It’s legendary. The movie itself is terrible, it’s basically a thin plot set up solely to have this epic car chase. The all-star, Jerry Bruckheimer produced 2000 remake was just not the same. Yeah it had the requisite epic car chase but it was all too slick. It was fun, but it had no soul.
Part of the reason why the original was so much fun was that it was so gritty and realistic. H.B. Halicki, in true Hollywood maverick form was the star, director, producer, stuntman, writer, main financer, and probably caterer too for all I know. The whole film was shot on a shoestring budget (some of the scenes in the film were not scripted but completely opportunistic), and some of the accidents in the chase are said to be unstaged. Halicki not only compacted 10 vertebrae on the final jump, but some he ended up having to purchase some of the cars that were inadvertently wrecked out of his own pocket.
Sadly, Halicki died in 1989 while filming the sequel from a botched stunt.
