Death Drivin' America - Part 3: DEATHSPORT, CANNONBALL!

There was the drag race juvenile 50s, the biker 60s, and then the New World team jumped lanes and drafted over behind a speeding slew of now semi-forgotten drag racing /moonshiner movies, and cross-country 'rallies,' rooted to actual events, such as the now-forgotten real-life Cannonball Dash, a cross-country race that was set up to protest the 55 mph highway law (set up in 1974) and caught the popular cinematic imagination where it congealed with the once-popular all-star cast ramshackle race-arounds like GUMBALL RALLY, VANISHING POINT and eventually SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT. In all of them, the issue of prize money, a bet, the importance of an honor system and all in the game camaraderie is easier to understand (a gum ball machine, for example, is a relatively worthless prize; a truckload of beer doesn't seem worth risking jail and doing all sorts of public damage, etc.). For $100,000. prize in CANNONBALL!, well, that's real money, and it's just too damn easy to cheat if all you need is an LA parking lot stamp at the NYC finish line.  One canny little guy flies his car in a big jumbo jet across country; others sabotage rival cars (with racers too dumb to watch their vehicle or check under the hood); and so forth.

These things bother me; and the film is choked up with actors too much alike to tell apart with your glasses off, all made even similar-er-er for no real reason. Anachronistic Racers range from a smiling polite black dude racing some nice Goy couples car to NY for them (we know they're deserving of a smashed caddy because they tell him not to drive at night or faster than 55 mph); Carradine as Cannonball breaks his parole to race, which is moronic considering one traffic infraction and he's back in jail with the key thrown away, but he sleeps with his parole officer (Veronica Hammil) so you know he's great and she's incompetent. Other racers include the great Gerrit Graham (PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE's 'Meat') is woefully miscast as a cowboy singer riding with his mobbed-up manager Mr. Redmond, who's hoping this event will boost his profile (which makes no sense, again, since there's no real publicity due to it being an underground outlaw affair --like trying to boost your public profile by going to cockfights). Robert Carradine, David's brother, is a honeymoonin racer. This time it's known as the 'Trans-America Grand Prix Auto Race." Anybody who'd race a towncar to begin with is an idiot, to do so with three people in it is even dumber. First of all, you'll run out of gas out in the midwestern plains - the gas stations just ain't close enough together for gas guzzler to go so far - it's plain suicide. Eventually you have to do what I used to do with my old 60s Cadillac, stop at every gas station you pass - even when it's half full, as you boom - it says 1/4 tank and you got about 15 minutes of driving left before you run out of gas right in the middle of nowhere.

It's some really dumbass shit, most of all from the allegedly brilliant racer Cory "Cannonball" (David Carradine), who is such an idiot he breaks parole to try and win it all, and regularly needs help from both his 'best friend' (a sycophantic copycat); even worse, Dick Miller is his bookmaking older brother, who sabotages other fast cars in the race but then, confusingly, seems to be out to sabotage his brother too (did he become someone else's brother in one of Simpson's rewrites?). The villainous rival drivers continually best poor Cannonball in the simplest of ruses --both on the road and in fisticuffs and through regular sabotage sorties against his car on their way out of the parking lot, almost as an afterthought, a flourish. The best oblivious  Cory can do is lose fights (there's a baller throwdown that trashes a gas station mini market) and act surprised when his jack is missing or his lights don't work. The topper is when he falls asleep at the wheel and you're like fuck, I'm rooting for the wrong guy.

I've barely scratched the surface with how purely stupid and incompetent Carradine's Cannonball (the driver) is, I can only presume crafty Bartel was going somewhere with the idea, some black comic joke between the 'lines' done with Simpson... lost in the nasal cavity of time.

Done fronting! CANNONBALL does rock if your brain's off, and there's a plethora of in-joke cameos: Corman himself is the Los Angeles D.A. who wants to stop the race but can't and knows it; Don Simpson is the assistant DA; Bartel is a shady fey mobster in the then-popular fey mobster vein (the type who play piano while their thugs (here Martin Scorsese and Sly Stallone) kick the shit out of someone (Dick Miller) for not holding up their this or betraying their that. Joe Dante and Jonathan Kaplan are tow-truck drivers who help out Cannonball with a new car (though I wouldn't trust him with my Big Wheel). Apparently you can also change cars and it's no big deal in this race, so it's way too easy to cheat. Does Bartel (and his co-writer Don TOP GUN Simpson) even know how races or gambling work? They should have watched TWO-LANE BLACKTOP or CALIFORNIA SPLIT.

Simpson stopped writing and turned to producing after this, smart move. He died in 1996 and Bartel died in 2000, so there you go. Hell, there we all go...

Luckily, there's also women, strong Corman-style broads: Mary Woronov, like her role in DEATH RACE, she's the most sympathetic and cool (when is she not?) here as the driver of a van carrying two horny blondes in the back (Diane Lee Hart, Glynn Rubin). Cory's old lady, played Veronica Hamel (beloved of all HILL STREET BLUES children) can devastate a whole cadre of good old boy saboteurs without so much as mussing her hair. Cannonball has to sit that one out, but he still misses one of the beaten dudes shanking his tank on the way out.

That's okay though. The good guys win, even if the good guys aren't always who you think, or something. At least there's no puerile snickering or silicone (Fred Olen Ray was still too young, thank god), and there's a big charnel house freeway pile-up that's not to be missed: bloody, savage, out of place, it's like if Burt Reynolds wound up decapitating some old lady in his effort to Yee-Haw over the sheriff's patrol car and the bouncy harmonica just kept a-boinging. There's also an awesome jump across an unfinished stretch of highway overpass, and it's all from back in the day they did that shit for real. The ever reliable Tak Fujimoto does a good job capturing the stonewashed pink of Cannonball's open shirt and the haze of the open road. In short, America.

A film for the dirt bike-riding 16 year-old arsonist in all of us, DEATHSPORT was meant to be a DEATH RACE 2000 sequel but instead gives us moody crypto-poetry, blazing fireballs, matte paintings of futuristic dystopian cities, and that old LA desert scrub being ground underfoot by tricked-out dirt bikes and hosses. So many dirt bikes blow up in this film it's almost a pyrotechnic's demo reel. The game, like the Statham DEATH RACE remake or THE RUNNING MAN, helps prisoners win freedom via  motor cross / Rollerball / gladiator mash-up, with no sense of humor about its own absurdity. So you get tired of shots wherein a row of three to five tricked-out 'death bikes' whizz past the camera in single file to a 'zzzzzzzap' sound effect (that's just the same effect loop over and over) but I like the guns, which are like big Pringles can mini bazookas that fire huge laser bolts that vaporize opponents; and the thrift-shop dumpster dive approach to the costumes is never short of astounding. The dirt bikes are all tricked up with white paint and shoot lots of fireballs. I'm glad the film never bothers to explain rules. We're too high from huffing rush and snorting evaporated Nyquil. Just blow shit up! Hell yeah, all the teachers and short Italian burnouts who wronged you in middle school can get theirs by flaming proxy. And girls who disobey the sleazy leader get thrown naked into the room of dangling light strips, or zapped on the color filter table of abstract woe. It would be misogynist if it wasn't hilarious. Girls kind of half-heartedly pretending to get mind-probed by red gel lights is always fun. I never understood this habit some movies have of making the pain and fear of a woman so vivid and realistic it leaves you with a traumatic stomach for weeks, it's why I can't stand Noomi Rapace. She doesn't get it. Corman and company get it. The electro-lightshow shock treatments given to Claudia Jennings don't leave a scar on our psyche but harken the whole mess back a few years to AIP's DUNWICH HORROR (1971) and Hazel Court's initiation scene in MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1968) but the weird lighting and enigmatic presence of David McLean's 'Lord Zirpola' also gives it all a weird vibe like the very mind-control ceremony-like scene of when the prison demonstrates the results of Alex's conditioning to a faceless audience (first with the naked girl and then the guy who makes him lick his boot).


So the evil empire catches two wandering warriors called in this post-whatever-scape, the 'range guides' (because they lead wagon-train-style herds through the wilderness); they bike their way to freedom through the indomitable skills and have some great soul meld sort of spirit sex even separated by a door so badly drippy white-washed you worry Carradine will get white paint on his chest hair.


Later on there's bargain mutants with yellow ping-pong-ball-eyes and camouflage-netting dashikis.

It all works because the cast is led by three New World champions: David Carradine plays an amalgam of Kane from ABC's 1972-5 KUNG FU series and of course Frankenstein in DEATH RACE 2000 (he must have had a multi-picture contract with New World, like Vincent Price had with AIP); feral playmate Claudia Jennings (similar contract; see THE GREAT TEXAS DYNAMITE CHASE) is a fellow guide and warrior (as in the best Corman stealth-feminism, she's as tough and wise and able as any of the men - and prettier too, without being trashy or even overtly feminine). Real-life burn survivor Richard Lynch (GOD TOLD ME TO) is the bad guy but he's cool because he's not afraid of death and seeks only the field of honor for a final sword fight.

And it's always amazing the way Lynch seems to wind up in films full of fire effects, considering his history (3). In fact, I'm literally in awe of his fearlessness (2). Burn scars cover almost entire body, yet there he is, striding amidst the fireballs like it's no big deal. I'm in awe. I guess, in the words of the Hephaestus-like blacksmith in MOBY DICK, "thou canst not scorch a scar." (1) And great as Jennings and Carradine are at keeping straight faces, Lynch, as the bad guy / master henchman gets all the best lines, purred in a mellow emotionless forceful calm: "You call me animal?" he declares, "after all I tried to do to make you feel at peace?" Whatever his fall from grace, he's openly admirable towards the memory of Carradine's warrior mother (whom he killed in battle), giving Carradine the ultimate warrior greeting: "Salute your mother for me"

The Lynch Salutes Your Mother

Andrew Stein's score provides a great minimalist mess of wind sound, endless 'zap' effects as dirt bikes speed past the camera in single file and sustained notes somewhere between the Bebe's FORBIDDEN PLANET and faux John Carpenter. When he gets down to melodic refrains on keyboard proper, however Stein can get downright terrible. Jerry Garcia even noodles forth, emerging at the darndest times in and around in the mix, and as anyone who ever sat through a Dead Show more than thrice can tell you, depend on Jerry to lead you out of the caves of aimless noodling and you're going to be in there a long while. That said, all encores end at last eventually and at times the Jerry gets damned surreal as does the comically sloppy (or obnoxiously arty -like with Godard, it can be hard to tell the difference) editing.

Some of the writing is interesting with the whole samurai aspect. I like the narrator's approach to the combat, noting that the range guides, "ow(e) allegiance only to their foes," whom are called "statesmen." And that the greeting between range guides is "Our union is limited." In other words it's Groucho's "Hello, I must be going" all over again. Another great one is their statement "No one can touch myself," oh man, how true. I wanted to write them all down, but they got away from me

In case you can't tell, despite my staggering levels of artsy cosmopolitan breeding and literacy, I got mad love for this terrible movie and all the deadpan jokes Carradine, editor Larry Bock, and replacement director Arkush sneak little into the crevasses, like the way Carradine every so often casts a wry glance at the camera, or the non-sequitur editing. I love the way the mutants hide their faces so we don't linger on the awful yellow ping boll eyes and the way camouflage netting that is both their clothes and their mutations (their shame over being mutated covers the shame of the make-up dept). I love how Jenning's unusual fox-like features are complimented by her white fur collar. I'm not a fan of the grating replaying of the same sound effect over and over as the pursuing bikers whizz past the camera in line along the dirt paths, but hey. Our union is limited. Noodle on, Big Jerry. Noodle on.

The Shout DVD (where it's packaged with the forgettable Australian ROAD rip 'BATTLETRUCK' which I remember from back when it premiered on US TV, and being excited since it had THE WARRIOR's Michael Beck as well as a ROAD WARRIOR plot -but it was impossible to follow or care past the first commercial break) is worth getting for the fun Bock-Arkush commentary. He tells us how the film was originally shot and written by UCLA recruit Nicholas Niciphor, whose THX13 style sci-fi short won some acclaim but clearly didn't display much narrative oomph; so Arkush was called in to fill it with fireballs, nudity and action and make it less obtuse and stilted, which he did. So arty inert springboard launches a rescue dive from the guy who is perhaps the best in the world at capturing the giddy anarchic spirit of a truly great rock concert on film (that his gonzo masterpiece GET CRAZY isn't on DVD is one of the great crimes of the 21st century) and trash classic is born, DEATHSPORT is like the cool dude who hands you a one-hit right right before you go into juvenile court. Maybe you would have been better off without it, but on the other hand joke 'em if they can't take a fuck - rock and roll! Pickle Rick! Meep-Morp.

With the scorched featured and measured tone of the fearless fire elemental Richard Lynch, the always lovely and grounded yet gutsy, literally foxy Jennings, the cracking wry fourth wall eye rolling Carradine, the copious fireballs sending tricked-out bikes flying into the air, and the Arkush commentary. you're home free regardless of suckiness level. Get it and I promise you won't ever have to watch... BATTLETRUCK, even if it does have Swan (Michael Beck) from THE WARRIORS in the Mel role. He's a long way from XANADU... but aren't we all? Sandahl Bergman played one of the dancing disco muses in XANADU. We couldn't have known then who she'd inspire next... one newly licensed car-driving Cimmerian who can rent XXX movies at the video store, but still needs mom to buy him R-rated movie tickets, because the Somerville Circle Cinema lady is a total bitch. Mom, Salut!