The Love Bug

A race car driver becomes a champion with a Volkswagen Beetle with a mind of its own.

• Director: Robert Stevenson
• Genre:Comedy / Family / Fantasy / Sport
• Runtime:103 minutes

Cast

Dean Jones : Jim Douglas Michele Lee : Carole Bennett David Tomlinson : Peter ThorndykeBuddy Hackett : Tennessee Steinmetz Joe Flynn : Havershaw

Jim Douglas is a down-on-his luck racing driver, reduced to competing in demolition derby races against drivers half his age. Jim lives in an old fire house overlooking San Francisco Bay with his friend and mechanic, Tennessee Steinmetz, a jolly Brooklynite who constantly extols the virtues of spiritual enlightenment, having spent time amongst Buddhist monks in Tibet, and builds ‘art’ from car parts. After yet another race ends in a crash (and Tennessee turns his Edsel into a sculpture), Jim finds himself without a car and heads into town in search of some cheap wheels. He is enticed into an upmarket European car showroom after setting eyes on an attractive sales assistant, Carole. Jim witnesses the dealership’s British owner, Peter Thorndyke, being unneccessarily abusive towards a white Volkswagen Beetle that rolls into the showroom, and defends the car’s honour, much to Thorndyke’s displeasure. The following morning Jim is shocked to find that the Beetle is parked outside his house and that Thorndyke is pressing charges for theft. A heated argument between Jim and Thorndyke is settled when Carole persuades Thorndyke to drop the charges if Jim buys the car on a system of monthly payments.

Jim soon finds the car is prone to going completely out of his control and believes Thorndyke has conned him. Tennessee, however, believes certain inanimate objects to have hearts and minds of their own and tries to befriend the car, naming it Herbie. Jim’s feelings about his new acquisition soon improve when it appears Herbie is intent on bringing him and Carole together. He also discovers Herbie to have an incredible turn of speed for a car of his size and decides to take him racing. After watching Jim and Herbie win their first race together, Thorndyke, himself a major force on the local racing scene, offers to cancel the remaining payments Jim owes on Herbie if Jim can win a race that they will both be competing in at Riverside later that month. Jim accepts, and despite Thorndyke’s underhanded tactics, he and Herbie take victory. Over the next few months they go on to become the toast of the Californian racing circuit, while Thorndyke suffers increasingly humiliating defeats. Thorndyke finally snaps, and persuades Carole to take Jim out on a date while he sneaks round to Jim’s house. After getting Tennessee drunk on his own Irish coffee recipe, Thorndyke proceeds to tip the remainder of the coffee into Herbie’s engine. At the following day’s race, an apparently drunk Herbie shudders to a halt while Thorndyke blasts to victory. Read more