Most haunting rides of film and TV

In theory, 2011's "Drive Angry" is a pulpy, horror-tinged revenge yarn, with John Milton (Nic Cage) busting out of hell to avenge his murdered daughter and rescue his kidnapped granddaughter. In practice, it's a bit of a tragedy — how else to characterize the carnage wreaked on an endless stream of classic pony cars? The standout is a 1969 Dodge Charger, which is where we first see Cage's escaped hell spawn. While Cage is busy chewing the scenery, the Charger manages to steal every scene it's in.

View Slideshow:  Stars and Their Convertibles

Where the first "Ghost Rider" movie insisted on repeatedly transforming the demon biker's Harley-Davidson into an overzealously modified, skull-faced prop, the 2012 sequel showed a surprising amount of restraint. When Johnny Blaze (Nic Cage) becomes Ghost Rider and the Yamaha V-Max changes with him, it gains some char-broiled, flame-spewing character, but it's still recognizably a V-Max, with all the iconic menace that entails.

View Pictures:  Car Stars of Hollywood

It's hard to top the timeless badassery of a Harley-Davidson panhead, the bike that became synonymous with rebellion when it was featured as Peter Fonda's star-spangled ride in the 1969 film "Easy Rider." But "Ghost Rider" (2007) certainly tried, turning Nic Cage's chopper into a skeletal beast with smoldering eyes, chains in place of forks, and the ability to drive up the sides of buildings. And it is terrifying, but more for its gaudy, overreaching design than any intended satanic qualities.

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In a movie devoted to vehicular slaughter, the most disturbing scene in the 2007 "Death Proof" has Kurt Russell, who plays a stunt man turned serial killer, converting his 1971 Chevy Nova SS into both a murder weapon and a murder scene. The matte-black muscle car is "death proof," a stunt-ready model designed to protect its driver from even the most brutal on-screen crashes. Russell's passenger isn't so lucky — she's killed by aggressive steering and braking, slammed to death inside the stripped-down cabin.

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The Creeper is a demon, and apparently a numerologist, showing up every 23 years for a 23-day cannibal binge, assimilating those munched organs into its patchwork body. But for much of 2001's "Jeepers Creepers," the Creeper is largely out of sight, tooling around in a 1941 Chevrolet cab-over truck, a rusty behemoth that's as good for vehicle-on-vehicle combat as it is for corpse storage. What's most terrifying is the Creeper's sense of humor: The truck's vanity plate reads BEATNGU, or "Be eating you."

View Slideshow:  Best Trucks on the Silver Screen

The bad news: You're about to be run down by the vengeful resurrected spirit of a guy (Charlie Sheen) whom you and your gang of car-stealing drag racers have killed. The good news: You'll catch a rare glimpse of Dodge's scissor-doored 500-horsepower M4S concept car before splattering across its impressively aerodynamic hood. "The Wraith" (1986) is a feature-length ode to the M4S, which is as indestructible as its undead driver, and which he ultimately hands down to the luckiest little brother in horror-movie history.

Bing Images: Dodge M4S

The only reason to watch "Maximum Overdrive" (1986) is its villain: a toy-hauling, Green-Goblin-faced 18-wheeler that turns malevolent — like every other machine on the planet, thanks to a passing comet and terrorizes the occupants of a truck stop. The Western Star 4200 is the de facto leader of the movie's rampaging big rigs, somehow trumping the machine-gun-packing military truck, possibly by virtue of that radiator mask. In its defense, the eyes do turn a rather awesome shade of hateful red.

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It isn't the first ghostly hearse in movies — that honor belongs to the star of "The Hearse" (1980) — but the Ecto-1 is clearly the coolest, and it remains one of the most iconic cars in cinema. It's actually a combination ambulance and hearse from 1959, when Miller-Meteor built a limited run of body-hauling models on Cadillac's professional chassis. The gear festooning its roof in "Ghostbusters" (1984) is intended to track apparitions, but more importantly, it looks cool.

View Slideshow:  50 Years of Bond Films: The Cars

To say that "Christine" (1983) is about a bloodthirsty car is true. But it's more true to say that it's an utterly demented love story about a boy and his restored '58 Plymouth Fury. Like so many codependent high-school relationships, it ends badly, with Christine going on a bully-killing rampage, while her nerdy teenage paramour takes the hint and becomes a callous, beer-drinking bad boy. The Fury winds up compacted but unbowed; the epilogue shows her cubed frame stirring, beginning the long road to demonic recovery.

View Slideshow:  Celebs and Their Classic Cars

Like its star, a homicidal 1977 Lincoln Continental Mark III, 'The Car' (1977) doesn't need to explain itself. Here's a movie about a seemingly driverless sedan that kills indiscriminately — bikers, hitchhikers, cops — whoever, really. The film was a flop on release and no one would call it a cult classic, although it was recently dragged back into the spotlight amid reports that director Guillermo del Toro ("Hellboy," "Pan's Labyrinth") prowls around Los Angeles in a full replica of this legitimately sinister Mark III.

View Slideshow:  Most Influential Cars: The '70s

Until someone unearths a cave painting of a psychopathic wheel, the origin of the evil automobile will be traced back to "Duel," a 1971 TV movie that was Steven Spielberg's feature-length directorial debut and a film so ludicrously good that it was later released in theaters. After passing a black Peterbilt tanker truck on a two-lane highway, a salesman winds up fighting for his life in a harrowing series of car chases through the Southern California desert. The truck isn't possessed, but since we never see the driver's face, it's the tanker that seems to radiate — and embody — the looming menace of road rage.

Read:  Future Classic Cars

Finally, a car that no one's afraid of but whose ghoulish occupants would probably be shot on sight. The Munster Koach is a cobbled-together Frankenstein monstrosity of parts harvested from the Ford Model T. George Barris, the Koach's creator, used three of Henry Ford's seminal cars to create an 18-foot-long chopped hot rod. The Koach appeared frequently during the two-season run of "The Munsters" (1964-1966), and while there's no word on a reimagined version for the 2012 reboot, "Mockingbird Lane," here's hoping for a hideous, electricity-arcing beast born of a trio of cursed Tesla Roadsters.

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Based out of the Boston area, Erik Sofge is frequent contributor to Popular Mechanics and Slate.com. He specializes in everything scientific and technical.