Grand Theft Auto (1977)

Grand Theft Auto (USA, 1977) 84 min color DIR: Ron Howard. PROD: Jon Davison. SCR: Rance Howard, Ron Howard. MUSIC: Peter Ivers. EDIT: Joe Dante. DOP: Gary Graver. CAST: Ron Howard, Nancy Morgan, Marion Ross, Peter Isacksen, Don Steele, Clint Howard. (New World Pictures)

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Despite being a popular actor from American Graffiti and Happy Days, and studying directing at the USC film school, Ron Howard couldn’t get a directing job. Howard surely realized that his boyish looks weren’t going to last him forever, but studios were understandably wary of letting the boy best known as “Opie” become a director. Roger Corman, however, saw that billing Howard as a director on a follow-up to the car-crash hit Eat My Dust! (in which Howard acted but did not direct) could only boost ticket sales. So what if this neophyte can’t hold a camera to save his life – people will line up anyway.

Considering the fact that Grand Theft Auto was Ron Howard’s directorial debut, the finished product is a surprising amount of fun. It’s the fast-moving tale of two young lovers (Howard and Nancy Morgan) who head to Las Vegas in Morgan’s father’s Rolls Royce to elope. Pretty soon, faced with an attractive reward, a variety of rather kooky characters chase after the couple. Many car wrecks ensue, the Rolls Royce among them.

It’s hard not to squirm during some of Howard’s sexually suggestive dialogue, but in general, Grand Theft Auto is a funny and entertaining chase comedy in the It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World vein. Actually, it may be the perfect date movie, with romance for the girls and car crashes for the boys. Like Eat My Dust!, it was a box office hit, and its TV rights were sold to CBS for a then-whopping $1 million. “That makes your 7 ½ % look pretty good,” said Corman to Howard, “and my 92% look goddamn good!”

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Originally published in The Roger Corman Scrapbook.