Yes, you go into a movie named Racing Fever expecting b-roll footage and sure, you get it, but this is also a William Gréfe movie, which means that you’re going to get South Florida drama, in this case, the story of professional hydroplane racer Pop Gunner who has one race left in him before he passes the torch to his son Lee. But there’s also the matter of his main competition, Gregg Stevenson, who just so happens to be aardvarking with Pops’ little girl Linda.

So yeah. Gregg is already married and has a kid, which seems to complicate matters, but Linda stay with him even when he gets wasted and hits Pops with his race boat. I never saw Miss Budweiser — seriously, if you grew up in the 70’s, Miss Budweiser was a big deal — hit a human being, but there you go.

This leads Gregg’s wife and daughter to go to Lee — the son — for some reason and the daughter and the son end up shacking up too and getting knocked up and of course, someone has to get shot because this is a Gréfe movie and wow, you thought Thanksgiving was complicated in your family.

There’s also a song in it, because the kids need to dance, man. And a downer ending, because the 60’s were a drag. Look — it has some songs, it has some hunks, it has a cute girl, it has death and plenty of pathos. It’s also the movie that probably played last at the drive-in, when people were sleeping things off or getting one last round off. The IMDB reviews of this eviscerate the film when they should realize that this is exactly the movie that it should be.

You can watch this on YouTube.