Race with the Devil (1975)

 

Race with the Devil (1975)

 

This Genre-mixing Action Movie is one of the most perfect products of its time imaginable.

 

With 1970s there was an obvious push among B-Movies filmmaking for works that were both extreme enough to satisfy the Exploitation market and subversively thoughtful, call it a dance of the Profane and Sacred. There were a notable minority of works that did achieve some profundity (the films of George Romero and David Cronenberg) but most failed. Still the attempt itself gave the cinema an energy that we’d rarely seen before. Among the most notable examples of those that missed the mark but still enthralled us was Director Wes Craven’s “Last House on the Left” (1972) an exceptionally vicious Rape & Revenge flick which was, oddly, a remake of a Christian Parable and Art House triumph, Director Ingmar Berman’s “Virgin Spring” (1960), only increasing the explicitness, and jettisoning the themes of God’s role in Earthly affairs and Atonement for sin.

 

“Race with the Devil” is one is not one of the profound ones, not by a longshot, but it has the energy of all other best of the misses.

 

This newly sophisticated (well, pretend sophisticated) Exploitation market was not only increasingly violent, but better on the technical level, and therefore more viscerally exciting. This is especially notable in the car chases, that decade featured in both low- and big-budget films most of the best loved car chases in cinema history, towering over all that came before and rarely surpassed since.

 

There were also three decent-to-big-budgeted, A-list Horror movies, so successful they changed how the Horror Genre was viewed in Hollywood forever, and all concerned with the same subject, Satanism. They were “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968, so yeah, only almost the ‘70s) “The Exorcist” (1973), and “The Omen” (1976, so after this film). These three films were not only shamelessly mimicked by their low-budget B-movie brethren, but they primed our culture to accept Real-World, Large-Scale, Satanic Conspiracies where many of those seemingly normal people who sit right beside you spend their private-time engaging in Obscene Occult Ritual. Only “The Omen” really tried to sell the “large-scale” part of this scenario, but a decade later, when the Satanic Panic swept the real-world USA, destroying so many Innocent lives and empowering so many Political Extremists, Author Ira Levin, who penned the original novel “Rosemary’s Baby” (published in 1967), he publicly regretted being part of lighting the fuse.

 

Another A-list release, this one unrelated to Satanism, but similarly heavily mimicked in the B-movie market, was “Deliverance” (1972), which concerned affluent City Slickers on vacation in the USA’s most rural areas and are besieged by the “other half,” the poor, unwashed, uncultured, sub-humanly savage, masses. As Hollywood creators were generally Urban Elites, and the bulk of cinema’s audiences were similarly city dwellers, these Class and Regional Prejudices proved Morally Unassailable at a time when explicit Racism and a few other Bigotries were inspiring enough protest that hurt ticket sales and even kill projects.

 

And then there was how B-movies, always anti-Authoritarian in posturing, were fed by a Real-World of the increasing Paranoia born of the “Season of Assasination” (1963 through 1975) which famously saw the murders of President John F. Kennedy, his brother and Presidential hopeful Robert, Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King, Jr, and too many other murders and attempted murders to list here, all unfolding in the context of the revelations of the Pentagon Papers (1971), the Watergate Scandal (1972) and revelations of the Church Committee (1975). Though these scandals didn’t involve Satanism, they might as well have, as they primed our culture to accept Real-World, Large-Scale, Conspiracies where many of those seemingly normal people who sit right beside you spend their private-time engaging in Subversion the Constitution and Assassinating anyone they feel like.

 

“Race with the Devil,” certainly not the era’s most Philosophically Probing B-movie, but still stands out as the one that fused all these threads of the Zeitgeist together into the same place. Moreover, it managed this in a film with a run-time of less-than 90 minutes.

 

The leads were Peter Fonda and Warren Oates, strong box-office names and lifelong friends who would do a number of films together. Fonda was already a Counter-Culture Hero because of “Easy Rider” (1969) but in this film an important part of the story-telling is that the two male leads are the opposite of that. Fonda plays Roger Marsh and Oates plays Frank Stewart, solidly Middle-Class Entrepreneurs, co-owners of a Motorcycle Shop that doesn’t have a hint of Biker-Gang affiliation. Their hard work has just delivered the American Dream to them, they’ve had a very profitable year and want to go on a special vacation with their spouses, Kelly, played by Lara Parker, and Alice, played by Loretta Swit.

 

Director Jack Starrett displays his skills from the first images, long before the Horrors emerge. There’s a wonderful tracking shot through the Motorcycle Shop that, without much expository dialogue, demonstrates the foundations of Frank, and to a degree Roger even though he’s not on-screen yet. We see their idea of work ethic, their relationships with employees, their solid and conventional values.

 

Soon we move onto the film’s main vehicle, a top-of-the-line RV, and Screenwriters Wes Bishop and Lee Frost deftly lay out Frank’s pride of possession (he crows “We don’t need anything from anybody. We are self-contained, babe”). It cost the then-enormous sum of $36,000 and much is made of it having a microwave oven back in the days when that was impressive. This was a time when most films took a cynical stance against materialism even while selling the same (“Easy Rider” increased motorcycle sales tremendously) but here there is no apology, Roger and Frank worked hard for what they got and they deserve it.

 

They are good Citizens from a Civilized place, the city of San Antonio, Texas, and their destination is the equally Civilized, the even more affluent Aspen, Colorado. They don’t realize the dangers they’ll face by crossing through the Dark Lands in between: Smaller, more Rural communities, cruelly insular and full of un-Civilized Secrets.

 

Soon after, camping by the roadside, the foursome inadvertently witnesses a Satanic Ritual Murder. As Good Citizens, they go straight to the local Law Enforcement, specifically Sheriff Taylor, played by Jack Armstrong. But almost immediately they realize that the town they reported the Crime in is ripe with Conspiracies and Law Enforcement is somehow involved. Not knowing who is, or is not, members of the Coven, they take to the road again, their new destination is another Civilized city, carrying with them evidence to blow the entire Conspiracy wide-open. This is where’s the film, which is not overtly political, connects to Watergate:

 

This foursome is the USA as we like to see itself (the only transgressive thing that any of them do is when Kelly and Alice steal a library book, and they assure their husbands that they will mail it back), but the Authorities are Minions of the Conspiracy, they only pretend to be like Good Citizens. It’s a tale of Satanism that does not involve the usual depraved Hippie Cults like the real-world Manson Family (their murder-spree took place in 1969) but closer to the Villains of “Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Omen,” and Predisent Richard Nixon’s White House.

 

Soon they realize they are being followed, and after that, they realize they are not only being stalked from behind; the Conspiracy isn’t just one town, it’s a massive circle of Evil Doers, encountered in the next town, the next Trailer Park, on the road in front of them and well as behind. It involves Cops, road-side Store Owners, Truck Drivers, Construction Workers, even little old ladies and school-aged children. Our Heroes can’t know how large it really is, but it must be finite, and if they drive fast enough, they will escape the Nightmare and get back to a more normal USA.

 

The chase scenes, of which they are many, are glorious. The climax, which involves two such scenes virtually back-to-back, is easily 20-minutes of the film’s short running time, and epic. This was not truly a low-budget film, but no more than modest (under $2 million, while that year’s biggest movie, “Jaws” was $9 million), so the accomplishments of Stunt Coordinator, Paul Knuckles (what a name), were remarkable.

 

In someways, the film is an extended car chase, but it is full of surprisingly rich story-telling as well. The script gives us four lead Characters who are well-drawn, sympathetic and believable, and all these well-cast Actors are as convincing as their dialogue (Screenwriters Forst and Bishop were frequently collaborators, this film represents the best writing of their long and successful Exploitation careers). Yes, the females are regulated to secondary roles, mostly clinging to each other while the men do the Man-Stuff, which is all-but inevitable in an Action Movie, but they also prove smart, much like how marginalized Mina Murry in Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” (1897) was marginalized, but who repeatedly surprised the reader by being too intelligent to disappear into the wallpaper.

 

Of the four, the Cast member doomed to the least prominence was Actress Parker, most famous as an Evil Witch on the “Dark Shadows” Daytime Soap Opera (first aired 1966, she joined the cast until 1967) and doomed to typecasting in either Horror or Soap Operas forever thereafter. But here, as Character Kelly, she proves nicely nuanced in a role that a lesser talent would’ve offered only hysterics. She’s very much like Mina from “Dracula” marginalized in the plot, but as the foursome struggle with the Mystery, she’s often insightful. She’s paranoid but smart, beginning to suspect that everyone she meets may be a member of the Cult, and importantly, she’s mostly not wrong.

 

Which brings us to the most subtle scene in this notably unsubtle movie. Our foursome plan to spend the night in a large commercial RV park, the longest time in the film lets them stay in one place. Everyone is friendly, but many appear a bit off. Relaxing by the pool Kelly becomes convinced that the other people by the pool are watching her. Before the night is over, she’s proved right.

 

As for Fonda and Oates, the fact that they were old friends comes across on the screen, they play off each other marvelously, better than the leads in most Cop-Buddy Movies. They are supremely convincing as they tag-team to fight off the Satanic Marauders. Oates character Frank is somewhat better drawn, but Fonda dominates the screen; there’s a particularly impressive scene when Fonda himself, not a stuntman even though the film had at least eight of them, climbed to the top of the moving RV, and from its roof holds off attacks like a Western Hero fighting off Indians besieging a Wagon Train. 

 

The film features no Supernational elements, but it is legitimately spooky, and the lack of the Supernational makes the Paranoias the hint at Politics, or at least Sociology, and therefore more pointed. The scenes before the first murder are well-crafted, and even more the scenes in-between the later car chases display Director Starett’s skills at building suspense slowly and carefully, the sense of the tightening noose makes the epic climax that much more exhilarating. He also had a good eye for the barren landscape, each outdoor shot features dead grass, live oaks, prickly pear, and yucca. He also really knew Texas, the local newspapers were thrilled that the bar scene was filmed at the Silver Dollar Saloon, much an institution in Bandara, Texas, and the band playing in the background was Arkie Blue and the Blue Cowboys, which remained the house band there for decades to come.

 

One obvious flaw, impossible to disengage from why the film is compelling and entertaining, is the one-dimensionality of it all. Critic Kevin Thomas stated it quite well when he was not writing about this film, but another Starett opus, “A Small Town in Texas” (1976) which pretty similar to this one except there were no Satanists. Thomas lamented that Starrett "demonstrates that he has what it takes to do important pictures" and "gives the film more than it deserves, makes us care about his people, but nonetheless it winds up just another piece of grisly trash.” Well, across his more-than twenty-year Directorial career, Starett never did make an “important” film, but he did make a large number of entertaining ones. Also, though as a Director he never escaped B-movies, he had great success as a Charter Actor in other’s films, and even has a tiny role here.

 

He was not the first Director on the project, that was Screenwriter Frost who had experience in that chair, but Frost was quickly fired because he encourages improvisation on the set, which disturbed the Producers. That decision may have saved the film (I like Starett’s Directorial resume better than Frost’s) but almost killed the movie because Actors Fonda and Oates were friends with Frost and barricaded themselves in their hotel room locked themselves in the trailers in protest of the firing.

 

As told by Susan A. Compo, Oates biographer, the two stars "finally agreed to meet with the new team, but not before Oates had told Fonda, ‘Now listen, Flyer, I don't want you to get mad now. We go down for this meeting, I want you to keep your mouth shut, and don't say anything dirty. Let me do the talking.’" But in the meeting, it was Oates, not Fonda, who lost his temper. He began by saying, “‘Maybe you shouldn't just fire a director. Maybe you should consider what's going on and see if you can help the director instead of just...’ Having run out of words, he picked up the coffee table and flipped it in the air, where it did a complete somersault and landed on its feet. Its contents were flying, but the glass table performed like an Olympic gymnast.”

 

Producer Paul Maslansky wasn’t rattled, “‘We had a couple of drinks,’ he said, ‘and the next thing you know, they were saying, ‘Well, okay, let's give it hell.’"

And from Fonda’s Memoirs, "Most of the shoot was at night, and night shoots are always difficult. But Warren and I loved working together so much, we hardly noticed ... it was like going to camp with your friends and getting paid for it."

 

The last night of shooting, despite the film’s grim ending, was exuberant. The RV had been nicknamed “Ring of Fire” and when the nights work was done … well … Fonda again, “We had hidden many pies and water balloons on board. Starrett didn't see it coming. I pied him as I ran around the back of the Ring and Oates pied him when he turned around to look at the camera. Somehow, the crew had their own plan... The fight ended with all of us throwing pies, water balloons, and anything we could find at the Ring. We never wanted to see that damned thing again."

 

Starrett later claimed he’d hired actual Satanists to serve as Cult Extras, but he probably made that up for publicity purposes.

 

The score was not restrained, Composer Leonard Rosenman was a Osar Winner and three-time nominee, the approached the Satanic scenes and the Action scenes differently, but neither showed any restraint, nor should they have.

 

The film was oddly, and probably inappropriately, given a “PG” rating. The studio earned this by “fogging out” a woman’s naughty anatomical details in the one-and-only nude scene, the Ritual Murder. The violence, though, was abundant, not as bloody as that era’s Horror movies, but entirely consistent with the “R” rated Crime films in the cinema at the same time.

 

The film did well in the box-office, but then slipped into half-obscurity because of clumsy distribution following the death of the Drive-In circuit. Still, it was influential, though maybe not in a good way. It provided the basis for the Tamil language “Kazhugu” (1981), which I haven’t seen, the vastly inferior “Drive Angry” (2011), and the even worse “Party Bus to Hell” (2017). Director Ken Smith said it was a major influence on his “Red State” (also 2011), which maybe his worst film. Talk of a remake appear frequently on the internet.

 

Trailer:

Race with the Devil (1975) ORIGINAL TRAILER [HD 1080p] (youtube.com)