When you think about what finely-tuned machines modern action movie productions are, it’s nuts to think about how the original “Gone in 60 Seconds” came together. The film was written, directed, produced, and financed by Long Beach, California junkyard owner H.B. Halicki, with an incredibly bare-bones script and a cast made up of friends, family, and other non-Hollywood types. All of that, however, is just an excuse for an absolutely wild amount of automotive insanity, including a 40-minute chase sequence that wrecked 93 cars and still ranks as one of film history’s longest. We’re talking about skin-of-your-teeth filmmaking, here, but the end result is just absolute mayhem that blew up the box office by the standards of its time.
There are a lot of moments in Halicki’s opus that live rent-free in the minds of fans of car-based stunts, but the one that most stands out is the jump at the end of the aforementioned epic chase. The film’s feature car, a 1973 Ford Mustang named “Eleanor,” executes a 128-foot jump that reaches an altitude of 30 feet, all without the use of pistons, boosters, and, of course, CGI. Halicki, who starred in and did a ton of driving for the movie in addition to everything behind the scenes, was behind the wheel for the jump, and reportedly compressed 10 vertebrae in performing it.