Grand Theft Auto: The Roger Corman Collection

Not to be confused with the popular video game series of the same name, Grand Theft Auto was Ron Howard's feature film debut, as both a writer and director. Howard had made a couple of shorts, but Roger Corman gave him his big break with this movie that he co-wrote with his father, Rance.

In Grand Theft Auto Ron Howard plays Sam Freeman who is in love with his girlfriend Paula, much to the dismay of her rich parents who want Paula to marry another country club child, Collins Hedgeworth. The problem is that Hedgeworth is a pathetic loser who Paula doesn't really like whereas Sam is outgoing, fun and smart. The two decide the best way for them to get married is to go to Las Vegas and get hitched in a 24-hour wedding chapel. With no transport of their own, Paula and Sam make off with her father's Rolls-Royce and drive north from California to 'sin city'.

The problem for the two runaways is that Paula's father is a rich and influential man who is running for state governor so can't have his little girl getting married in some cheap and tacky giant in Vegas to a boy he doesn't like so he, and his uptight wife, decide to stop them. After heading out on the road, Paula's mother phones the local radio station and offers $25,000 for the person who apprehends her daughter and brings her home which sends some people out on the road to try and catch them. If this weren't a big enough incentive, Collins Hedgeworth, of his own volition, also fun to radio station and offers $25,000 to stop Sam and Paula getting to Vegas.

With 50 grand on offer, plenty of people are willing to risk their automobiles in the pursuit of cash and fame and hit the road to hunt down our two romantics.


Known to most people as Ron Howard's feature film debut and a movie with plenty of car chases and stunts, Grand Theft Auto is a really good watch and a great deal of fun. It is certainly full of well orchestrated and planned stunts and some excellent driving so is just about as far away from Howard's more celebrated films like Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind and Frost/Nixon as you can get. This isn't a heavy drama or a deep character piece, but a fun piece of popcorn fluff about a couple of kids driving to Las Vegas and a whole host of weird and wonderful characters trying to stop them, resulting in all sorts of automotive mayhem.

This may sound weird thing to say, but I enjoyed this a lot more than some of Ron Howard's other movies. That it is infinitely more fun than The Da Vinci Code is just about given and I could probably put together a fairly coherent argument that this is, in many ways, a much better movie than that overlong and turgid adaptation of Dan Brown's bestselling potboiler. Anyway, I digress, but suffice to say that Grand Theft Auto is very nicely put together film with decent characters, impressive stunt work and more laughs than you expect.

The Disc

The Picture
The full frame picture is pretty good and you can tell that this is a reasonably high quality transfer by the lack of streaming in the quicker moving scenes. Howard must have had a fairly high budget to work with as the number of cars that are wrecked and property that is utterly destroyed could not be done on something with an extremely meagre amount of money.

The colours are vibrant, detail is quite high and the contrast levels are good so the picture quality is much better than I expected and stands up against bigger budget films of the same period.

The Sound
The stereo soundtrack does a good job handling all of the action sequences with roaring engines, spinning wheels and smashing glass whilst also presenting the dialogue clearly.


Final Thoughts
Whilst no classic, I can understand why there are some that hold Grand Theft Auto in high esteem as it is a fun road movie with likeable characters in the form of Sam and Paula, and some great cartoonish villains like Collins Hedgeworth and his parents. The DJ who holds this whole thing together like some cartoonish Super Soul (from the great cult movie Vanishing Point) is a fantastic creation and the whole thing works as a well made an enjoyable movie.