Clip joint: five gripping movie scenes set in petrol stations
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Version 0 of 1. Whether you call them petrol, gas or filling stations, the places where we refuel our cars are versatile cinematic settings. The potential for explosions is in the background of any scene, should someone light a match – they are stockpiled with flammable liquid, after all. Whether in the middle of the city, or in the middle of nowhere on a dusty highway, they offer the chance to reflect on a character’s journey. No Country For Old Men When Anton Chigurh, an utterly remorseless killer whose hairstyle the Coen brothers based on a 1979 photo of a brothel patron, walks into this remote Texaco, the station’s proprietor has no idea that the two minutes of conversation and results of a coin toss that follows could be a matter of life and death. Chigurh’s candy bar wrapper compressing and expanding on the station’s counter becomes almost hypnotic as we are sucked further into this game of death. Christine Christine is by no means Stephen King’s finest novel, and John Carpenter’s adaptation is a rare example of a film being superior to its source material. We should also ignore the fact that Buddy Repperton, the John Travolta-esque jock who gets it here, looks too old to be a high school bully. However, this scene contains some wonderful images. The sight of Christine, a 1958 Plymouth Fury, exiting the gas station engulfed in flames, and accompanied by a haunting electronic score composed by Carpenter himself, lives long in the memory. The Birds The actions of one bird attacking a gas station attendant set into motion a series of terrifying events in Bodega Bay, California. Hitchcock’s sequence is masterfully edited, cutting between the leaking gasoline, the shocked faces of those in the diner and close ups of a terrified Tippi Hedren. When the gas station explodes, we look down from the point of view of the hovering seagulls in the sky as they survey the carnage beneath them and prepare to wreak more havoc. RoboCop Why can’t this guy just get on with his geometry studies without crazed machine-gun-toting criminals mocking him and threatening to kill him? There’s just no justice in the world … until Robocop arrives, that is. Forget the remake, Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 film is a brutal, twisted and darkly humorous classic. Wild at Heart Not every gas station scene has to contain an explosion and/or a murder. While Wild at Heart does contain some pretty brutal scenes, David Lynch slows the pace down here. As the music plays, the wind rippling through Lula’s dress and hair and the old man in the chair with his languid, slightly bizarre gesticulations are pure Lynch. Charles Graham-Dixon is on Twitter at @CharlesGD. • Do you have an idea for Clip joint that you’d like to write? Email tshepo.mokoena@theguardian.com with your pitch. |