Checkered Flag or Crash (1977)

This car-race picture comes awfully close to qualifying as entertainment, but dodgy editing and vapid storytelling eventually become so distracting that it’s hard to classify Checkered Flag or Crashas anything other than a dud. Set in the Philippines, the movie depicts a 1,000-mile road race that attracts sportsmen driving cars, dune buggies, and motorcycles. Part demolition derby, part endurance test, and part speed trial, the race scenario offers great potential for action, comedy, and drama. Alas, writer Michael Allin and director Alan Gibson mostly substitute shots of cars driving through dirt patches and thick jungles for actual cinematic content. Joe Don Baker stars as champion driver “Walkaway” Madden, a bearish American, and Susan Sarandon costars as C.C. Wainwright, a car-magazine reporter who rides shotgun in Madden’s rig during the race. The other significant characters are Bo Cochran (Larry Hagman), the race’s good-ol’-boy organizer, and “Doc” Pyle (Alan Vint), Madden’s ex-partner and a rival driver. The movie largely comprises so-so racing footage, interspersed with cutesy romantic-banter scenes involving Baker and Sarandon. While both actors display their considerable innate charm, there’s no chemistry between them, and the characters are underdeveloped to the point of barely existing. Furthermore, there’s no tension in the movie, since Madden’s first-place finish is never in doubt. (After all, most of the other drivers are portrayed as losers and/or nincompoops.) The picture has decent production values, but these don’t count for much because the shooting and cutting of racing scenes is sloppy—camera angles are so close that it’s hard to distinguish details, and the editing relies on blur shots for connective tissue. Considering that Checkered Flag or Crash is a race movie, the presence of substandard racing footage pretty much scotches the whole deal. Yet the movie’s most galling element, by far, is the atrocious music score, which has a cornpone Nashville-meets-Vegas quality. Some of the cues seem pulled from old Hee-Haw sketches, and the title song is the worst kind of truckstop earworm.

Checkered Flag or Crash: LAME

The Van (1977)

It’s no mystery why most teen sex comedies are awful, since the producers of such films prioritize raunchy humor and sleazy scenarios over more high-minded storytelling considerations. Nonetheless, generating a few cheap laughs (and a few cheap thrills) from a simple premise shouldn’t be the most difficult task in the world. Therefore, upon encountering a dud like The Van, one can only marvel at how completely the filmmakers in question failed to vault such a low hurdle. Built around the most rudimentary of ideas—a high school graduate buys a tricked-out van to use as a bachelor pad on wheels—the movie churns through one unfunny scene after another, the inherent nothingness of each sequence exacerbated by choppy editing. Naturally, the acting is terrible, with the lone exception of future star Danny DeVito, who appears in a smallish supporting role. The picture begins when Bobby (forgettable redhead Stuart Goetz) graduates from high school and cashes in the money he’s made working at a car wash to buy a rig that he christens “Straight Arrow.” (Those words, accompanied by a phallic graphic, appear on the side of Bobby’s van.) Although Bobby is in love with classmate Tina (Deborah White), he spends the summer wooing various women into his van for sex. The comedic “highlight” of his carnal campaign involves sleeping with a heavyset girl whose weight breaks the waterbed Bobby installed in the back of the vehicle. The narrative is disjointed, with subplots introduced and discarded arbitrarily, and whenever the filmmakers run out of ideas (which is often), they cut to a montage and play the tacky soft-rock song “Chevy Van”—notwithstanding the fact that the Straight Arrow is a Dodge. The Van is so enervated that at one point, Bobby and Tina spend an entire lengthy montage attending a beachside van show, looking at other people’s tricked-out rigs with admiration. And as if failing to deliver in every other way wasn’t bad enough, The Vanstrikes out in the smut department, since there’s virtually no nudity in the film. So, unless ogling vehicles that are adorned with airbrushed murals raises your temperature, leave this wreck on the side of the highway where it belongs.

The Van: LAME

Death Race 2000 (1975)

           When is a bad movie a good movie? Death Race 2000 falls short of any serious standards, because it’s campy, cartoonish, and silly, with one-dimensional characters cavorting their way through absurd adventures. Yet the film’s exuberance and lack of pretention manifest as a crude sort of charm, which works in tandem with breakneck pacing—the movie’s like a piece of candy you don’t realize you shouldn’t be eating until it’s all gone. Science fiction delivered by way of black comedy, Death Race 2000 presents a future in which the United States has become the United Provinces. The supreme ruler of the United Provinces, Mr. President (Sandy McCallum), has eliminated many personal freedoms and keeps the population narcotized by presenting an annual blood-sport extravaganza called the Transcontinental Road Race. A small group of drivers, each of whom has an oversized persona and a colorful costume to match, competes not only by racing each other from one coast to the next but also by running over pedestrians for points. During this particular iteration of the race, however, leftist rebels subvert Mr. President’s authority by sabotaging the event.

          The main racers are Frankenstein (David Carradine), the reigning champion whose body comprises replacement parts after years of racing injuries; “Machine-Gun” Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone), a gangster-styled competitor determined to replace Frankenstein as the crowd’s favorite; “Calamity” Jane Kelly (Mary Woronov), who works a Western-outlaw motif; Herman “The German” Boch (Fred Grandy), the league’s resident ersatz Nazi; and Ray “Nero the Hero” Lonagan (Martin Kove), a vainglorious putz with a Roman Empire shtick. Each racer is paired with a navigator, so most of the film comprises standoffs in which teams try to beat each other’s racing times and score points by nailing innocent victims. Also woven into the film are running gags related to announcers and fans. Plus, of course, the violence of the rebels.

          Based on a story by Ib Melchior, Death Race 2000was produced by Roger Corman and co-written by longtime Corman collaborator Charles B. Griffith, whose sardonic touch is audible in the film’s playful dialogue. Director Paul Bartel, the avant-garde humorist who later made the cult-fave comedy Eating Raoul (1982), does a great job throughout Death Race 2000 of balancing goofy humor with sly social commentary—every gag is a nudge at consumerism, egotism, sensationalism, or something else of that nature. The movie is never laugh-out-loud funny, but the tone is consistent and the story (mostly) makes sense. Plus, this being a Corman production, there’s plenty of gore and nudity to keep l0w-minded fans happy. Carradine makes an appealing antihero, his casual cool suited to the role of a seasoned killer, and Stallone is amusing as his hotheaded rival. Meanwhile, Woronov lends a touch of heart, Don Steele (who plays the main announcer) sends up showbiz phoniness, and leading lady Simone Griffeth (who plays Frankenstein’s navigator) blends likeability with sexiness. Best of all, Death Race 2000 runs is course in 80 brisk minutes—all killer, no filler.

Death Race 2000: GROOVY

Vanishing Point (1971)

          Although I’ve never really grooved to this particular counterculture artifact, as many friends who dig the same cinematic era have, all it takes to explain the appeal of Vanishing Point is to describe the close parallel between the film’s minimalistic storyline and prevailing early-’70s social concerns. Barry Newman stars as Kowalski, a drifter who makes his living delivering cars across long distances. After accepting a job to ferry a hot rod from Denver to San Francisco, Kowalski jacks himself up on speed and blasts down open highways with legions of cops in pursuit. Meanwhile, an enigmatic, blind radio DJ going by the handle “Super Soul” (Cleavon Little) narrates Kowalski’s journey for his listeners, framing the driver’s ride as a principled fight against the Establishment. The sympathetic reading of this material, of course, is that Kowalski just wants to be free, man, so when society tries to trap him with laws and rules and speed limits, he strikes a rebellious blow on behalf of rugged independence. And if you can’t anticipate how a story comprising these elements will end, then you haven’t seen too many counterculture flicks—as the song goes, freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.

          Viewed as historically relevant symbolism, Vanishing Point is interesting, because it presents a lone-wolf protagonist whose existence comprises nothing but early-’70s signifiers: He’s an alienated Vietnam vet, he self-medicates with illegal drugs, and he’s determined to force a confrontation with what he perceives to be the oppressive forces of law and order. Heavy shit, no question. It seems safe to say that writers Guillermo Cain, Barry Hall, and Malcolm Hart—as well as director Richard C. Sarafian—deliberately infused their story with of-the-moment dimensions.

          But very much like another existentialist road movie of the same vintage, Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Vanishing Point plays an iffy game by using ciphers instead of fully realized characters. For instance, certain conventional narrative elements, such as backstory and well-articulated motivation, are largely absent from Vanishing Point. So, even though Vanishing Point provides ample fodder for post-movie interpretation games, the actual onscreen events are repetitive and superficial. It doesn’t help that Newman, who enjoyed a very brief run as a leading man in movies and television, is a bland persona. (Conversely, Little exudes casual-cool charisma and delivers his on-air monologues with smooth style.) It also says a lot that many Vanishing Point fans dig the movie because they’re entranced by the Dodge Challenger muscle car that Newman drives in the movie. After all, the Challenger has the film’s most fully rendered characterization—especially compared to the cringe-worthy portrayals of two gay hitchhikers whom the hero encounters.

Vanishing Point: FUNKY

Eat My Dust! (1976) & Grand Theft Auto (1977)

          Although these silly car-chase romps produced by Roger Corman should not be mistaken for quality cinema, they enjoy footnote status in movie history because they allowed Ron Howard to become a director. By the mid-’70s, Howard was a veteran TV star, having appeared in over 200 episodes of the ’60s favorite The Andy Griffith Show as a child actor, and having successfully transitioned to grown-up fame in Happy Days, which hit the airwaves in 1974. Additionally, he’d gotten a toehold in features, thanks to American Graffiti(1973). But what Howard really wanted to do, as the saying goes, is direct—so he agreed to star in Corman’s Eat My Dust! if the producer let Howard direct the follow-up. And though Grand Theft Auto is not a sequel (Howard plays different characters in each movie), both pictures traffic in vehicular mayhem.

          Eat My Dust! was written and directed by frequent Corman collaborator Charles Griffith, who always brought gonzo humor to his work. The picture stars Howard as small-town kid Hoover Nievold, the car-crazy son of a world-weary country sheriff (Warren J. Kemmerling). Hoover’s desperate to make time with a sexy blonde named Darlene (Christopher Norris), and she’s a speed freak infatuated with a racecar owned by Bubba Jones (Dave Madden). Hoover steals the car and takes Darlene for a joyride so he can get laid. That’s pretty much the entire story. Bystanders lose property as Hoover blasts through the countryside,  the sheriff makes chase, police cars crack up in spectacular ways, and Griffith throws a few weird sight gags into the mix, but nearly the only thing differentiating Eat My Dust! from other Corman car flicks is the lively bluegrass score by ace mandolin player David Grisman. Still, Howard is appealingly peppy, Kemmerling is entertainingly cranky, Norris is wholesomely pretty, and the movie is basically harmless.

          As for the sequel, one must strain to find indications of Howard’s future directorial talent in Grand Theft Auto—the picture was made in the same quick-and-dirty fashion as Eat My Dust!—but great things often come from humble beginnings. Howard co-wrote Grand Theft Auto with his dad, character actor Rance Howard, and the sequel is more plot-driven but slightly less enjoyable than its predecessor, largely because it lacks the freewheeling abandon of Eat My Dust! In Grand Theft Auto, Howard plays Sam Freeman, a young California man of modest means who is eager to marry his wealthy sweetheart, Paula (Nancy Powers). Her folks object to the union, however, so Paula steals her parents’ Rolls-Royce, collects Sam, and makes for Vegas with authorities and her parents in hot pursuit. The story starts to mimic It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) when word gets out that a reward has been placed on the kids’ safe return—random people join the chase and make the situation even more chaotic than before. Eventually, Paula and Sam become folk heroes by defying the oppressive dictates of the Establishment. (This is one of those pictures in which commentary from radio DJs is used to illustrate public sentiment, making Grand Theft Auto a watered-down version of the 1971 cult classic Vanishing Point.) Naturally, the movie concludes with an overwrought demolition derby. Alas, whereas Eat My Dust! has a certain crude charm from beginning to end, Grand Theft Autoruns out of gas well before it crosses the finish line.

Eat My Dust!: FUNKY

Grand Theft Auto: FUNKY

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974)

          While not actually a good movie in terms of artistic achievement and/or narrative ambition, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry is in some perverse ways the epitome of its genre. Throughout the ’70s, filmmakers made innumerable ennui-drenched flicks about young people hitting the road for crime sprees that represented a sort of anti-Establishment activism. In the best such pictures, the wandering youths articulated their angst so well that their actions felt meaningful; in the worst such pictures, the basic premise was simply an excuse for exploitative thrills. Since Dirty Mary Crazy Larry exists somewhere between these extremes, it’s emblematic of the whole early-’70s road-movie headspace. The picture also has just enough cleverness, reflected in flavorful dialogue and oblique camera angles, to validate the existence of genuine thematic material, even in the context of a trashy lovers-on-the-run picture.

          Peter Fonda stars as Larry, an iconoclastic driver pulling crimes to earn money for a new racecar. Riding shotgun during Larry’s adventure is Deke (Adam Roarke), an accomplice/mechanic. During the movie’s exciting opening sequence, Deke breaks into the home of a grocery-store manager (Roddy McDowall) and holds the man’s family hostage while Larry waltzes into the store to collect the contents of the store’s safe. Unfortunately, Larry’s most recent one-night stand, Mary (Susan George), tracks Larry down during his getaway—she steals his keys and threatens to tell the cops what he’s doing unless she lets him tag along. Thus, Deke, Larry, and Mary form an unlikely trio zooming across the Southwest with police in hot pursuit. Working from a novel by Richard Unekis, director John Hough and his assorted screenwriters do a fine job of balancing talky interludes with high-speed chase scenes, creating an ominous sense of inevitability about the drama’s impending resolution.

          Still, the characterizations are thin—although the crooks’ main pursuer, Sheriff Everett Franklin (Vic Morrow), is an enjoyably eccentric small-town lawman—and the performances are erratic. Roarke anchors the getaway scenes with a quiet intensity that complements Fonda’s enjoyably cavalier persona. Englishwoman George, however, is a screeching nuisance, presumably impeded by the task of mimicking redneck patois. She’s so annoying, in fact, that it’s easy to laugh when Fonda berates her with this bizarre ultimatum: “So help me, if you try another stunt like that, I’m gonna braid your tits!” Dirty Mary Crazy Larry zooms along as fast as the cars featured onscreen, delivering several nerve-jangling crash scenes and generally setting an interesting trap for the reckless protagonists. Yet the movie’s ending changes everything, and the finale is so quintessentially ’70s that it’s reason enough to check out this hard-charging romp.

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry: GROOVY

Thunder and Lightning (1977)

Yet another drive-in flick about rambunctious moonshiners, Thunder and Lightning would linger far below the pop-culture radar if not for the popularity of its leading actors, David Carradine and Kate Jackson. Working once again under the penny-pinching aegis of producer Roger Corman, Carradine pours on the rebellious charm to liven up the story’s aimless cacophony of chase scenes, explosions, and fist fights. In fact, Carradine is forced to contribute extra effort—if smirking can be described as effort, that is—because Charlie’s Angels spitfire Jackson is more or less a nonentity given the colorless nature of her co-starring role. Carradine plays Harley Thomas, a good ol’ boy whose graying uncles cook up moonshine that he delivers in his souped-up ’57 Chevy. Harley dates Nancy Sue Hunnicut (Jackson), a wealthy young woman who doesn’t realize her father, Ralph Junior Hunnicut (Roger C. Carmel), hides a massive moonshine operation behind the front of his legit soda-pop empire. Through the machinations of an unnecessarily convoluted story, Ralph Junior gets into trouble with the Northeast mafia, Harley gets into trouble with Ralph Junior, and everybody ends up chasing after a massive shipment of poisoned moonshine. The fast-moving picture also makes room for an alligator-wrestling preacher, a pair of incompetent Noo Yawk assassins, and Ralph Junior’s knuckle-dragging henchmen, two of whom are played by ’70s B-movie stalwarts George Murdock and Charles Napier. Although Thunder and Lightningis ostensibly a comedy, frenetic onscreen action is presented in lieu of actual jokes. Given the movie’s choppy editing, one suspects that director Corey Allen’s on-set camerawork was chopped apart during post-production to rev up the pacing, so if Thunder and Lightningever had nuance (unlikely), it disappeared long before the movie hit screens. Still, the picture offers a few brainlessly diverting scenes, as well as some choice examples of redneck patois—like the moment when a motorcycle cop sees a pair of cars zoom by and exclaims, “Sweet kidneys of Christ, those boys were movin’!”

Thunder and Lightning: FUNKY

Le Mans (1971)

          Virtually an experimental film despite its big budget and marquee star, Le Mans is actor Steve McQueen’s most ardent cinematic love letter to auto racing. Although fast-moving cars played important roles in previous McQueen flicks, notably Bullitt(1968), vehicles are more important to Le Mans than actors, including McQueen himself. Shot on location during the 1970 edition of the grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans road race, the picture has very little characterization, dialogue, or plot. Instead, it’s an impressionistic assembly of exciting footage that plays out like a blend of documentary and European art film.

          We eventually grasp the major threads of the piece, particularly the psychological damage that stoic American driver Michael Delaney (McQueen) suffered after his involvement in a crash at the previous year’s race. We also get glimpses of Delaney’s strained relationships with other drivers and the women who form an emotional constellation around the racetrack. Yet these supporting characters, played by minor European actors, all fade into the background—McQueen’s star power ensures that his is the only personality to emerge from the noise.

          Still, it’s possible that no degree of character definition would have made this piece more distinctive, since there’s a long tradition of auto-racing movies in which actors are overwhelmed by the sturm und drang of their roaring engines. Plus, it’s so clear in every frame of this picture that McQueen gets off on the mechanics of auto racing that it seems likely he got this picture made for his own satisfaction, with the idea of entertaining anyone but hardcore racing fans a secondary consideration. Thus, Le Mans is impressive but soulless.

          Some of the racing footage is undeniably exciting, showing low-riding speed machines blasting around French streets in dangerous conditions like darkness and inclement weather, so it’s impossible not to react viscerally while waiting for the inevitable catastrophes. (The movie’s crash scenes are compelling, with finely tuned vehicles crumbling to scrap given their speeds at the moment of impact.) Furthermore, director Lee H. Katzin’s team employs some truly extraordinary editing, using devices like audio dropouts and jump cuts to maximize the drama of key moments within races, and composer Michel Legrand’s jazzy, Golden Globe-nominated score turns some sequences into the equivalent of slick music videos. However, one longs for a greater sense of the men behind the wheel and the women who love them.

Le Mans: FUNKY

Hooper (1978)

          While this may not sound like the most enthusiastic praise, Hooperis better than most of Burt Reynolds’ myriad car-chase comedies of the ’70s and ’80s. However, because Reynolds’ good-ol’-boy charm was among the most appealing textures in mainstream ’70s cinema, noting that he was at the height of his powers when he made Hooperunderscores why the movie works: Despite a story so thin it sometimes threatens to evaporate, Hooper offers 99 minutes of comic escapism driven by the macho charisma of its mustachioed leading man.

          One of several late-’70s/early-’80s film and TV projects celebrating the work of Hollywood stuntmen, Hooperstars Reynolds as Sonny Hooper, an aging daredevil who realizes a career change is imminent because his body can’t take much more abuse. When we meet him, Sonny is employed as the stunt double for Adam West (who plays himself) on the 007-style action picture The Spy Who Laughed at Danger. Despite being a pro who regularly delivers spectacular “gags,” Sonny clashes with the movie’s asshole director, Roger Deal (Robert Klein), since Deal demands impossible results on budget and on schedule, then takes credit for the footage Sonny and his team make possible.

          Sonny is involved with Gwen (Sally Field), the daughter of a retired stuntman (Brian Keith). Because Gwen has seen firsthand what stunt work does to the human body, she’s adamant that Sonny quit, but Deal’s pressure and Sonny’s own vanity become obstacles. Then a hot new stuntman, Delmore “Ski” Shidski (Jan-Michael Vincent), arrives on the scene. Although Sonny recognizes that he’s being replaced with a younger model, he insists on going out with a final super-stunt. The gentle drama of the picture, which obviously takes a backseat to action scenes and jokey interplay, stems from the question of whether Sonny will push his luck too far or succeed in providing Deal with the gag to end all gags.

          Hooper was a bit of a family affair for Reynolds, and the pleasure he presumably derived from making the picture is visible onscreen. The movie reunited Reynolds with his longtime buddy, stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham, following their success with Smokey and the Bandit (1977), and Field was Reynolds’ offscreen paramour in addition to being his frequent costar.

          Needham’s intimate familiarity with the stunt world benefits the movie greatly, because many details—from the preparations of car engines for jumps to the application of Ben-Gay on aching knees—feel effortlessly authentic. And while the character work and dialogue are as simplistic as one might expect from this sort of picture, the key actors are so watchable that we want Deal to get his comeuppance, we want Sonny to succeed, and so on. Plus, of course, the stunt sequences are fantastic, like the elaborate bit during which Sonny and Ski drive a sportscar through an entire town as it’s being demolished.

Hooper: GROOVY

The Driver (1978)

          Fast, stylish, and taut, The Driver is an audacious experiment in cinematic minimalism. Eschewing conventional elements like backstory, character names, and emotional life, writer-director Walter Hill presents an action movie comprised merely of situations and forward momentum; the fact that a certain kind of ambiguous character study emerges from this Spartan storytelling speaks not only to Hill’s craftsmanship but also to the depth of his commitment to themes of individuality and male identity.

          The Driver (Ryan O’Neal) is a Los Angeles wheelman who freelances for crooks, providing his expensive services during high-speed getaways. The Driver’s reputation has spread beyond the criminal community to the world of law enforcement, so the Detective (Bruce Dern) devotes himself to catching the Driver. Caught between them is the Player (Isabelle Adjani), a casino gambler who witnessed the Driver performing a crime but refuses to ID him for the Detective’s benefit. When these characters converge, the Detective forces a situation that puts the Driver in league with reckless thieves willing to betray anyone and everyone for the right price.

          Taking place mostly at night, and set in evocative locations like a cavernous warehouse and L.A.’s iconic Union Station, The Driver is a sleek underworld poem. Nobody trusts anybody, and yet people must rely on each other to get their jobs done, so disconnected souls rise and fall based on their luck in picking the right partners. For viewers who buy into Hill’s singular approach, The Driver is a metaphorically rich meditation on the bleak moral relativism shared by killers. Yet others might find The Driver pretentious and vacuous, merely a symphony of attractive actors, cool shots, and exciting sequences.

          For me, the beauty of the picture is that it justifies both reactions—it’s a deep statement if you’re inclined to explore its enigmatic textures, and it’s empty fun if all you want to do is enjoy its visceral pleasures.

          Cast for their surface qualities rather than their acting chops, O’Neal manifests a cynical swagger that works well in this context, while Adjani’s dark beauty suits Hill’s nocturnal aesthetic. Dern manages to slip in a bit of characterization despite the script’s restraint, so he steals the movie by dint of presenting a recognizable personality. However, the acting in The Driver is really just part of Hill’s overall palette, because this is the action movie as art piece—whenever Hill commences a chase scene or a tense standoff, he reveals his innate mastery of primal signifiers and visual economy. In his hands, a car zooming across a nighttime highway is a brushstroke across a canvas, and a fragment of dialogue is a world of implied psychology.

The Driver: GROOVY

Bobby Deerfield (1977)

Two Hollywood heavyweights famous for intellectualizing their work succumb to bad habits in Bobby Deerfield, a plodding romantic drama without enough narrative substance to support its heavy themes. Ostensibly the story of a racecar driver mired in existential crisis, the big-budget misfire gets lost in a maze of pretentious dialogue and vague characterization. Despite all their obvious effort to craft something surpassingly sensitive, producer-director Sydney Pollack and director Al Pacino ended up making something utterly artificial: The storytelling lacks the depth found in Pollack’s best dramas, and Pacino’s performance is so internalized it validates every criticism about self-indulgence ever lobbed his way. Bobby Deerfield is especially disappointing because Pacino and Pollack should have comprised a dream team for fans of thoughtful movies. Based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque and written for the screen by the literate humanist Alvin Sargent, Bobby Deerfieldbegins with narcissistic Formula One driver Bobby Deerfield (Pacino) watching a nasty crash that injures one driver and takes the life of another. Jarred by the realization that his career involves courting death, Bobby starts wandering around in an angst-ridden haze, eventually visiting the hospital where the surviving driver is recuperating. While there, Bobby meets a fellow troubled soul, Lillian (Marthe Keller), who has a whole different set of issues with human mortality. Even with Pollack’s consummate skill for constructing love stories, the dynamic between Bobby and Lillian holds zero interest. Bobby’s such a cipher it’s impossible to care whether he finds love, and Lillian’s an ice queen—thus, since their interaction is the whole movie (aside from a few moderately distracting driving scenes), Bobby Deerfield is a 124-minute spiral into a black hole of downbeat boredom. The movie is skillfully made and the acting is strong, within the limitations set by the murky writing, but who cares? Digging the good stuff from the muck simply isn’t worth the effort.

Bobby Deerfield: LAME

The Last American Hero (1973)

          Based on a nonfiction story by Tom Wolfe, which was in turn based on the career of real-life NASCAR driver Junior Johnson, The Last American Hero is a solid character piece elevated by the documentary-style realism of its racing sequences and by uniformly good acting. The screenplay, by William Roberts, is a bit on the thin side, relying on broad characterizations and a hackneyed structure, but the aforementioned strengths help smooth over shortcomings in the writing.

          Jeff Bridges stars as Junior Jackson, the movie’s fictionalized version of Johnson. He’s a willful young man living in the Deep South, working in the family business of running moonshine. Junior’s skill behind the wheel comes in handy for evading cops, but because local police know all about the Jackson’s operation, Junior’s father, Elroy (Art Lund), is in and out of jail on a regular basis. When the legal bill related to one of Elroy’s arrests exceeds what the family can afford, Junior steps up deliveries but also joins demolition-derby races organized by an unscrupulous promoter (Ned Beatty).

          Soon, Junior graduates to the big time of the NASCAR circuit, where he competes with a super-confident champion (William Smith) and courts a racetrack groupie (Valerie Perrine). The story gains dimension once Junior starts running with a big-city crowd, because his aspirations to independence and integrity wither upon exposure to pressures like the need for sponsorship. In particular, Junior gets into an ongoing hassle with Burton Colt (Ed Lauter), a hard-driving entrepreneur who sets usurious terms and expects humiliating deference. All of this interesting material serves the concept encapsulated by the Jim Croce-sung theme song, “I Got a Name,” because the thrust of the story is Junior’s search for identity.

          Bridges is great, as always, winningly essaying Junior’s transition from naïveté to worldliness, and the supporting actors fit their roles perfectly. Lund and Geraldine Fitzgerald provide earthy gravitas as Junior’s parents, while a young Gary Busey adds an impetuous counterpoint as Junior’s brother. Perrine, all blowsy exuberance, captures the damaging caprice of a woman caught in fame’s tail winds, and Smith is understated as a man who realizes his moment in the spotlight is slipping away. Lauter rounds out the principal cast with his petty villainy, providing a formidable obstacle for the hero to overcome.

          Much of the credit for this ensemble’s work must go to director Lamont Johnson, whose handling of the movie’s visuals is as strong as his guidance of the actors. Though usually an unassertive journeyman, Johnson surpasses expectations by elevating Roberts’ humdrum script into something memorably humane.

The Last American Hero: GROOVY