Action Vehicles on America’s Sentimental Twisted Open Roads – Tone Madison

The UW Cinematheque presents a trio of very different car-centric films from the 1970s on three Fridays in July: “Vanishing Point” on July 12, “Race With The Devil” on July 19, and “Damnation Alley” on July 26.

America’s obsession with the automobile and the open road has always been fertile fodder for movies. Tapping into our cultural myth of westward expansion and a romanticized ideal of rugged individualism seemed a surefire way to make a box office hit in the 1970s. Studios churned out chase movies, motorcycle movies and trucker films, often tailored to the most car-loving audiences at drive-in theaters.

The UW Cinematheque’s summer series “Action Vehicles” brings together three films on three consecutive Fridays in July that offer very different examples of how car culture has permeated American cinema. Vanishing point (1971) opens the series on July 12th at 7 p.m. and is one of the best car chase films of all time. Race with the devil (1975), which will be shown the following week on July 19th at 7pm, is a paranoid backwoods nightmare; and Damnation Alley (1977), which concludes the series on July 26 at 7 p.m., is a completely misguided sci-fi road trip. All three films are shown in new 4K DCP restorations from 20th Century Fox.

An intoxicating mix of arthouse nihilism, damn politics and adrenaline-fueled thrills. Vanishing point set the standard for car-centric films of the 1970s. Essentially just one big, extended car chase, the film follows Kowalski (Barry Newman), a burned-out transport driver in a supercharged Dodge Challenger. After betting his amphetamine dealer that he can drive to San Francisco in two days, Kowalski races through the American West at top speed and quickly incurs the wrath of the highway patrol. Pursued by a small army of cops, Kowalski receives help from blind radio host Super Soul (Cleavon Little), who mythologizes Kowalski as “the last American hero” as he slides into oblivion.

A surprise box office hit with an anti-establishment stance, Vanishing point helped establish the formula of the outlaw folk hero and the chase that later appeared in populist road movies like Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and convoy (1978), but with a much more ambiguous view of its hero. Unlike the heroes of these films, Kowalksi is a much more ambiguous character, played by Newman with a deadpan stare and anti-charisma. Director Richard Sarafian attributed the film’s success largely to future Chinatown (1974) Cinematographer John Alonzo, who mounted lightweight handheld cameras on the Challenger to recreate the thrill of a speeding muscle car.

Race with the devil is a lurid exercise in occult horror. Peter Fonda and Warren Oates play Roger and Frank, two friends on vacation with their wives, driving through Texas in a state-of-the-art RV. After stumbling upon the site of a satanic ritual, the couples are pursued by a sinister conspiracy that always seems to be one step ahead of them. A cheap mix of Rosemary’s Baby (1968), liberation (1972) and The Wicker Man (1973), the film presents a paranoid vision of rural America, seemingly populated exclusively by good old Satanists.

Although the plot is extremely ridiculous, Race with the devil is surprisingly effective at steadily building the tension until it erupts in its violent climax. Director Jack Starrett began his career acting in low-budget biker movies and had a talent for both gritty action sequences and casting scary-looking character actors like RG Armstrong (who plays Sheriff Taylor here). The film reunited Fonda and Oates, who had first worked together on Fonda’s directorial debut. The hired worker (1971) and had immediately become close friends. Both had serious experience in vehicle films – Fonda was a motorcycle enthusiast and became a counterculture icon with Simple driver (1969) and took over a large part of the driving in the chase classic himself Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974); while Oates’ presentation of the GTO in Two-lane asphalt road (1971) is one of the best performances of the genre. Although her characters in Race with the devil are one-dimensional, their personal chemistry is obvious, and Oates’ weary earnestness gives the plot some much-needed believability.

Based on a novel by science fiction author Roger Zelazny. Damnation Alley is a post-apocalyptic vision of the future from the 1970s during the Cold War. After a devastating nuclear attack, the United States is completely destroyed; explosions destroy all major cities and throw the planet off its axis. Cut off from the rest of the world on a remote missile base, the unlikely team of Major Denton (George Peppard), the rebel and high-flyer Tanner (Jan-Michael Vincent) and the eccentric Keegan (the always delightful Paul Winfield) embark on a cross-country odyssey to find other survivors. Traveling in the Landmaster, a huge twelve-wheeled military vehicle, the crew must contend with mutated bugs, catastrophic climate change and their own distrust of one another on their way to the promised land (Albany).

Damnation Alley was supposed to be a big blockbuster for 20th Century Fox, but after extensive interference from studio bosses and exceeding the original budget by a lotThe film was completely surpassed at the box office by the success of war of stars (1977). Studio interventions could explain Damnation AlleyThe film’s disjointed tone borders on unsettling horror before shifting into a much more family-friendly direction with the introduction of sweet orphan Billy (Jackie Earl Haley). The film’s visuals are similarly uneven, often looking more like a cheesy 1950s sci-fi film than a big-budget spectacle. An early scene in the film sees Tanner riding his motorcycle around giant scorpions that are clearly just regular-sized scorpions projected onto the screen. Despite its flaws, the film is a real looker. Damnation Alley is still quite entertaining, with some funny scenes and a rousing, synthesizer-heavy score by Jerry Goldsmith.

In summary, “part of what makes these movies so American is, of course, our love of cars. We are a nation on wheels, shopping, banking, exercising, eating, drinking and making love in our cars… They are more than a means of transportation, they have always been a symbol, a dream, a way of life,” wrote Andrew Horton in his 1978 book, cineast Essay “Hot Car Movies and Cool Individualism.” While car culture is still ubiquitous in American life, its symbolic significance in the film medium has diminished considerably since the 1970s. The end of the drive-in meant that movie studios stopped making films for the rural South, whose love of films about fast cars had largely fueled the boom. The gasoline crisis and major missteps by the auto industry further weakened the genre’s appeal.

Although these films could only have been made in the 1970s, the open road is a timeless cinematic device. The rough edges and anti-authoritarian attitude of these films are welcome reminders of what filmmakers can achieve with just a camera and a speeding car.