Customer Reviews

Race With the Devil [VHS]

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4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Take a moment and think about the worst vacation you ever had...I've had a few doozys, but I think the absolute worst involved a time when I was in Florida and I got an ear infection for a few days and my activities were confined to laying on my side and administering liquid antibiotics into my ear via a medicine dropper. My point is everyone has had at least one vacation that didn't turn out as expected, but I think few could top the nightmare encountered by the two couples in the film Race with the Devil (1975), when they inadvertently incurred the wraith of a backwoods cult of Satanic devil worshippers. Co-written by Wes Bishop (Chain Gang Women, The Thing with Two Heads) and Lee Frost (Policewomen, Dixie Dynamite), the film was directed by Jack Starrett, who also appearing in a number of films, but many may remember him from is role as the purposely stereotypical western curmudgeon Gabby Johnson from Mel Brooks 1974 film Blazing Saddles. Starring in Race with the Devil is Warren `Quaker' Oates (Dillinger, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia) along with Peter `One Toke Over the Line' Fonda, who, by the way, is set to appear in the new Ghost Rider film as the character of Mephisto. Also appearing is Loretta `Hot Lips' Swit ("M*A*S*H", Freebie and the Bean), Lara Parker ("Dark Shadows"), R.G. Armstrong (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, White Lightning), along with co-writer Bishop (he plays the character of Deputy Dave), and director Starrett, in his seminal role as `Gas Station Attendant'.

It seems two married couples, Frank (Oates) and Alice (Swit) Stewart and Roger (Fonda) and Kelly (Parker) March are finally taking a vacation, after five, long years building up a now successful motorcycle dealership. For the occasion Frank has gone balls to the walls and popped for a brand new, 32-foot motor home with all the modern conveniences, at least modern in 1975 terms. Their plan is to drive from Texas to Aspen and enjoy some snow skiing, but events conspire to make this a trip they'll never forget beginning with Frank deciding to find a secluded area to park the RV and rest for the night. It's around this time Frank and Roger witness a strange gathering or robed individuals dancing around a fire, performing some sort of ritual that culminates in the sacrifice of a young woman. The men, deciding it's time to leave (uh, yeah, I think so), accidentally arouse the attention of the group, and thus begins a nightmarish journey of escape and survival as the deadly cabal are determined to keep their secrets, even if it means following this RV to hell and back...

One thing I learned while watching this movie is that Satanists are an extremely persistent bunch...they really don't know when to quit, that, and one should watch out for low bridges, especially if you're perched on top of an RV...anyway, I've been looking forward to this film being released onto DVD for quite some time, as I think it is an excellent example of, despite a low budget, a film can still be entertaining and really well done given the talent and crew involved. The story is pretty straightforward with a few surprises (and some plot holes), but what elevates this beyond its means are the characters of Oates and Fonda, who play surprisingly well off each other, this being their 3rd film together, the other two being The Hired Hand (1971) and 92 in the Shade (1975). There is chemistry there, as the two complement each other. The one thing I didn't understand is if this group was as encompassing and organized as we were led to believe, I didn't understand why they didn't just get the couples during one of their stops for gas or something...it would have been so much easier to take care of business then rather than chasing them down the highway at 60+ miles per hour, but then that would have taken away some of the excitement in removing some of the strongest action sequences. As far as the female leads, well, they really didn't have much to work with, as Ms. Swit's character was just there more or less to flesh out Oates' character, but Ms. Parker had a bit more (not much), as she was of the more sensitive type, picking up on sinister vibes before the rest of the group. In terms of direction I thought Starrett did very well, considering he was brought in early in the production as the original director was let go due to the powers that be feeling he up for the job. The film has a consistently creepy vibe throughout, as the unknown of who may be involved is a persistent factor. Starrett builds the momentum early, and keeps it going until the end. There are some scary moments, but I really wouldn't consider this so much a horror film, but more of one to give you the creeps. One of my favorite scenes is when Frank and Roger are witnessing the ritual and Frank's interested is piqued when the females begin disrobing and the distinct possibility of group intercourse is apparent...which is about the time the girl is killed and the two decide they're in the wrong place at the wrong time and decide to sneak away without drawing attention, only to have Frank's wife Alice unknowingly wake up the entire county with her annoying bray, calling her husband back to the RV...another sequence I really liked was later in the film, as the group is speeding down the road being chased by various vehicles filled with cult members. They cultists begin jumping on the RV Road Warrior style, and Frank has to fend them off, getting jiggy with a 12-gauge shotgun....woohoo! One thing I thought odd was during the sacrifice scene the girl to be offered up is stripped nekkid, but her nekkidness is blurred out...we see her behind the fire pit, so one could say perhaps the heat emanating from the fire caused this, but I'd wondering if this was how it was during the original release...it didn't really bother me, but I do prefer the content of films on DVD to be as close to how they were originally released as possible.

The widescreen (1.85:1) picture, enhanced for 16 X 9 TVs, looks really sharp and clean on this Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD release. The audio is only available in Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono, but comes through clearly. There are some very worthwhile special features including a newly made featurette titled `Hell on Wheels' (17:51) with Peter Fonda relating a lot of interesting information about the film and his co-stars. Also included is a commentary track with producer Paul Maslansky, actress Lara Parker, moderated by DVD producer Perry Martin, an original theatrical trailer, three radio spots, a poster & still gallery, a behind-the-scenes photo gallery, previews for other Anchor Bay DVD releases like The Entity (1981), Quicksilver Highway (1997), Ghost in the Machine (1993), and a reproduction of an original poster of the film on a card inside the DVD case.

Cookieman108

This just in...I heard a remake of this film is in the works, scheduled for a 2006 release, with Drew McWeeny (who should really think about changing his name) and Scott Swan as the writers (their previous credit includes Mortal Kombat: Devastation), and producer Chris Moore (American Pie, Reindeer Games) set as the director.

There's always been something disarming about the presence of Peter Fonda in a picture. Perhaps it's his 'nice guy' presence and you'd be right to assume that his starring in a horror movie would work against it. Not so in this case. Together with Oates and their stage wives, Fonda's presence is a good way of making of the terror strike home. The two couples are all-American high-end middle class types and they love living life to the fullest extent. And so they make a china shop ready for the horror bull to enter. The movie isn't as slow-moving as it may seem by the clock, it's just that there is a great deal of momentum being pent up in the early portions. When the scares actually do start, they are powerful and genuinely chilling. Let it be known that Satanist-bashing horror pictures were fairly common in the first half of the Seventies and here we find a whole string of Texan communities hard at it. The film is just the right length and its delivery is augmented tremendously by the dark conclusion. Despite the content, this film is watchable at all levels. I saw it when I was 10 years old and found it delightfully chilling. The direction is top rate and first class performances are extracted from Fonda and Oates. Truly an overlooked classic from a particularly adventurous era of fright cinema.

What makes this movie so scary is that the people who are the monsters are the most ordinary people you could think of; gas station attendants, RV park retirees, Country Western bands and a local sheriff or two...and the premise is deceptively simple: two couples go on vacation in an RV big enough to house a family of twelve (only slight exaggeration) and on the FIRST night Warren Oates and Peter Fonda (after making the first mistake of turning off the main road and going off on their own into unknown territory in a well-intentioned effort to avoid crowds...) witness a Satanic Cult sacrifing a young girl...and Loretta Swit unwittingly becomes the catalyst for their unwanted attention by yelling at her husband to come in...then the story takes off in a hurry. And all the time there really are monsters everywhere you look...the same sort of every day plausible situation anyone could conceivably find themselves in; a Satanic version of Deliverance...another seemingly innocent situation that started out to be a simple canoe ride downriver turned into the nightmare from Hell.
What is so disturbing here is that no matter where they go or how far or how innocent the people they encounter along the way seem, all are against them and the ending is really terrifying and a genuine shocker. You don't get to relax for one single second; it is a fast nightmare ride, with pieces of the RV flying off, the women screaming and the men yelling and all sorts of nasty surprises along the way, culminating in the aforementioned, even more disturbing, climax. Well worth the price, great entertainment.

The 1975 film "Race With the Devil" begins innocently enough. Two couples on vacation in an RV decide to take a turn on a dirt road to spend the night away from the bustle. They park their rocking vehicle out in the wilds of south central Texas. They inspect the beauty of the desolate land, have a candle-lit dinner and a glass of wine, and toast the first night of a needed vacation. The sun sets and a full moon rises. But a funny thing happens.

Across the river they hear an eerie howl and suddenly, a mysterious bonfire roars to life. They grab a pair of binoculars and notice a group of people in black robes dancing around this huge fire. There's weird chanting, a man in a mask with a sword, and nude women at his feet. The dancing becomes more intense, and a woman is stabbed to death in an apparent sacrifice. At that moment, the wife of one of the stunned men turns on the RV light and screams at her husband to come inside. The Satanic cult realizes they are not alone, and furiously charge across the river. Thus begins one long and very creepy chase across the back roads of a Texas landscape.

We've been here before, whether it be with a cannibalistic family in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or Georgia hillbillies in "Deliverance." The setup is usually the same - a group of innocents, semi-lost, encountering horrid miscreants without a shred of help anywhere in sight. I don't think "Race With the Devil" is as good as either of the two previous films mentioned, but I will say in all honesty this flick scared me as a child.

"Race With the Devil" taps a primal fear we have of being stranded in unknown lands pursued by people with murderous intentions. The inspirations for this little 1975 horror opus are many, as Satan was quite the villain back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Where to begin? Perhaps Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby," one of the most chilling films ever made. And then you have "The Exorcist," "The Devil's Rain" and such TV flicks as "Crowhaven Farm." Which brings us to "Race With the Devil," where you have robed Lucifer hippies clawing at an agonizingly slow RV rolling for the nearest stretch of cement. Peter Fonda and Warren Oates do their best to fight off this beer-bellied horde (I suppose with the exception of the occasional dancing, they get little exercise), using everything from vacuum cleaners to ski poles to hold off the possessed crew.

For a kid growing up in the suburbs of Texas (that would be me), Satanic cults existed out there, and they were waiting in the dark. Out there is an uneducated wilderness, and it's scary. To this day, I have moments of fear when camping alone, remembering that cult from "Race With the Devil." As our society grows each day into an urban setting with farming communities disappearing, what is rural becomes alien and evil. It's out there man! Who knows what shenanigans they're up to!

The Texas-born Jack Starrett directed this little drive-in horror/action hybrid, and he really didn't create much else. A few episodes of "Hill Street Blues," a couple of other B-movie excursions. He's probably best known as the tough cop with a billy club who drives Sylvester Stallone over the edge in "First Blood." He sadly passed on in 1989. Starrett has a funny cameo in Race With the Devil as a nosy gas station attendant.

Warren Oates, the greatest character actor in motion picture history, stars as the unlucky sod who makes the fateful choice to camp in the Texas boonies. He was really too good to be starring in this fare, but he does deliver the best line when the sheriff mentions a local hippie cult that kills cats. With a straight face, Oates replies, "Well, I guess they ran out of cats." By most accounts Oates tilted beers with film director Sam Peckinpah while they made such films as "The Wild Bunch" and "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia." A huge Warren Oates cult has grown since his death in 1983, and this film is as good as any learn the greatness of this brilliant actor.

In "Race With the Devil," Peter Fonda has a good time shaking martinis while firing shotguns at hillbilly Satanists. And you even have "Hotlips" Loretta Swit as a perplexed wife. She likes to scream a lot and wear colorful bathrobes.

I suppose we could obsess over the stupid decisions our protagonists make before Satan closes in on the RV. We could laugh at the dialog as they marvel over the newfangled microwave and color TV. We could even snicker as by the end of "Race With the Devil," the trashed RV resembles Steve Martin's and John Candy's car in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." But our laughs are uneasy. When we travel to unknown lands, we are terrified of being preyed upon. In "Race With the Devil," these country folks are out there man, creepy and evil. Part horror, car chase and action, this film is one of the greatest drive-in flicks ever made.

This is a great movie. Mainly because the action scenes in the chase are filmed in Wimberley, Texas where my family has a place. We travel down that same road year after year and it always brings back the memories of this movie, especially the truck going over the bridge and landing in the Blanco River.

I first saw this movie when I was a kid, of 11, My parents didn't think it was too scary so they let me watch it. Race With The Devil has become one of my favorite scary movies. Even if you have seen this movie a million times and you know what's coming and how it ends, you will STILL get the knot in your stomach waiting for the end. I know I do, I know what's coming and I STILL get the tension knot in my stomach. This is just a really good scary movie, in my opinion.

It is not often that I watch, let alone review a movie of this genre but this one in particular left an indelible impression on me as a child. Like several of the previous reviewers, I first
saw this film at a drive-in in the summer of 1976 with my dad and brother. It was not uncommon then to see a movie circulating in the drive-in theatres a full year after its release. The VCR and VHS were still several years away.

Roger (Peter Fonda) and Frank (Warren Oates) are owners of a custom motorcycle business on vacation with their wives to Aspen, Colorado, traveling in a luxurious new RV with all the
amenities imaginable in 1975. (The color TV, the stereo, microwave oven...goahlly!). On their first night camping out in a remote area, they witness a human sacrifice in the distance as
part of a satanic ritual taking place across the river. All hell breaks loose when the two are discovered and a vicious pursuit of the foursome ensues escalating into several attacks and car chases. Throughout the film, the motorhome is damaged and falls apart piece by piece as a metaphor for the group's shattered sense of security, diminishing sanity and a dream vacation which has turned into a run for their lives!

The movie's shock value for me was diminished only as a result of my vivid memories of several scenes and due neither to the passage of time nor maturity when I finally saw it for the first time in over two decades. It was still as chilling today as it was when I first saw it a quarter of a century ago!

Don't let the critics' maligning criticism dissuade you from watching this flick. (Hey, how many of us buy a book because it's on Oprah's list anyway?) Granted, much of the dialog is pedestrian and the characters played by Loretta Swit and Lara Parker seem little more than shallow cutouts of the Stepford Wives. As for Peter Fonda, the motorcycle riding scenes, reminiscent of his role in Easy Rider, seem gratuitously provided in an attempt capitalize on that movie's popularity. That said, who can forget the sinister smile that appears on the face of Fonda's character just before he runs a satanist's car off a bridge exploding into a fireball?
But the best lines belong to Warren Oates who also appears to play his role with more sincerity.
("Well, this time they ran out of cats!")

One curious thing that is never explained, though is why the the gunshop owner goes ahead and sells the two men a 12-gauge rifle if we are led to believe that he too is involved in the conspiracy. (After all, the phone lines are "down" at the shop due to a "big wind"!)

The film's best asset, however, is it's ability to transform seemingly peaceful and innocuous settings into an erie landscape. Gradually, the audience as well the characters realize you can run but cannot hide as the entire area seems blanketed by a network of satanists conspiring to terrify and ultimately catch the two couples. Through the skillful hands of the director, this movie affirmatively answers the question as to whether a successful horror film can take place on a rural Texas interstate --- and often in broad daylight! While that may not seem like a great leap today, back in the mid 70s, Race With the Devil was among the first of its kind. Prior to that, most horror films often revolved around gothic settings such as a haunted house,ghosts or graveyards.

Although this film is not the best execution of an intriguing theme, it's one of the quintessential 70s B movies which helped set a precedent for modern horror.

I saw this film in the 70's. It made a lasting impression on me. The film includes the foxy witch from Dark Shadows. Hotlips from MASH. Peter Fonda from Easy Rider and Mr.Warren Oates.
This film was made in an much inocent time way before the strange societies and strange uneasyness that is circulating now. Talkabout Tom Cruz's film Eyes Wide Shut this film prefigured that message. It just that unlike Cruz's movie that alerted folks that rich people belong to not too frienldly societies so too do regular folk inhabite fringelike clubs too. This classic never got the attention it deserved,perhapes it was too close to real life. The ending is real to life too. I mean with all the innocent children being kidnapped and other freaky things that our cablenews is alerting us to be very wary. Imagine how back in innocent times before Ted Bundy and other kind with strange appetites. How it scary was. I mean Earthday was just invented and peace, love, and joy were still believed in. Heck folks in Florida did noteven lock their doors to their houses yet. This film was way before its time. I pesonnally can not see a vacationing RV without thinking of what happened in the film. People disappear while vacation in cars or RVs more than is realize. The film is not graphic or gory. It does not have to be to get the message across. The panic in the film comes across as pure choas. The choas that one feels in the dark no place to turn and no one to turn to for help. That is what so scary. It so like we are living today with the aftermath of the Twin Towers, never knowing what is gonna happen next. You just want everything to return to normal.
Its like impending doom. This film is exactly what Americans feel like today. We are in that RV and bad things are happening man!

The whole premise of this suspenseful action flick is flawed - if masked murderers were seen from a distance in a remote location, especially if they were exceedingly well organized and included the local constabulary among their number, they would have no need whatsoever to assault the witnesses and would instead more than likely just hightail it outta there - but it's great fun, anyway. Just because Hitchcock would've done a better job with the thing doesn't mean it isn't good.

Friends Warren Oates and Peter Fonda, and their wives, Loretta Swit and Lara Parker, take a mobile home road trip to Colorado for a little skiing. While camping one night, they chance to witness through binoculars a sacrificial murder across the lake by a bunch of masked Satanists. (See, why wouldn't the Satanists just flip them off, laugh and run away? But then we wouldn't have a movie, would we?) The next thing they know, they're being pursued by the killers. The local constabulary is no help - indeed, they prove to be part of the problem - and damn near everyone our hapless misadventurers come across for the rest of their trip happens to be hooked-up, one way or another, with the nasty folk.

Aside from the fundamentally flawed premise, and an ending that really makes no sense at all, this is a great flick. The road stunts are terrific. The suspense is masterful, the script pretty good. The cast are completely believable, throughout. The movie is handsomely produced, and makes clever underuse of an eerie Leonard Rosenmann score to crank-up the anxiety factor. It's basically Duel meets Deliverance does Rosemary's Baby a la The Road Warrior, and is pretty much as fun as that mix sounds.

Don't think about it. Just go along for the ride.

This along with "Shock Waves" is the Holy Grail of late night movies that I have been looking for that scared me .... badly(got you!) as a child.
Two couples(Warren Oates , Peter Fonda, Loretta Switt , and Laura Parker) after years of building a motorcycle shop up decide to rent a top of the line(1975 anyway) RV and take to the road. BAD IDEA!!!!!! After a day of biking and having fun the guys sit outside have a beer and witness a satanic cult sacrifice! This would be bad enough but when a wife yells for them to come in, the cult sees them and the chase and chills are on. It seems that everyone in the part of Texas that they are in is part of the cult as they are hounded every step of the way after reporting the incident. Car chases, snakes, animal cruelty, RV cruelty, and random violence to road signs ensue.
This is a great paranoid chiller(as most post Watergate movies were) where everyone is out to get our heroes, and no one is to trusted. This is one of the best Drive-In movies of all time! The ending is one that you will never forget and stays with you long after the credits roll.
The cast is pitch perfect, full of some of the best character actors of all time and the pace is lighting quick. I hear that a remake is planed, well if the ones they have done lately are any sign, they can't improve on this Great Little Chiller!