Short Attention Span Review - Race With The Devil (1975) - With Texas-Sized Spoilers

A tightly scripted and action filled thriller, Race With The Devil (1975) is an entertaining blend of paranoia and car crashes. Peter Fonda and Warren Oats - along with their wives Loretta Swit and Lara Parker- set out on a well-deserved vacation to Aspen from their home in San Antonio. Traveling in a decked out RV - a motorized manifestation of the suburban dream - they stop for the night in a rural backwater...and witness a Satanic mass that ends in murder. From that moment on, they are pursued across Texas by an ever-widening conspiracy of Satanists.

Among the cast, Fonda and Oats carry the show. While Swit turns in a strong performance as Oats' wife, Parker is mostly wasted, due to her being reduced to a stereotypical shrieking damsel in distress. Perhaps this is the greatest weakness of the script; both Swit and Parker don't have much to do, leaving the fighting to the men. In fact, the dialogue and plot points (the men serve as the primary emotional attachment for each other) makes the women almost superfluous.

For those looking for thrills, the vehicle stunt work is impressive. A number stand-out chase scenes are the action centerpiece of the movie and the practical effects and stunt work is a nice contrast to the CGI-heavy films of today. When a car flips over in 'Race', it actually is a car, not pixels on a workstation.

Director Jack Starrett (The Losers, Cleopatra Jones) keeps everything moving along at a brisk pace. Even the moments of quiet have a tense edge to them, particularly as the characters and the viewer becomes aware of the scope of the conspiracy, mostly conveyed through lingering glances and slightly distorted close-ups of random people, who may or may not be Satanists. The chase sequences are well-filmed, conveying a solid kinetic feel without resorting to bane of the modern action film, the "shaky cam." 'Race' is a great example of how fluid camera work and deft editing - by John Link (Predator, Die Hard) - can propel an action sequence, while not inducing motion sickness in the audience.

While the filming by Robert Jessup is adequate, it at times has a "movie of the week" feel to it (although this is not a surprise given that most of Jessup's work both before and after 'Race' was in television) looking flat and dull - although, to some degree this reflects the time of year the film is set, January. One thing that is conveyed is a sense of a washed out, colorless landscape, in which the only things that brighten up the drabness are exploding cars and Satanist bonfires.

On the surface straightforward horror-thriller, 'Race' has a few deeper themes, something that rewards a careful viewing. Made during a time of social dislocation and national exhaustion - the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, the recent '73 oil crisis and overall poor economic performance and ongoing changes in race, gender and class relations - 'Race' presents a picture of the middle class under assault. During the course of the film, a jarring coalition of authority figures (the police, the rural power structure), big business (as exemplified by the apparent involvement of the telephone company in the conspiracy) and the working class (the "average" citizens who track the protagonists and serve as foot soldiers for those in power) make up the ranks of the Satanists. The fact that all this takes place in the poster state for conservatism and the myth-space of the Old West (in which men were rugged individuals, not robe wearing lapdogs of Satan!) further emphasizes the theme that no one can be trusted, whatever there surface appearance or professed beliefs and that old standards and socio-cultural norms are dead. In our own age of the National Security State, ubiquitous surveillance and attenuating personal ties, this message of profound alienation is, if anything, more powerful.

Overall, Race with the Devil is a rewarding mix of exploitation film standards and deeper themes that reflect the time the film was made...and which still resonate today, as we sit at home and wonder who, if anyone, can be trusted.