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.

Masque Of The Red Death (1964) - With Color-Coded Spoilers

Synopsis

An old women wanders a stage-bound hillside, collecting firewood. She encounters a man dressed in a red hooded robe who gives her a rose and tells her to return home, proclaiming that the "day of...deliverance is at hand."

So begins Roger Corman's Masque of the Red Death. Part of the American International Pictures series of films based on Edgar Allen Poe's works, Masque stars Vincent Prince as Prince Prospero, a man of calculating evil who rules over a Medieval wasteland. While tormenting a village of his peasants, Prospero discovers that the old woman's "deliverance" is the Red Death, a disease that causes one to bleed from the pores, dying in agony.

As the plague spreads across the countryside, Prospero gathers the local nobility into the safety of his castle. Of course, how safe can you be with a man who worships the devil, likes to spout off about the true nature of terror and occasionally murders people? As it turns out, not very safe.

The local 1% engages in the usual debauchery, while Price tries to convince local villager Francesca (the beautiful, but a little bland, Jane Asher) to embrace evil. The gathering soon devolves into death and madness. Prospero's consort, Juliana (Hazel Court, who oozes smoldering sensuality) pledges herself to Satan as his bride and, after a experiencing a drug-induced hallucination of Hell that leaves her wanting more, is killed by a raven. Alfredo (the great Patrick Magee as a sadistic, sexually deviant noble, a base version of Prospero) is incinerated while wearing an ape costume during the climatic masquerade ball. Gino (David Weston) and Ludovico (Nigel Green) - Francesca's lover and father, respectively - are forced to play a game involving a poisoned dagger that ends with one of them dead. Fun and games in 14th Century Europe.

As the masquerade ball nears its climax and Francesca is apparently ready to give herself over to Prospero, the "Man in Red" makes an appearance and gives Vincent Price a final, fatal insight into how the world really works.

Analysis

If there is a central theme, it is the victory of entropy over everything else. Prospero thinks that by declaring God to be dead and creating an Id-driven, solipsistic universe, he has achieved insight into mankind's place in the world, as a passion driven animal. Francesca clings to a fuzzy notion of a God of Love, although, as she admits when Prospero tries to engage her in a philosophical discussion, "I have no learning." Her's is the faith of the innocent...or, as Prospero obviously believes, the common herd. Gino and Ludovico, focus on a more relationship driven world, one in which the bonds of friendship and love will win out over the immoral world of the lonely Prince Prospero. Juliana is has made Prospero's attention the center of her universe, doing anything, even risking her soul, to gain his approval. Prospero's various sycophants are followers, doing whatever degrading acts he commands, whether for safety, wealth or, in the case of Alfredo, the license to indulge one's animal instincts.

Hazel Court and Jane Asher make for a delicious duo.

The Red Death wipes all of these attempts to define existence away. Although ostensibly a personification of Death, it is more accurate to see it as the force of universal entropy. It not only brings an end to life; it crushes belief and reveals the universe to be a blank slate, one that we all imprint meaning on; but all meaning is ultimately pointless. In the end, the Red Death - the force of entropy - is the only truth

It is the sophistication of theme and presentation that makes Masque such an impressive film. Sumptuously filmed, with vibrant colors, a suitably disturbing soundtrack, impressive sets for a film of this budget (recycled from the film Beckett) and an effective cast, without this thematic sophistication, it would be intellectually empty. Instead, it is a brooding meditation on the meaning of all things, one that rewards the careful viewer with a provocative examination wrapped in the trappings of a moderately budgeted period horror movie

Film Highlights

• Just about any of Vincent Price's soliloquies on the meaning of life and the manifest failings of humanity. From such an accomplished and charismatic actor, what could seem to be amoral justifications for atrocities, come across as well-reasoned lessons on human nature. It is easy to see how someone like Francesca could, in the end, come at least part of the way towards Prospero's world-view.
• When the village is being torched by Prospero's men, a peasant runs out of burning hut, clutching a baby. Another peasant picks up the kid and leaves the burning man lying on the ground, unaided. It succinctly sums up the tension between human mercy and the brutality of existence that will be repeated throughout the film.
• The use of obvious sets for outdoor scenes contributes to the feeling that our reality is just a facade, something laid over a truth that will be revealed over the course of the film.
• Hazel Court and Jane Asher are a pair of truly fetching redheads...wait, redheads...in a movie...about the Red Death...it's all connected.

Verdict

This is a great movie, a true classic. It should be considered mandatory viewing for anyone who considers themselves a cineaste.