10 Shameless Movie Rip-Offs That Totally Sucked

9. Smokey and the Hotwire Gang (Smokey and the Bandit)

It is absolutely amazing that this film managed to avoid a copyright lawsuit, given how the structure of the title is absolutely identical, and the clear intention is to make people think this is part of the very same franchise that helped turn Burt Reynolds into a household name. It's got everything that the popular film on the right has; more CB radios than you can shake a stick at, dumb police officers who get outsmarted by a roguish bandit at every turn, and flagrant abuse of the law. What it doesn't have, though, is Reynolds or anyone associated with the original hit; instead, the cast and crew is filled out by a bunch of no-namers who basically went nowhere, as the film didn't even register as a blip on most people's radars, with good reason, too. It's just a pale, dull as dishwater imitation, and star James Keach has been mostly banished to straight-to-TV fare ever since, no doubt penance for agreeing to star in such a shameless rip-off.