The Last Chase
| The Last Chase | |
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Theatrical poster
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| Directed by | Martyn Burke |
| Produced by |
Martyn Burke Gene Slott Fran Rosati William Duffy |
| Written by | A. Roy Moore C.R. O'Christopher |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Gil Melle |
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Production
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| Distributed by | Crown International Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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101 minutes |
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| Language | English |
The Last Chase is a 1981 Canadian-American dystopian science fiction film starring Lee Majors, Burgess Meredith and Chris Makepeace, and directed by Martyn Burke. It was produced by Argosy Films.
At an unspecified future time, the United States is a police state. A substantial percentage of the population was wiped out by a devastating viral pandemic twenty years previously. Amidst the resulting chaos and general panic, democracy collapsed and a totalitarian cabal seized power. After moving the seat of government to Boston, the new dictatorship outlawed ownership and use of all automobiles, boats, and aircraft, on the pretext (later proven false) that an even bigger crisis, the exhaustion of fossil fuel supplies, was imminent. The loss of other personal freedoms followed, and surveillance cameras now monitor private citizens' every move.
In Boston, Franklyn Hart (Majors), a former race car driver who lost his family to the plague, is a spokesman for the mass transit system. Publicly, he deplores the selfishness of private vehicle ownership and exalts the virtues of public transportation; privately, he is barely able to contain his contempt for the oppressive, autocratic bureaucracy and the dismal party line that he is compelled to promote.
Years before, as private vehicles were being confiscated, Hart sequestered his race car—an orange Porsche roadster—in a secret compartment beneath his basement. Over the ensuing years he has gradually restored it to drivable condition, raiding long-abandoned junkyards in the dead of night for parts. His goal is to drive across the country to "Free California", an independent territory that has broken away from the rest of totalitarian America. Young electronics whiz Ring McCarthy (Makepeace) deduces Hart's plan, and Hart reluctantly agrees to bring him along on his perilous journey.
The ubiquitous surveillance system catches Hart vaulting a junkyard fence; Hart and McCarthy flee Boston in the roadster as police close in. Although gasoline has not been sold for twenty years, Hart has access to a virtually inexhaustible supply, the few inches of residual fuel remaining at the bottom of subterranean storage tanks in every abandoned gas station in the country. He uses a portable hand pump to refuel from these tanks as necessary.
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Wikipedia