, as always!

The film does not attempt to sensationalise the events, merely presenting them as is, albeit with considerable literary license one suspects. The actual collision is quite well done for its day, showed in stop-frame at the beginning and in full gory detail at the conclusion. I have this film in our library and decided to compile this review having watched it this evening, the first time in ten years or so. An absolute time-capsule!

Titled COLLISION COURSE in Australia, and several European countries.