7 Horror Movies With Homicidal Cars And Trucks To Add To Your Halloween Watch List

Motortion Films/Shutterstock

It's that time of year again. Temperatures are dropping in the northern hemisphere, the leaves are falling off the trees, and RVers are breaking out their four-season campers to prepare for what is shaping up to be a hectic El Niño winter. You can also find all your fall favorites, from PSLs to those Oreos with the orange filling that definitely tastes different than the normal filling. But all of that fall coziness is technically just performative autumn if you don't balance it out with the appropriate number of scary movies to make your skin crawl.

Here at Jalopnik, we don't settle for just any old horror movies, either. No, we like to keep things on theme 365 days a year, and that's why our October is going to be packed to the brim with the many delightful scary movies that feature cars and trucks as central antagonists, frightening foes, and ruthless killers. There might be more of them than you would have guessed, and they range from all-time classics to so brutally corny that you can't help but love them.

In the run-up to Halloween, you'll find my TV tuned to films like Stephen King's "Maximum Overdrive," John Carpenter's "Christine," and Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof." There are honestly so many horror movies that center around road vehicles, though, that it can be hard to pick a favorite. What killer car movies are you most excited about watching and rewatching this Halloween? We all know what Rivian is watching this year, seeing the brand's annual Halloween mode beautifully recreate Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters.

Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images

John Carpenter is a name you should know, if you don't already. He's one of the most massively successful filmmakers of the last century, and his career spans over 50 of those years at this point. If his name doesn't ring a bell, he's the mind behind the oh-so-memeable "They Live" (1988) starring Roddy Piper and the haunting 1982 film "The Thing," starring Kurt Russel and Wilford Brimley. He also wrote and directed 1978's "Halloween," the horror classic that follows the murderous story of Michael Myers and which has spawned a massive movie franchise. Though one automotive mistake kind of ruins "Halloween" for many enthusiasts.

While it hasn't seen the widespread and continued success of "Halloween," Carpenter also directed one of our favorite disturbing and scary car movies. "Christine" came out in 1983 and asks the question, "How do you kill something that can't possibly be alive?" "Christine" was written by Stephen King, making this movie a team-up between two of the GOATs of horror, and it features a sentient 1958 Plymouth Fury with a taste for blood. She starts her murder spree before she's even off the assembly line and, 21 years later, finds herself in the hands of a teen driver named Arnie, who becomes as obsessed with Christine as she does with him.

"Christine" is, as movie critic Roger Ebert called it back when it was released, "utterly ridiculous," but it's also a hell of a horror film. It has chases, crashes, bad decisions, and scenes that will make your skin crawl. There's not much you can ask of a horror movie that "Christine" doesn't deliver.

While "Christine" might be the foremost sentient, autonomous, and bloodthirsty car in most cinephiles' minds, she's not the only one. In fact, she's not even the first. Six years before "Christine" was released in theaters, a humble film with a simple name came out that also featured a beautiful, now-classic car with a dark and twisted side. "The Car" (1977) didn't have as big of names attached to it, and its Rotten Tomatoes score of 32% suggests that maybe it doesn't quite hold up, but it's still a silly, fun, and at times unnerving film with a sinister car at its core.

"The Car" was directed by Elliot Silverstein, who was no stranger to film involving either cars or horror. In "The Car," a young James Brolin plays a sheriff and single father in small-town Utah, where a strange black car starts off a spree of hit-and-runs by killing some innocent cyclists. As the car racks up kills, the identity of its driver remains a complete mystery, and some believe the car might even be driving itself. The movie's tagline says it all: "Is it a phantom, a demon, or the Devil himself?" The only way to find out is by watching.

What makes this film all the more fun is the eponymous car itself. It's "played" by a 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III, but it's no stock model. It was customized by car customizing legend George Barris, who added new fenders and a hand-made grille, recessed the headlights deeper behind the fender, cut a few inches off the top, and finished the project off with 20 coats of black pearl paint to achieve the car's signature look. The result is a Continental that looks straight out of the uncanny valley.

Real horror heads know that an integral part of the culture is watching movies that are admittedly pretty terrible. There's no excusing a movie as corny and forgettable as "Wheels of Terror" (1990), but it might still be fun to put on the TV on a cool October night and watch in the background. This one didn't have any big names attached to it, it didn't introduce any young stars who would later take cinema by storm, and its only award nomination was for Best Young Actress in a Cable Special at the Young Artist Awards, which it didn't win. In other words, it barely made a ripple in Hollywood.

"Wheels of Terror" has a plot strikingly similar to that of "The Car." After Laura and her tween daughter Stephanie make a big move to a calm suburb in Copper Valley, Arizona, they discover that it's being terrorized by an evil Dodge Charger — surely many of us have had traumatizing experiences involving a Charger. It's just par for the course. This particular 1974 Charger is seemingly driverless and has been tormenting people about town. When the protagonist watches her daughter get abducted by the malign muscle car, she sets off in desperate pursuit to save her.

What's so amazing about the evil Dodge at the center of this film is that it's clearly multiple different cars. The models they used for the Charger terrorizing Copper Valley flip from 1971 to 1974 Chargers all willy-nilly, and they're not even always the same color. The characters even refer to this Dodge coupe as a sedan multiple times. If you love to lampoon a movie as you watch it, this is an unbeatable choice.

This year celebrates the 40th anniversary of "Maximum Overdrive" (1986), written and directed by Stephen King, and it deserves a spot in your Halloween rotation for its over-the-top technological violence and cars coming to life. Despite King's legendary status in the horror world and his dozens of extremely popular books, this is his only directorial effort, and there might just be a reason for that. The film stars Emilio Estevez and Pat Hingle, and it's a fever dream of epic proportions that was nominated for not one, but two Razzies in 1987: one for Worst Actor and one for Worst Director.

The premise is that a passing comet causes all machines on Earth to come to life and start killing indiscriminately. If that's not enough to reel you in, King's comment on his own movie when speaking with The Kingcast is, "I was doing a lot of cocaine, and I was drinking a lot. You can tell!" Sold yet? All kinds of machines start murdering in this movie, from lawnmowers to a semi with a massive Green Goblin mask for a grille, and the only explanation for why seems to be, once again, cocaine.

The main action follows a group of survivors holed up at a truck stop in North Carolina called "Dixie Boy," and they're none too skilled at surviving. In fact, they die so gloriously that the film reportedly had to see major edits to avoid getting slapped with an X rating from the MPAA. There are even rumors that another horror legend, George Romero, was on set for much of the film's production and that the first cut threatened to make him sick. Unfortunately, the X-rated cut likely doesn't exist, so we'll never know how bad it really could've been.

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

So far, most of the movies listed here are old enough to be grandparents. It seems the '70s and '80s were rife with filmmakers pondering the implications of autonomous cars that prefer to kill you rather than tell you what they're doing and why. Of course, a truly evil sentient car might even want to do both. Still, the cinematic exploration of cars with a taste for blood seems to have tapered off in the '90s. That's what makes Quentin Tarantino's 2007 film "Death Proof" all the more unique and compelling — along with the fact that it debuted in theaters as part of an anthology called "Grindhouse" that combined both "Death Proof" and Robert Rodriguez's "Planet Terror," which didn't feature evil cars but did star Rose McGowan fighting zombies with a machine gun leg.

In "Death Proof," the car isn't sentient, but it is used by antagonist Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) to repeatedly cause deadly accidents that allow Mike to walk away unscathed. It's as if he's feeding some kind of ravenous beast. The movie has some excellent chase scenes, including an extended chase sequence that makes up a good portion of the second half of the film, and Kurt Russell is excellent as always. There's also a highway massacre or two, just for extra thrills, you know. The title refers to Mike's car, a 1970 Chevy Nova that he's death-proofed by reinforcing it and modding it over the years to make it a perfect killing machine. Mike eventually targets and faces off against a group of stuntwomen, including Rosario Dawson and Zoë Bell.

The year 2001 saw the first installment of "The Fast and the Furious" franchise, which skyrocketed Paul Walker to street-racing superstardom and kicked off a massive ongoing franchise. However, many people don't remember that Walker actually starred in a second car-focused movie that year. The oft-forgotten "Joy Ride" has all your favorite horror tropes. College freshman Lewis (Paul Walker) is on summer break and embarks on a road trip from California to New Jersey, joined by his crush Venna and older brother Fuller along the way.

Things go awry when Fuller cajoles his baby brother into pulling a prank on a trucker over the CB. The trucker, because of course, turns out to be a rampaging murderer whose only goal now is to kill the young adults who pranked him. Oh, and the trucker goes by the name Rusty Nail, which totally isn't a silly handle. "Joy Ride" had J.J. Abrams on the writing team, and while it hasn't seen nearly the success that "The Fast and the Furious" did, it was at least successful enough to earn a couple sequels, albeit with an entirely new cast and an expanded writing team sans Abrams.

The semi truck that Rusty Nails drives in this movie is, once again, not actually sentient or ontologically evil, as we've seen in many other films on this list, but it sure is menacing as hell. Rusty Nail and his big rig pursue Paul Walker and crew across the country and against all odds, and that truck just won't quit. This is a solid thriller for anyone who wants to indulge in a little nostalgia and pour one out for the late, great Paul Walker.

Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images

Last but not least on this year's list of movies with killer cars to watch for Halloween is the 1971 movie "Duel," directed by Steven Spielberg. Even though "Duel" came out when Spielberg was only 24, the now-iconic filmmaker had already directed several short films and episodes of TV by then. This was, however, his second full-length film after 1964's Firelight, which inspired what would eventually become "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" in 1977. "Duel" was a TV movie based on a short story of the same name by Richard Matheson, better known for his novel "I Am Legend." Matheson also wrote the script for "Duel."

"Duel" stars Dennis Weaver, a lone traveling salesman who finds himself being stalked and followed by a tanker as he travels across desert highways to his next appointment. Most of the movie takes place as Weaver's character drives his Plymouth Valiant through desolate stretches of highway and features tense scene after tense scene of a menacing Peterbilt 281 trying to run him and various other interlopers off the road. The premise is simple, and the film might seem repetitive or boring by today's standards, but in actuality, it's a tense thriller that's well worth the watch thanks to great solo acting on Weaver's part and a lot of beautiful, long shots of the landscape whirring by as Weaver tries to get to safety. This is the kind of movie you couldn't make today, and not only because the world's oil reserves are quickly dwindling.