Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is a 1974 American road crime drama film based on the 1963 Richard Unekis novel titled The Chase (later retitled Pursuit).

Directed by John Hough, the film stars Peter Fonda, Susan George, Adam Roarke, and Vic Morrow.

Two NASCAR hopefuls, driver Larry Rayder and his mechanic Deke Sommers, successfully execute a supermarket heist to finance their jump into big-time auto racing.

The unorthodox sheriff, Captain Everett Franklin, obsessively pursues the trio in a dragnet, only to find his officers unable to catch Larry, Mary, and Deke after they ditch the Impala for a 1969 Dodge Charger R/T 440 at a flea market.

The trio evades several patrol cars, until one of them - a specially prepared high-performance Dodge Polara police interceptor - effectively keeps up with the Charger until a traffic collision.

Immediately after, Captain Franklin himself locates the trio, and pursues them at ground level in a Bell JetRanger helicopter.

Having finally evaded the police, Larry and company meet their doom when they collide with a freight train pulled by an Alco S-1 locomotive, which unexpectedly emerges from a walnut grove.

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is based on the novel originally titled The Chase (later renamed Pursuit) by Richard Unekis, published in 1963.

The protagonists of The Chase used such a vehicle, a Chevrolet, and made use of the checkerboard of roads in the farm country of Illinois to outrun the police, as well as the cover of an approaching thunderstorm.

[citation needed] In the commentary of the 2005 DVD and later Blu-ray releases, Hough says two blue 1966 Chevrolet Impalas, as well as two 1969 (and one 1968) Citron Yella Dodge Chargers were used in the filming.

Adam Roarke, Susan George, and myself were sort of like The Three Stooges I guess you could say...I had a fine time making the film.

[9] It earned rentals of $12.1 million in the United States and Canada, making it Fox's most successful film of the year.

You assume in the movie that Adam Roarke is going to die at some point, but he's there right to the end, so it really should be called Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and Deke.