Before “Racer X,” the 1998 Vibe magazine article that detailed an illegal street racing circuit operating within New York City . . . before Vin Diesel and Paul Walker . . . there was this tale of romance and cops-on-the-case originally known as Crashout, written by Roger Corman.
In a deal similar to the one Corman made with Ron Howard years later on Grand Theft Auto: John Ireland agreed to star only if he could direct. And in nine days on a budget of $50,000, Ireland (The Shape of Things to Come, Incubus) directed his first feature film, Corman had his second producer’s credit (after Monster from the Ocean Floor), and the newly-incorporated American Releasing Corporation (which would become American International Pictures) had their first feature film. For Ireland’s co-star, Corman was able to get a down-and-out Dorothy Malone, who was without talent representation at the time, for an affordable price.
In the pages of his 1990 biography, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime, Roger Corman states that producer Neal H. Moritz and Universal Pictures approached him to licensed the title for 2001’s The Fast and the Furious after Moritz learned of Corman’s 1954 film while watching a documentary about American International Pictures. At the time, Moritz toyed with the idea of retaining the Racer X title from the Vibe article, along with the titles of Race Wars and Street Wars. One of Moritz’s rejected titles, Redline, was later used by one of the many F&F rip-offs, a 2007 film starring Tim Matheson and Eddie Griffin. (And another of the knockoffs, 2008’s Street Racer from Asylum Studios, sounds suspiciously like a portmanteau of Mortiz’s others rejected titles.) The deal that got it done: Moritz could have Corman’s title-by-trade: all he had to do was give Corman some stock footage to use in his later productions.
Universal welcomed Corman into the fold again when he got the idea to make his own sequel to 1975’s Death Race 2000. The idea came to fruition when an Italian journalist interviewing Corman commented The Hunger Games shared similar social and political themes explored in Death Race 2000. So Corman reached out to Universal, who produced Paul W. S. Anderson’s 2008 remake, with a plan to bring back the dark, sociopolitical satire of the original — and the killing of pedestrians. Universal was on board: the studio co-produced the film that became Death Race 2050 with Corman’s New World for the home video streaming market.
As you watch Corman’s ’54 car racing drama, you’ll notice the plot bears a striking resemblance to the glut of low-budget indie knockoffs made in the wake of F&F 2001’s success: We have another ne’er-do-well charged with a murder he did not commit and his salvation lies on the quarter mile.
Broken out of jail and on the run, someone recognizes Frank Webster (John Ireland) in a small, roadside coffee shop. To facilitate his escape, he kidnaps a customer, Connie (Dorothy Malone), and hits the road in her white Jaguar sports car. To elude police, and courtesy of Connie’s sleek ride, Frank easily slips into a cross-border sports car race into Mexico. Cops, guns, crashes . . . and love, ensues.
You have a couple of streaming choices. You can watch this on TubiTV or on You Tube HERE and HERE. The quality on all three uploads is about the same, but the Tubi upload carries ads. You can also watch it over on the Internet Archive, which is turning out to be a great repository for hard-to-find and classic films.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes forB&S About Movies.
Much like how The Fast and The Furious would take the familiar title of a past film and make something new, this movie is a loose remake of the 1974 H.B. Halicki movie. Also, much like the Paul Walker/Vin Diesel film, critics absolutely hated this movie, which cried all the way to nearly tripling its production costs at the box office.
It has something that every single The Fast and the Furious movie lacks: Nicolas Cage as Randall “Memphis” Raines.
Memphis has the job of stealing fifty luxury cars for Raymond Calitri (Christopher Eccleston, who played both Dr. Who and Destro). He wanted out of this life, but his moron brother Kip (noted film idiot Giovanni Ribisi) screwed up and will get killed if his big brother doesn’t fix things.
Along with his mentor Otto Halliwell (Robert Duvall), Memphis assembles his crew again, including Donny Astricky (Chi McBride), Sphinx (former football star Vinnie Jones) and Sara “Sway” Wayland (Angelina Jolie, probably the main reason other than Cage to watch this movie).
I love that the cop, Detective Roland Castlebeck, is played by Delroy Lindo. That guy should be in more movies. Plus you get Scott Caan, James Duval from Gregg Araki’s movies, Timothy Olyphant, Grace Zabriskie (Sarah Palmer!), Trevor Goddard (Kano!), Mater P (Hootie hoo!) and John Carroll Lynch, who should also be in more movies.
Remember up top when I said this was a success? The truth is that its high production and marketing cost lost Disney around $90 million, who used Hollywood math to write it off as a $212 million loss. I guess that explains why there was no sequel.
Director Dominick Sena made music videos for everyone from E.G. Daily (“Sat It Say It”), Peter Cetera and Amy Grant (“The Next Time I Fall In Love”) and Richard Marx (“Don’t Mean Nothing”, “Should’ve Known Better”) to Janet Jackson (“Rhythm Nation”, “If”, “Miss You Much”, “Come Back to Me” and “The Pleasure Principle”) and Pia Zadora (“Heartbeat of Love”) before making movies like Kalifornia, Swordfish and Season of the Witch, which reunited him with Cage.
And what in the hell is this about? “Nic Cage Bitch” is our Nicolas Cage blowout written by Paul Andolina of Wrestling with Film. It’s a must read for all fans of the Cage, so check it out and learn about some Cage films you may have missed, such as A Score to Settle, Between Worlds, Kill Chain, Outcast, Rage, and Seeking Justice.
Mill Creek box sets are among my favorite things in life, as otherwise, I’d never discover so many movies. However, for every Cathy’s Curse, Welcome to Blood City or The Alpha Incident there is a Best Friends. Such is life. Savage Cinema box set, you so crazy.
Jesse (Richard Hatch, Battlestar Galactica) is the mature one. Pat (Doug Chapin, Where Have All the People Gone) is the goofy one. Together with their girls, Kathy (Susanne Benton, A Boy and His Dog) and Jo Ella (Ann Noland, Satan’s School for Girls), they decide to go on a RV trip across the country. For everyone that has told me what a good idea that sounds like, I point them to movies like this. Actually, have any movies about being on a Winnebago trip ever gone well?
Director Noel Nosseck made the move from movies like this into TV movies like this. Good for him. As for this movie, well, this movie promises some drive-in scumbag narrative and delivers a relationship film. No matter what, I always end up judging movies by their cover.
You can watch this on YouTube, if you haven’t bought the set.
Justin Lin comes into the franchise here and, well, he has none of the original cast members coming back. So what do you do? Concentrate on the cars. Also, the chronological history of the story would change from here on out, with installments until 2015’s Furious 7 being set between 2 Fast 2 Furious and this movie.
Yes, you’d be shocked how confusing — and deep — these movies go. I watched all of them within a day or two, so I’m still amazed how we go from street gangs to the family basically being the G.I. Joe team.
High school student Sean Boswell keeps getting arrested for street racing, so he is sent to live in Japan with his father. There, he discovers, well, street racing. Are you surprised? There he meets Twinkie (Bow Wow), who gets him in and he starts doing that Tokyo Drift, as they say.
Sung Kang, who plays Han Lue, originated that role in Lin’s movie Better Luck Tomorrow. He’d return in Fast & Furious, Fast Five,Fast & Furious 6 and Furious 7, as well as the short film Los Bandoleros, all set between the events of Better Luck Tomorrow and this movie. Han’s explosive car crash was revisited in post-credits scene of Fast & Furious 6, which introduced Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw.
Boswell would return in Furious 7, while he, Kang and Twinkie will all be back for F9. How is Kang still alive? We’ll see.
Following poor test screenings, Vin Diesel agreed to make a cameo as Dom in exchange for Universal’s ownership to the rights of the Riddick series and character. No money exchanged hands. I’m always amazed at how canny Diesel is. This allowed him to make 2013’s Riddick as an independent film. Also, of course Dom won in the race against Boswell. Come on.
This Saturday, August 8 at 8 PM — yes, 8/8/2020 at 8 PM, which feels like some kind of occult ritual is about to happen — we’ll be conjuring up two visions of the sasquatch, the yeti, the skunk ape…the Bigfoot!
Up first, 1974’s Shriek of the Mutilated!
Here’s a drink just perfect for draining while you watch people get, well, mutilated!
EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie originally ran on our site during our Biker Week event on July 24, 2018. It has perhaps one of my favorite trailers of all time. And seeing how it ended up on the Mill Creek Savage Cinema set, let’s take another look at it.
I have no idea who this movie is for. I would imagine that gay folks would either find it camp or be offended by its horrible stereotypes. Then, I think that bikers would also be upset by the fact that it sends up their culture and points out the homoeroticism at its core. And then, I think that anyone looking for a comedy will be put off by the ending. Even worse, anyone who loves good filmmaking will wonder why they’ve suffered through the endless takes and torturous plot.
But fuck, that’s a great trailer. It has everything good about this movie, including some quotable lines. That’s what a great grindhouse or drive-in trailer is all about: action, baby!
Director Larry G. Brown only created two other films: An Eye from an Eye, a 1973 movie where a children’s television show host stalks and murders abusive parents, and 1986’s Silent but Deadly, which has a poster of a dog farting.
Producer Gary Razdat even posted this on IMDB about the film: “In the genre of cinema verite, I thought that the film was a pure attempt to make a movie and see if it could get distributed…I know that for sure as I am the one that produced the movie. It started out with the best of intentions and the money came and went…the best part was that we actually got it distributed and on the film circuit…The characters were picked from the USC school of film as were a couple of the women, one of which was an actual ‘hooker’ that just wanted to be in the film. It was a real effort to complete the film since the director was insane and had forgotten to film an ending – which we had to re-shoot after everything was wrapped…quite a story, eh?”
Hey — is that Michael Pataki and Dan Haggarty as bikers? Yep. Sure is. They’re straight bikers who the Pink Angels ply with prostitutes. Yet when they wake up, they’ve been made up with hair accessories and makeup by our heroes. Oh, you guys. This scene probably only exists so we can get some female nudity and moviegoers could feel a bit more manly after seeing so much man lust. It’s also when one of the better scenes happens, as the future Grizzly Adams jumps on the black prostitute, who proclaims, “Black is not only beautiful, it’s good.”
There’s also a general who is trying to capture the Pink Angels for some reason. And he gets them in the end, as the film jump cuts to an ending with our heroes, the folks we laughed, love and fought with for over 80 minutes or so lynched in the front yard. I guess after Easy Rider every biker movie had to end on a downer note. That said, this is a real downer.
My advice? Just watch the trailer. You’ll be better off.
The Mill Creek Savage Cinema set features an image from this film’s poster on its cover. Seeing as how this was also known as Biker Babes, it’s probably the most suggestive — and therefore best possible selling — film to feature.
The Hellcats bury Big Daddy, who was killed by their mob contact Mr. Adrian (Robert F. Slatzer, who directed this as well as Bigfoot) when he learned that the crook was also a snitch for Detective Dave Chapman. All of these relationships are symbolized in the start of the film — the biker gang is putting their boss in the ground while the cops and the crooks watch from a distance.
Adrian decides to kill off Chapman when he’s on a date with his fiancee Linda (Dee Duffy, who was a Slaygirl and Miss June in the Matt Helm movies The Ambushers and Murderer’s Row). Dave’s brother Monte (Ross Hagen, who was also in The Sidehackers) comes back from the war to learn about what happened. He and Linda decide to act like a biker couple and get revenge.
He does so by getting drawn and quartered longer than the leader of the gang, Snake (Sonny West, a member of Elvis’ Memphis Mafia). This earns him the right to have sex with Sheila (one and done actress Sharyn Kinzie) and brings our protagonists into the gang’s scam to bring back drugs from Mexico.
Tom Hanson, who directed The Zodiac Killer, shows up here as Mongoose. Gus Trikonis, who made Nashville Woman, The Evil, She’s Dressed to Killand more, is Scorpio. Tony Lorea, who plays Six-Pack and also acted in Supercock, went to to be the assistant director of Sweet Sixteen, The Gloveand Ladies Night. Was this entire gang made up of exploitation movie directors? Where’s Bud Cardos?
You can either watch this as part of the Savage Cinema set or check it out on Daily Motion.
You know how it is at B&S About Movies: discussing mainstream, Tinseltown-made movies is anathema. So when we started digging into the antecedents of The Fast and the Furious franchise for this tribute week, you know we’re heading to the VHS shelves stocked with the films directed by Daniel Haller (Die Monster, Die, Devil’s Angels, and The Dunwich Horror), William Asher (Johnny Cool and “Beach Movies”), and Richard Rush (Hells Angels on Wheels, Psych-Out, The Savage Seven) that star the actors we care about, i.e., Frankie Avalon (Blood Song), Fabian (Disco Fever, Kiss Daddy Goodbye), Mimsy Farmer (swoon . . . Four Flies on Grey Velvet, The Perfume of the Lady in Black, Autopsy), Annette Funicello, and Diane McBain (Maryjane, The Mini-Skirt Mob, The Delta Factor). So, yeah, we’re going to review Thunder Alley (1967), The Wild Racers (1968) and Fireball 500 (1966) in quick succession. We’d be derelict in our reviewing duties if we didn’t inhale anything with the Corman-AIP stank on it*. (Ditto for Jim Drake’s (Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol) 1989 car-crash homage, Speed Zone.)
So while this “mainstream” film is directed by Howard Hawks and released by Paramount Pictures, we’re breaking those mainstream-rules since this racing “epic” features an early starring role for James Caan (who did this and the space “epic” Countdown and water “epic” Submarine X-1 . . . on his way to the apoc-epic Rollerball. . . oh, and some mob-movie called The Godfather).
But don’t let Caan’s presence and the iconic name of Howard Hawks fool you: This is pure Elvis-as-a-race car driver-via-process shots tomfoolery, ala Viva Las Vegas (1964), Spinout(1966), and Speedway (1968), without the singing. Hawks should have cast Frankie Avalon and Fabian, and dumped it in Drive-Ins, and called it a day. At least it would have turned a profit, like those abysmal (yet adoring) Elvis race romps.
“We gotta win this race . . . lemonade, that cool, refreshing drink.”
It’s true: The days of Hawks wowing us with the gangster classic Scarface(1932), the war epic Sergeant York (1941), the noir must-see The Big Sleep (1946), his one-two punch oeuvre with John Wayne of Red River (1948) and Rio Bravo (1959) (yeah, we know they also did ’62s Hatari, ’67s El Dorado, and ’70s Rio Lobo), and — the big daddy of sci-fi — The Thing From Another World (1951), were clearly behind him. Critics weren’t kind then, and retro-critics aren’t kind now, to this NASCAR romance-saga — and as someone who watched all of the Hawks-Wayne films with his dad (and loved them): I can honestly say this truly is the weakest film in the Hawks catalog.
In the backwash of Hawks-Paramount Pictures’ production, John Frankenheimer (Birdman of Alcatraz, The Manchurian Candidate, the blimp-disaster Black Sunday) put together the superior Formula One-centric Grand Prix (1966) with James Garner (chronicled in document, The Racing Scene). That Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film “blew the doors off” Paramount’s Red Line 7000, with a $20 million gross against $9 million, making it one of the Top-Ten grossing films of 1966, which earned a DGA Award for Outstanding Directing in a Feature Film — even though it featured real-life, stock-shot racing footage, just like the Hawks racing drama.
As with Tom Cruise developing his love of car racing into Days of Thunder(1990), Steve McQueen — himself an accomplished racer of Porsches — produced his affection for France’s 24 Hours of Le Mans with Le Mans (1971) for 20th Century Fox. As with Red Line 7000, and unlike Grand Prix, McQueen’s racing epic — even though it filmed all of its racing footage “on-location” during the 1970 Le Mans race — failed at the box office, making less than its $8 million budget. Ditto for Paul Newman who made Winning (1969), his Indy 500-dreamer race romp with James Goldstone (TV movie heaven with Cry Panic and the amusement-disaster Rollercoaster) for Universal.
And what’s our analog god of all things UHF and VHS have to say about all this racing tomfoolery: Quentin Tarantino has stated that he’d “rather saw off his fingers” than sit through Winning, as it was worse than Steve McQueen’s Le Mans. He’s also said that if he was to direct a racing movie (Please do! Don’t let Once Upon a Time In Hollywood be the end?), it wouldn’t be pretentious, like Grand Prix, it would be like Red Line 7000, with it’s soap-opera-everyone-trying-to-sleep-with-everyone-else storyline, but fun — and play like a really great Elvis Presley race movie.
And Quentin loves his cars (in movies) and didn’t miss that Red Line 7000 features the then “new” 1965 Shelby GT-350 speeding on the track and that one of the characters drives a 1965 Cobra Daytona Coupe. In his own Once Up a Time in Hollywood, Quentin broke production protocols and used over 2000 vintage rides in the film: the average film uses between 300 to 500 cars. To that “racing end”: Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) drove a 1962 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, Abigail Folger (Samantha Robinson) drove a 1969 Pontiac Firebird, and Tex Watson (Austin Butler) drove a 1959 Ford Galaxie.
So, am I out of line saying that I’m waiting for Humphrey Bogart to crawl out of the cockpit, unzip the flame retardants, and jump into the Holiday Inn sack with Lauren Bacall?
That’s how outdated (even back in the early UHF ’70s) this racing romp feels to me, with the horses traded out for cars and the western wastelands for circular asphalt. And that Nelson Riddle score! Talk about wanting to saw off fingers . . . and ears. Where’s that swingin’ n’ screechin’ Dick Contino (Daddy-O, Girls Town) jazz score when you need it? (The ‘Con bagged Leigh Snowden from The Creature Walks Among Us, so he’s a “cool cat” in my book.)
But that’s the plot, sans the horses and Nevada dirt: everyone is trying to bed everyone else except their own girlfriends, either punching out or trying to kill their romantic rivals. And in between: they race via process shots via stock footage (including several high-profile crashes) filmed at the Atlanta Motor Speedway, Darlington Raceway, Daytona International Speedway, and Riverside International Speedway — A.J Foyt’s violent crash at Riverside earlier in 1965 served as the “death” of Caan’s team mate at Daytona. The “romance” gets so heated that Caan’s Mike Marsh trades paint with Dan McCall (Skip Ward of Ann-Margret’s Kitten with a Whip, Elvis’s Easy Come, Easy Go, and the box-office bomb Myra Breckiridge) and tries to kill him on the track.
On the casting side: George Takei, on his way to where no man has gone before, is Kato, a member of Caan’s pit crew. And no disrespect to the mighty Jonathan E., but how cool would it have been to see Paul Mantee of Paramount’s Robinson Crusoe on Mars (and the Bond rips A Man Called Dagger and That Man Bolt) in Caan’s role (who was also a Paramount contract player)?
Again, it all comes back to the actors we want to see: Paul Mantee. Do you remember Paul on Seinfeld as the Health Inspector busting Poppy for peeing and not washing his hands? And — surely Sam will give me shite — we’re back to my “Six Degrees of Seinfeld” foolishness, again.
Sorry, kids. No freebies. Not even on TubiTV and Vudu. You’ll have to settle for an Amazon Prime VOD.
* Long threatened, we finally rolled out that Roger Corman tribute month to his New World Pictures shingle in March 2023. Clicking through will populate all of those reviews.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
William Asher’s career was mostly in TV — he was a driving force behind I Love Lucy and Bewitched — and making AIP’s beach movies work. The one aberration is the movie Butcher, Baker Nightmare Maker, which is a mindblowing piece of film that I encourage everyone to see.
AIP was always ahead of the teen curve, as they realized that the beach films had run their course and now, the kids wanted, well, rebellion.
AIP executive Deke Heyward said, “The next big thing for teenage films is protest. Teenagers empathize with protest because they are in revolt against their parents… These films represent a protest against society. These will be moral tales, there will be good guys and bad guys. But we will show the reasons for young people going against the dictates of the establishment.”
Stock car racer “Fireball” Dave Owens (Frankie Avalon) has come from the West Coast to race Spartansburg’s champion Sonny Leander Fox (Fabian). He also gets plenty of glances from Fox’s girl, Jane (Annette Funicello).
The conflict comes when Dave is conned into smuggling moonshine by Julie Parrish and Harvey Lembeck’s characters. Then the IRS gets involved, threatening to jail our hero unless he helps them defeat the moonshiners. And then Fox wants one more race on the deadly Figure 8 track.
The real star of this movie is the Fireball 500, a 1966 Plymouth Barracuda customized by George Barris. There was going to be a sequel, Malibu 500, but that eventually became Thunder Alley.
As if Dave making eyes at Fox’s girl wasn’t bad enough, he’s also hooked up with Martha the Moonshiner (the aforementioned Parrish). So how does our man beat the system and get the girl? There’s only one way to find out.
Let’s roll the dice on that Mill Creek Savage Cinema box set one more time. This time? An American mondo exploration of the Death Riders, a group of stuntmen travelling the country, picking up ladies and blowing one another up real good.
You have to love a movie with the tagline, ” A Motion Picture Dedicated to Those Who Don’t Make It.” Yes, the teenage and twenty-something boys — barely men at this stage in their lives — that make up the Death Riders are carny barnstormers, heading from town to town putting on all manner of stuntwork for audiences that, at times, swarm them with affection. It’s also the only movie that Jim Wilson would direct, although he did serve as the cinematographer for the Chuck Norris movie Good Guys Wear Black.
Oh Crown International Pictures. Oh Mill Creek. When the two of you unite, I get crazy films like this to take my mind off the world and how much it upsets me. Can we just go back to 1976 and put me inside a wooden coffin with no safety measures and explode me in a field to the delight of some kids who are bored on a hot summer night?
Vilmos Zsigmond — yes, the same man who shot McCabe and Mrs. Miller, as well as The Deer Hunter and Close Encounters of the Third Kind — was the director of photography on this. And it was edited by Phil Tucker, who in addition to also cutting The Nude Bomb directed the burst of insanity known as Robot Monster.
You’ll feel like you’re part of the gang, pranking one another, forgetting a girl by the next town and randomly winning $5 for a motocross race out of nowhere. This movie is the mid-70’s, a lived in, dog-earred, threadbare and sun-drenched mess, but so enjoyable all at the same time.
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