The Wrecker (play)
The Wrecker is a British play, written in 1924 by Arnold Ridley and Bernard Merivale, and filmed in 1928-29.[1][2] Much later Ridley played Private Godfrey in Dad's Army.[3]
The play is about an old engine driver who thinks his engine is malevolent and self-aware.[4] The finale is a huge train wreck using elaborate stage special-effects as per The Ghost Train, an earlier and more famous play by Ridley. The play ran for 165 performances at St. Martin's Lane Theatre.
The play was adapted as a film under the same title released in 1929.[5] It featured a spectacular crash between a passenger train and a Foden steam lorry stuck on a level crossing. The scene was filmed at Herriard on the Basingstoke and Alton Light Railway, in one take, and destroyed both the steam wagon and the SECR F1 Class locomotive.[6]
See also
- The Ghost Train, the earlier 1923 play by Arnold Ridley
- "You Drive," a 1964 episode of The Twilight Zone
- My Mother the Car, a 1965 television sitcom series about a man whose mother has been reincarnated as a dilapidated "1928 Porter touring car"
- The Love Bug, a 1968 comedy film about an anthropomorphic 1963 Volkswagen racing Beetle
- Killdozer!, a 1974 made-for-TV horror movie based on a short story of the same name by Theodore Sturgeon
- The Car, a 1977 film about an anthropomorphic customized 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III
- The Hearse, a 1980 horror movie about a possessed hearse
- Christine, a 1983 novel by Stephen King about an anthropomorphic 1958 Plymouth Fury
- Christine, the 1983 horror film based on the King novel
- Nightmares, a 1983 movie made up of four separate story segments; the third segment, "The Benediction", stars Lance Henriksen who plays a traveling priest attacked on the highway by a demonic 4x4
- Maximum Overdrive, a 1986 horror movie; and Trucks, a 1997 made-for-TV remake film; both based on the short story Trucks by Stephen King
- The Wraith, a 1986 film starring Charlie Sheen who plays a man murdered by a gang of car thieves who gets revenge upon his killers by returning as a phantom car and driver set out to eliminate them
- From a Buick 8, a 2002 novel by Stephen King about a deadly 1954 Buick Roadmaster
- Phantom Racer, a 2009 SyFy movie about a possessed race car
References
- ↑ "Blood on the Stage, 1925-1950". google.co.uk.
- ↑ "The Wrecker (1929)". BFI.
- ↑ "Dad's Army (1971) - BFI". BFI.
- ↑ Christopher Fowler (21 May 2011). "Invisible Ink: No 78 - Arnold Ridley". The Independent.
- ↑ Hal Erickson. "The Wrecker (1929) - - Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related - AllMovie". AllMovie.
- ↑ Mitchell, Vic; Smith, Keith (1984). Branch Lines to Alton. Midhurst, West Sussex: Middleton Press. ISBN 0906520118.