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10
= Highest Rating |
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SNEAK
PREVIEW
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DVD Release Date: Sept.
28, 2004 |
Five
years before Burt Reynolds had a huge hit with
Cannonball Run, Roger
Corman's New World Pictures released Cannonball
—
a low budget drive-in flick whose basic plot (not
to mention title) was ripped off by the Reynolds
film. A follow-up to the highly successful Death
Race 2000 (1975), Cannonball
reunited star David Carradine and writer/director
Paul Bartel with a fleet of high performance muscle
cars, only this time the vehicles weren't tricked
out with cosmetic Mad Max accessories. Minus the
sci-fi/satirical elements of their first collaboration,
Cannonball plays
for the most part like your standard redneck action/comedy.
It's nothing special really, but Bartel's quirky
sense of humor and penchant for oddball characters
elevates it a notch and at least keeps things
interesting.
A popular car magazine sponsors
an illegal cross-country race, from Santa Monica
to New York City, with $100,000 in prize money
at stake. Any four-wheeled vehicle is eligible
to enter. Heavily favored to win is hotshot racer
Coy "Cannonball" Buckman (Carradine) in his suped-up,
fire engine red Trans Am. Coy has just come through
a bad period in his life, having done time for
manslaughter; he took the fall for his best friend
and master mechanic, Zippo (Archie Hahn), who
was the one actually drunk behind the wheel during
a fatal accident. (Buckman took the rap because
the childlike Zippo "could never survive in prison.")
Now he hopes to win the race and impress a potential
sponsor. This doesn't exactly thrill Coy's gorgeous
parole officer girlfriend, Linda (a pre-Hill
Street Blues —
and eminently doable —
Veronica Hamel), who reminds him that a single
speeding ticket could land him back in jail. But
Coy's more worried about the competition, chiefly
old rival Cade Redman (Bill McKinney) in his black
Dodge Charger and German professional Wolf Messer
(James Keach) driving a bright yellow Ferrari
Pantera. Unknown to Coy, his older brother Benny
(ubiquitous B-movie face Dick Miller) has placed
a large bet on him to win. He desperately needs
the payoff to cover the substantial debt he owes
mob boss Mr. Marks (Bartel), who'll have him fitted
for cement overshoes if he doesn't square the
books. Benny's desperate, so he plants a bomb
in the German's Ferrari —
rigged to explode when the car hits 160 mph —
and hires a thug to thwart (and kill, if necessary)
the other drivers. Big Brother's clumsy and repeatedly
ill-timed interference, however, could very well
end up costing Coy the race... if not his life.
Doesn't sound like there's
much potential for comedy, does it? Well, the
humor's provided by some of the other drivers,
such as the luckless black guy in a Lincoln Continental
he's been hired to drive to New York (the owners
don't know about the race) and a trio of randy
vixens in a van, led by Mary Woronov (Eating
Raoul). The crazy redneck Cade is stuck
taking a cornpone country singer (C.H.U.D.'s
Gerrit Graham) and the singer's manager, a crabby
old lady, along with him to pay expenses; director
Bartel is amusing as the effete, anything-but-stereotypical
gangster. There's plenty of action, too, and not
just of the automotive variety. Naturally Carradine's
given the opportunity to lay on a few kung fu
kicks, including a bruising brawl with McKinney
in a convenience store. (Clearly shot without
using stunt men.) Surprisingly, though, it's Veronica
Hamel who gets to kick the most butt, putting
some martial arts moves on a gang of Cade's buddies
in one scene.
On
the whole Bartel doesn't really succeed in balancing
the action, comedy and dramatic elements, as if
he wasn't quite sure what kind of film he was
making. (In the DVD's featurette [see below] it's
revealed that Bartel actually didn't want to helm
the picture at all —
after the success of Death
Race 2000 he feared being pigeonholed as
an action director. His personal interest in cars
was virtually nil.) This is most evident in Cannonball's
fiery climax, in which at least 20 cars and trucks
are wrecked on the "New Jersey Turnpike" (which
happens to look an awful lot like a southern California
freeway). Every single vehicle in the pileup explodes
in a massive fireball... and not one of 'em is
a Pinto. The scene is supposedly deadly serious
(people die), yet it's so ridiculously over-the-top
it's merely absurd instead. I've seen less (and
smaller) explosions in war movies!
Even
though Bartel's heart wasn't in the project, by
and large he doesn't do a crappy job. The flick's
low budget is only betrayed by the occasionally
glaring lack of continuity (battered, damaged
cars —
the most expensive ones, that is —
have a tendency to magically repair themselves
from scene to scene) and the big climactic stunt
(a Mustang jumps over a huge gap in an unfinished
expressway ramp a la Speed)
is ruined by an obviously phony-looking process
shot. Still, fans of those vehicular stars of
the Muscle Car Era should get a thrill seeing
these top-flight rides in their prime, and film
aficionados will enjoy playing 'Spot the Cameo'
—
the movie's full of them. (That's Roger Corman
as the D.A., future Howling
helmer Joe Dante as a long-haired grease monkey,
and Martin Scorcese and Sylvester Stallone as
Mafia goons lunching from a bucket of KFC.)
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Presented
in anamorphic 1.66:1 widescreen, Blue Underground's
DVD edition of Cannonball
looks marvelous; the original 35mm camera negative
was used for the transfer. Colors are vibrant
and there's not a smidgen of print damage anywhere
to be seen. (A couple of nighttime shots are overly
dark, a consequence of the film itself.) A choice
of 5.1 Surround, Dolby 2.0 and Mono sound mixes
are offered. (Regardless of which audio option
is selected, it doesn't help that some of the
actors — Scorcese, for example — sometimes mumble
their lines.) In addition to the theatrical
trailer, TV spots and image galleries (stills,
pressbook, promotional materials), the disc serves
up a 10-minute featurette entitled Kicks and
Crashes. David Carradine, Mary Woronov and
Roger Corman weigh in on the making of the film,
though a significant portion of the anecdotes
concern Paul Bartel the filmmaker rather than
Cannonball
the movie. If you're hoping to get more information
about the cars and any of the driving stunts then
the doc will be found lacking. But if, like me,
your interest lies in exploitation/drive-in flicks
and the people who made them then it's a real
treat. (Too bad Bill McKinney was either unwilling
or unable to participate; he practically steals
the movie. Bartel succumbed to cancer in 2000.)
9/14/04
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