“(A) versatile and underrated B-movie Renaissance man.”
— IMDb, about actor-director John “Bud” Cardos.

That’s the understatement of the century, ye IMDb database scribe. Look at that short — but hit-packed director’s resume: Kingdom of the Spiders (we need to review that one!), The Dark! The Day Time Ended! Mutant! Gor II: Outlaw of Gor! (well, they’re hits for the B&S About Movies crowd). Then there’s Bud’s cable and VHS potboilers that star friggin’ Ernest Borginine, Robert Vaughn, Oliver Reed, and Herbert Lom in the same friggin’ movie: Skeleton Coast (1988), and Act of Piracy (1988) with Gary Busey and Ray Sharkey kicking ass. Then there’s Bud’s acting resume with Al Adamson and the films Hells Angels on Wheels (1967), Psych-Out (1968), The Road Hustlers (1968), The Savage Seven (1968), Killers Three (1968; starring Merle Haggard and a very young Lane Caudell of 2020’s Getaway), Blood of Dracula’s Castle (1969), Satan’s Sadists (1969), Five Bloody Graves (1969), and Hell’s Bloody Devils (1970).

After entering the annals of Bikerdom with his third acting gig in Hells Angels on Wheels (he had support roles in 1965’s Deadwood ’76 and Run Home, Slow), and paying attention on all of those Al Adamson sets and Roger Corman AIP productions, Bud Cardos transitioned behind the lens for the blaxploitation-spaghetti western (Uh, oh. Here we go again with the genre mixin’: Hey! Harry Hope and Harry Tampa of Smokey and the Judge and Nocturna fame, hiya!) with The Red, White, and the Blue, aka Soul Soldier (1970).

And the burgeoning, becoming “hot” and “trendy” drag racing genre was next on Bud’s resume with the youth-oriented (as were all of the ’60s racin’ flicks that simply substituted asphalt for sand) action-drama starring John Davis Chandler?

“Who?”

Seriously? The dude is iconic in a Richard Lynch-amazing kind of way.

Now do you know him?

Let’s not even get into his extensive ’60s and ’70s television resume . . . just look at the movies: John Frankeheimer’s The Young Savages (1961; a more violent The Blackboard Jungle, if you will) with Burt Lancaster. Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) with Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn, and Richard Jaeckel. Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josie Wales (1976). Across 100-plus credits, JDC was everywhere, and he was nowhere. No truer “dark man” actor was he.

Here, John Davis Chandler stars alongside Jeremy Slate (Do we really need to get into is resume?) and beach-snow flick bunny mainstay Deborah Walley in this not-a-Frankie-Avalon-Fabian racing flick that stars Mark Slade alongside (as you can see by the drive-in flyer, above) the nation’s top drag racers. (Mark has too many ’60s and ’70s TV series to mention, but by 1967, starred for three years on The High Chaparral; before that, the McHale’s Navy rip, The Wackiest Ship in the Army; he got his start as co-star on Gomer Pyle: USMC.)

Drag Racer is simple tale: Mark Slade is a young man who dreams of tearin’ down the quarter mile with the big dogs that, while it has (it must have) romance, there very little of that dramatic yakity-yak that bogged down the likes of Red Line 7000, Thunder Alley, and The Wild Racers. As with David Cronenberg’s lone non-horror film, Fast Company, Drag Racer is about gritty realism that puts the actors into the pits to mix it up with the real racers (Bill Schultz, John Lombardo, Norm Wilcox, and Larry Dixon) at famed West Coast racetracks Irwindale Raceway, Lions Drag Strip, and Orange County Int’l Raceway.

Is the acting a bit rough in spots? Is the editing and cinematography amateurish? Sure. (It adds to the film’s realistic, documentary quality.) This is one of those films that was once embraced by UHF-TV in the early ’70s (watched it twice), temporarily embraced on VHS (watched it once), then jettisoned. Considering Bud Cardos’s pedigree, this one — is in desperate need — of a full restoration (and not just a rip n’ burn) to DVD. Hint! Kino Lorber, Arrow Video?

This is a classic must-watch for racing fans — even with a muddy, washed-out blurred print. It really is one of the best drag flicks out there. And whadda ya’ know: You Tube comes through again — and with a VHS and not a TV rip! Sweet!

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Okay, so this is more grindhouse . . . than fast. And it’s more hicksploitation . . . than furious. But this Smokey and the Bandit, drive-in rush job by Lawrence Woolner’s — an exhibitor who had made a number of films, including several with Roger Corman — Dimension Pictures under the thumb of Warner Bros. is rife with all of the fast and furious car chases and crashes we came for.

And besides: we’re talking Dimension Pictures here. Do you realize how many Lawrence Woolner drive-in flicks you’ve seen: Invasion of the Bee Girls, ‘Gator Bait, and Dolemite are a few. And how can we forget Scum of the Earth and The Redeemer: Son of Satan (aka Class Reunion Massacre).

And if that doesn’t entice you: Quentin Tarantino “Easter Eggs” the Dixie Dynamite theatrical one-sheet in Deathproof. And, for you Steve McQueen fans: he’s an uncredited motorcycle stuntman on the film. (Hey, $200 bucks is $200 bucks.)

You still never saw Dixie Dynamite? Well, you surely saw its stunts recycled as stock footage (as with Flash and the Firecat; also reviewed this week) in the Lee Major-starring TV series The Fall Guy. (Opps! Lee starred in his own fast n’ furious romp: The Last Chase; also reviewed this week).

Oh, yeah, the plot (such as it is): When their moonshiner pappy is killed by a corrupt deputy, two curvaceous young girls of the Daisy Duke-variety (the smokin’ Jane Anne Johnstone and Kathy McHaley as Dixie and Patsy) take over daddy’s business and set out for revenge in a Dukes of Hazzard meets Robin Hood tale. (Do you know your Dukes roots? No? Check out our review of Moonrunners.)

Hey, wait a cotton pickin’ minute ya’ll. Isn’t this just all a trial run for Thelma and Louise made 15 years later.

Oh, hell, yes, Bocephus!

But we’z all gits Warren Oates (Two-Lane Blacktop) as a motocross racer and old family friend that helps the girls, and we get our Sheriff Buford T. Justice in the form of Sheriff Phil Marsh played by Christopher George (Mortuary!, Day of the Animals! City of the Living Dead!, Grizzly!). And there’s the always welcomed R.G Armstrong, again, who’s been down this road before with Burt Reynolds in the rednecksploitation influencer, 1973’s White Lightning.

This is out in a couple of different reissue-imprints as an easily attainable DVD, but you can check it out on You Tube.

Don’t forget: We had a huge “Redneck Week” blowout back in August 2019, which we recapped — and explore even more films — with our “The Top 70 Good Ol’ Boys Film List: 1972 to 1986” featurette. There. Finally! We did it, Sam! We reviewed Dixie Dynamite! Cross it off the list!

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

We’ve talked quite a bit about writer-director-producers Ferd and Beverly Sebastian in the paragraphs of our reviews for ‘Gator Bait and AC/DC: Let There Be Rock (which they imported and recut) and Rocktober Blood* (four times!). The drive-in oeuvre of their Sebastian International Pictures was a studio that was second-to-none in churning out one Roger Cormanesque ‘make ’em-fast-make ’em cheap hit film after another.

This crime caper tale — primarily written by Beverly with Ferd as her co-writer; she, in turn, served as a co-director to Ferd — we’ve got two reformed, California “Summer of Love” hippies in a tricked-out dune buggy pulling heists. Ah, but this is lighthearted caper, so if it sounds a lot like Smokey and the Bandit — two years before we knew anything about a gold eagle-blazed black Trans Ams — it probably is.

“The Flash” of these proceedings is the affable Tricia Sembera, who, while on her way to becoming the next Claudia Jennings (‘Gator Bait) courtesy of getting her start with the Sebastians, retired from the business after making this, her lone film. After continuing her 20-year successful overseas modeling career with Ford Models, she came out of retirement to do one more film: the 1980 ABC-TV movie The Ivory Ape starring Jack Palance.

“The Firecat” of these crime caper shenanigans is TV actor Roger Davis, who you know for his two year, 120-plus episode run as Charles Delaware Tate on TV’s Dark Shadows, as Jeff Clark in the 1970 House of Dark Shadows theatrical film, and the scuzzy redneck romp, 1976’s Nashville Girl. (And I remember him as the human-Cylon hybrid “Andromus” from the awful-dreadful Galactica: 1980. Sorry, Rog.)

Together, as the Flash and the Firecat, they concoct an idea to use The Flash’s blonde bombshell wiles to seduce Tracy Walley, the teen son (Tracy Sebastian, aka Trey Loren, aka Billy Eye Harper) of a bank manager (ubiquitous TV actor Phil Burns**), and ride the dopey, love-struck puppy around town in her “cool” dune buggy and buy him an Orange Fanta, etc. Meanwhile, The Firecat calls in a ransom demand and walks out of the bank with $30K large — without pulling a gun. Of course . . . Tracy Walley isn’t kidnapped because, going back to our Smokey and the Bandit analogy: he’s “Frog,” aka Sally Field, who was “kidnapped” by the Bandit. And, as we say often around here, “the chase” ensues.

Hey, wait a minute. I know this footage! Yep! STOCK FOOTAGE ALERT! It was used on The Fall Guy! Thanks to SCL Stunt Fan You Tube for the upload.

The chase comes courtesy of Sheriff C.W. Thurston, played by the always welcomed Dub Taylor (known for 1972’s The Getaway and 1969’s The Wild Bunch, and too many other films — 260 — across film and TV to mention). Also on their trail is Milo Pewett, played by Richard “Jaws” Kiel (The Humanoid), who could care less about the kid and more about the cash.

Hey! There’s Newell Alexander (who also appears in 2012’s Easy Rider: The Ride Back, which we reviewed for our first “Fast & Furious Week”). And there’s George “Buck” Flowers! YEAH! So, basically all of the underdog actors from the ’60 and ’70s we care about here at B&S About Movies are in this movie.

You can watch Flash and the Firecat for free on You Tube, as well as a few other Sebastian International Pictures flicks on their official You Tube page.

* Yeah, we love Billy Eye and Rocktober Blood around here . . . a love only matched by our admiration for Sammy Curr in the other “No False Metal” classic of our youth: Trick or Treat.

• No False Metal: Rocktober Blood
• Box Office Failures: Rocktober Blood 2: Billy’s Revenge
• Rocktober Blood: A Second Look: Remembering Nigel Benjamin
• Seven Notes of Terror (the Euro-Italian reimaging of Rocktober Blood reviewed for our “Giallo Week“)

** Sorry Sam: Don’t fire me, man. But Phil Burns was Marty Seinfeld, Jerry’s dad for one episode. He was soon fired and replaced by Barry Frank. So, you may want to ban Phil Burn and Barry Frank movies, so as to stop my Seinfeld insanity.

Ferd Sebastian
July 25, 1933 — March 27, 2022
Obituary

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.