Doesn't Stand the Test of Time

Absolutely right!

Yup👍

I would give ANYthing to have lived in that time period. The music, culture, and just overall feeling of that entire decade is just directed at me, pity I grew up in the late 90s-early 2000s...

I'm 24, not really into cars, and just watched this for the first time 'n thought it kicked ass!!
Not really sure how this doesn't stand the test of time. Great music, great action/stunts, great cars (and chopper!!), great girls, and a simplistic story without too many details bogging it down (which also allows you to interpret/imagine the characters/motives/background however you like).

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Gringorilla,
your one viewing of this film sounds about right. The first time I watched Vanishing Point, I thought, "what is so good about this film?" A couple of years past and three viewings later, I began to get what others were going on about. For me, this will eventually become a great film.

That's been my first experience of it also. I doubt I'll watch it a 2nd time to find out differently.

I enjoyed the music and I'm a fan of Cleavdon Little (knowing him from Blazing Saddles) and generally like any sort of car chase film.

This came up in a recommendation of 10 "1970s Typical Car Flicks" worth a look.

I'd watched Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry the night before and was enjoying it far more than this one despite it having many issues itself.

I had to stop half way through this to do something and popped on to the net to see what people thought of it.

I saw a comment that they thought the story was essentially about dying / purgatory and I probably enjoyed the film more having that slant put on it than I'd have done otherwise.

I did not mention "car flicks." I mentioned "car chase movies." The purpose of quoting is to indicate that you are transcribing someone else's words as originally written. A "car flick" and a "car chase movie" are two different things. Namely, a "car chase movie" is focused primarily on one character being pursued by another in a car, while a "car flick" is simply a movie about cars. For example, Burt Reynolds' Smokey and the Bandit is a car chase movie, while Cannonball Run is not (it's a car race movie.) Clearly, you need to work on your transcription skills.

If you want to be pedantic about me referring to a group of movies as "Burt Reynolds flicks" (despite "flicks" being a perfectly acceptable word to describe a motion picture,) then I would recommend you wear a life preserver as you steer your boat among the "isle[s]" of your local retail store's ocean.

Now that we have that out of the way, you clearly did not read the post you are replying to. If you had, you would have seen that I was not comparing "the following" of any movies. I was comparing how "dated" several other "car chase movies" of "the era" (examples given range late 60s-early 80s) to Vanishing Point (1971). Were I trying to compare the "following" I would not have listed Gone in Sixty Seconds, which had pretty much faded into obscurity until its remake.

But since you brought it up, there is no way for you to prove this claim that Vanishing Point has the biggest "following" of the movies I listed. It does not have the most active IMDB board, nor the highest IMDB rating, nor does it consistently top lists against those other examples. In the absence of some objective measure of the actual size of the following of any given movie, all you have is an empty assertion.

Anyways, it appears you didn't "get" the post you were replying to. If you had, you'd have realized that I did indeed "get" this movie. What I didn't get was the "so what?" of the movie.

"So it goes" -Slaughterhouse Five

"To really get emotionally involved, I think you had to be there."
Which is exactly my point in the OP. If a film requires you to have experienced the exact context in which it was made to appreciate it, then the further you get from that context, the less relevant it will be.

Of the ones you listed I've seen Easy Rider and Dirty Harry. I feel like Easy Rider runs into the same problem: from the perspective of 2016, Easy Rider is about two guys who just do things for the sake of doing things, and then have a tragic end due to the consequences of their decisions. It just doesn't resonate unless you've lived in an era where freedom is doing a bunch of drugs, casual sex, and taking road trips.

Dirty Harry, by comparison, has become even more relevant with age. The tension it creates between a cowboy cop who is becoming burned out by ever-increasing rules, regulations, and politically correct atmosphere and a villain who is exploiting these obstacles for his own gain is especially prescient in an era where we are increasingly aware of extrajudicial police killings.

"So it goes" -Slaughterhouse Five

Yeah this point OP is making is kind of weird.

I loved Vanishing Point. I watched it many years ago but still think about it frequently. The ending reminds me a lot of the Silver Dream Racer, but the difference between the two is that Vanishing Point was leading up to its inevitable end and even was literally about the existential measure of someone's resolve where they feel they've reached the vanishing point.

I thought the movie was working on a lot of different levels, and the fact the main character had accepted his fate was both calming and disappointing, but it made complete sense based on what the movie was about and what it was trying to convey from start to finish.