Race With The Devil (1975)

I once wrote the single worst short story about a satanic cult ever. I know that (since you read and enjoy my weekly reviews) you can't possibly believe this, but it's true. This was back when I was still very young. It was called "Cultism: Closer Than You Think," and I even decorated the front cover with one of the worst renderings of a satanic cult member ever. Actually, he looked more like a member of the Klan, in retrospect, but that's neither here nor there. The story (in as much as it can be claimed it had one) involved me (did I mention this was written in First Person perspective?) stumbling upon a coven of Satanists in the midst of a blood sacrifice. After a short chase, I wound up spending the night up a tree (much like the plot), and the next morning, the cultists were gone. The end. I swear to you, loyal readers (all five of you), I have never seen this week's film before watching it for this review.

Roger, Frank, Alice, and Kelly (Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Loretta Swit, and Lara Parker, respectively, and not to be confused with Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice), head out on an early-year vacation in Frank's brand-spanking-new, fully-loaded camper. After some dirt biking and grabassery, Roger and Frank get mildly toasted for the evening. Across the shallow river, fire erupts, and thinly-robed people begin to prance around. Taking a closer peek, the two horndogs think it's just some filthy hippies having a harmless orgy. But when the coven leader (in a very nice mask, by the way) unsheathes the sacrificial dagger and plunges it into an all-too-willing female member, the men suddenly realize they're in some deep crap (sound familiar?). Alice's big mouth (she was "Hot Lips" Houlihan, after all) alerts the cultists to the vacationers presence, and our hapless quartet find themselves, not really in a Race With The Devil, but definitely in a race away from his worshippers. 

The basic story premise for Jack Starrett's film goes all the way back to the pulp magazines of the early twentieth century. Stories about strange cults, the people (usually dames) who espy them doing their dirty business, and the two-fisted shamuses that busted them up (the cults, not the dames…well…) abounded. The Seventh Victim (produced by the legendary Val Lewton and directed by Mark Robson) also dealt with the subject of Satanism in a very personal, very disturbing manner. That it did so in 1943 is, to me, both intriguing and somehow more affecting. Of course, while the viewers of an illicit act are usually decent, normal citizens, the viewees almost always are not, and they are also not exclusively creepy religious zealots. Just look at Hitchcock's Rear Window, Stephen Hopkins's Judgment Night, or Malmuth's Hard To Kill. The act viewed doesn't even need to be criminal in nature, and Park Chan-wook's Oldboy bears this out. Suffice it to say, the basics are a well-trodden path, and like all types, it's what you do with them that counts. Starrett, a very workmanlike but solid director of exploitation fare (as well as being an actor), doesn't go the way one would necessarily expect with the film, and crafts a mostly successful effort. But there are a few bumps in the road, to be sure.

The film is centered on (in fact, is predicated on) the notion of The Gaze, what's seen or not and by whom (audience included). Frank and Roger witness something they weren't supposed to witness, and the chase is on. As the couples are haunted and harried by the cult, we rarely see any overt actions against them onscreen. In essence, this amplifies the tension and suspense, because like a poltergeist or a monster in the closet, we don't know when something is going to pop up to threaten the protagonists. It's not until the third act that the cultists act in a more public fashion to reach their ends. This is also the weakest point in the film from a Horror point of view (even though half the reason for making and watching the movie is to see cars smash into things as well as each other). 

But it's a different facet of how The Gaze can be utilized where I think Starrett and company played their hand very well. Using the Kuleshov Effect (consciously or unconsciously, but I suspect the former, even if they didn't know what it was called), they give us montages of different people everywhere our heroes go juxtaposed against the reactions of the principals (particularly of Kelly), with the reaction shots informing our interpretation of the incessant menace the four find themselves poised against. The shots of the people outside the camper seldom convey any open emotion or intent. That the protagonists feel threatened by nothing (or at least by what a rational person not being hounded by Satanists would consider nothing) plays into the building of tension and adds to the film's edginess. I found it rather odd, then, that no one in the camper ever objected to allowing strangers at gas stations to work on the camper or insisted on double-checking their work afterwards. Perhaps that's part of the plan to get the viewer to shout at the screen and work up some adrenaline. If so, then mission accomplished.

As a Chase film, the film falters a hair. By this point in time, Fonda had done Dirty Mary Crazy Larry as well as Easy Rider and was no stranger to the Road/Chase movie subgenre. Oates, though not as indelibly identified with this type of film, had done what many consider to be one of the best exemplars of it a few years earlier with Two-Lane Blacktop. Plus, he was already very much an icon of badass cinema from his work with Sam Peckinpah in The Wild Bunch and Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia. One would think that just having these two occupying a vehicle while being pursued by hostile forces would be enough, and maybe had they handled the material differently, it would have. However, in the struggle to serve two masters (both Horror and Chase subgenres), the filmmakers shortchange the latter. Rather than have our heroes constantly on the move, pedal to the metal, hellbent for leather, Starrett instead has the chase paced more leisurely. Consequently, the terror and paranoia angle and the escape angle are at odds throughout the runtime. They never occupy the same space or really tie themselves together completely. The car stunts, when they do come, are handled very well and shot effectively, but there seemed to me to be a bit too much downtime (and a mild air of non-concern from the protagonists) that deflates some of the uneasiness. It's not enough to ruin the film, and there is certainly enough here to satisfy almost anyone. However, as the film crosses the finish line, Race With The Devil feels more like a sprint than a marathon. 
 
MVT: How in the world can I not have Warren Oates as the MVT? The man could say more with that cynical smirk of his or his withering glare than any ten actors could say with three pages of dialogue apiece. 

Make Or Break: Everyone who watches this film is watching it to see the Satanic ritual scene (and, by extension, the action springing from it), and I admit I am one of them. Not as garish as it could have been, it sets a realistic tone that the film embraces right up until the closing frames.

Score: 7/10

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Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974)

Deke (Adam Roarke) wakes Larry (Peter Fonda) from his slumber (and the arms of Susan George's Mary) in order to go rob the local supermarket (managed by the always wonderful and uncredited Roddy McDowell). However, Mary (only ever intended to be a one night stand from Larry's perspective) inserts herself into the situation, and the reluctant trio is off on the run from the police. Enter unorthodox cop, Captain Franklin (the late, great Vic Morrow), whose tracking skills and gruff demeanor are legendary in the local sheriff's department (run by The Thing From Another World's Kenneth Tobey). Armed with a map and a fairly intricate plan, Larry, Mary, and Deke tax each other's patience and frustrate the fuzz at every turn.

The opening credits to John Hough's Dirty Mary Crazy Larry roll over various shots of thoroughfares and even a shot of a moving train. Mostly these shots were taken by helicopter, but they all emphasize two things: roads and movement. These are the two key motifs running throughout the film, and their symbolism defines its characters. The road can mean various things (and I would argue that the more you think about them, the more movies you can find that actually fit the paradigm of a "Road Movie," whether any driving takes place at all or not). Sometimes it means freedom, and that's part of what it means for the three protagonists. Larry is a former Nascar driver, and Deke was his mechanic. For them, driving is living, and (ironically enough), they want to get back to the place where literally driving in a closed circuit is the closest they can get to ultimate sovereignty. For Mary, it's the freedom to move ahead with her life. For Franklin, the freedom of the road equals lawlessness, and it's his job to control the roads in his jurisdiction.

Additionally, the road personifies the human desire to run from our past. Larry has fallen from grace in the world of competitive driving. Deke let his alcoholism strip him of his pride and helped deprive Larry of his career. Mary is running from past entanglements with the law. Like sharks, then, they must keep moving forward, or they will die. As long as there is macadam under their tires and gas in the tank, they can escape from the bindings of yesterday. But is the constant need for movement less from a well-considered game plan with a verifiable goal in mind (though they say it is, we know it isn't true), than from a noisome desperation brought about through their own doing? They strain against shackles they have placed on themselves.

Deke, Larry, and Mary all cling to their dreams tenaciously. Each of them suffers a type of tunnelvision which only serves to keep them down and will eventually do them harm. Larry only cares about driving. If it doesn't have anything to do with cars or driving, he doesn't want to know from it. With the exception, of course, of sex, which he will also run out on if it means getting behind the wheel of a fast car. Deke seeks redemption from the bottle, but he goes about it in a circumscribed way and through an odd sort of austerity. He doesn't like deviations from the plan (Mary being the biggest one), and he tries to be a voice of reason throughout the film, though he knows his pleas fall on deaf ears. Mary has found what she believes is a kindred spirit in Larry, and she refuses to let him go. Even after she's treated poorly by both men, she's always quick to forgive them. Franklin also suffers from this type of outlook, though his "White Whale" is whatever perp he's tracking down. Like a pitbull, his grip is like iron once he's clamped down. But unlike our antiheroes, who scurry about the county's backroads and byways like mice in a maze, Franklin has a view of the whole maze from on high, and he will use this knowledge against his enemies.

As we all know, conflict is the cornerstone to story. Without it, there's no dramatic tension, and the results are usually lifeless and uninvolving. Dirty Mary Crazy Larry is rife with conflict, but it's more telling about the title characters than anything else. Mary and Larry behave and treat each other like children. Almost the entirety of their dialogue to each other is taunts, barbs, or nitpicks. Disregarding for a moment, some of the more demoded colloquialisms, the fact that these two found each other is mystery, but that they were made for each other is undeniable. As with children, the two care only about their immediate wants (I want to play chicken, I want sex, I want a drink, etcetera). Like a boy pulling the hair of the girl he likes, Larry and Mary's running argument serves not to distance them from each other but to draw them together. This has been a staple of cinema for decades (just look at the old screwball comedies, if you don't believe me), and here the verbal sparring is as funny as it is fast-paced. 

That said, Ms. George has a tendency to overplay her reactions, and her performance in many of these scenes gravitate toward the bug-eyed (in an obvious play for the much-coveted BEM Award). Granted, in quieter scenes she makes up for it with a fairly nuanced interpretation of Mary's vulnerabilities. Deke, by contrast, is quiet in his animosities, and Roarke truly nailed the art of the slow burn in this film. As someone who dwells on things (to his detriment, surely), it's interesting that he is the one who stands up for Mary late in the film. While everything is still a game to Larry, Deke realizes the value of Mary's friendship first. Morrow is the soul of "crotchety" (as he almost perpetually was in all his films), but his Franklin is also an outsider among the sheriff's department. He refuses to wear a badge, he lets his hair grow out, and he criticizes his boss and the bureaucracy that he feels stifles his ability to do his job. This makes it sort of odd that Franklin does not appear to identify with the three criminals he's pursuing. One possible explanation would be because he holds himself above everything else. His egotism is up there with the greats, and even though he can see the whole map from the air, it is only from the ground that the chase and its devastating effects can truly be appreciated.

MVT: Fonda and George share a real rapport in the film, and even when you feel like slapping them for the petulant children they are, you truly cannot help but be engaged with their criminal pursuits and root for them at the same time.

Make Or Break: Though the first shot of Mary is extremely brief, and she and Larry have already met, they still have a meet-cute at the robbery site that gives the film its overall feel. Make.

Score: 7/10

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