Race with the Devil Still Delivers Delight

Race with the Devil burns rubber on the road to hell. This 1975 fright flick is a fabulous combination of concepts. Not many movies can be called road horror occult action films, but this beauty blends several genre elements into one special adventure. It’s a gleaming example of how facets from multiple flicks can mix.

The story follows the owners of a successful motorcycle shop in Texas. Roger Marsh and Frank Stewart (Peter Fonda and Warren Oates) head off on vacation with their wives, Kelly and Alice (Lara Parker and Loretta Swit). What starts out as an idyllic holiday in a luxurious RV soon descends into a steady stream of suspense and paranoia culminating in an epic road battle.

The shift into nightmare territory begins during the vacationers’ first stop. Camped out in a secluded area away from the highway, a cozy evening of cocktails becomes a haunting encounter with cultists. Frank and Roger notice a bonfire in the near distance. While peeping on what seems to be a wild orgy, the two unwittingly witness a Satanic human sacrifice. When the killers realize they’ve been observed, the rest of the movie becomes a race to escape the occultists’ wrath.

This initial flight is a mix of action and nail-biting worry. The RV gets stuck racing across a shallow river, the Satanists catch up, and readers can imagine the rest. After fighting off maniac cultists, the two couples report their experience to the local sheriff. Veteran actor R.G. Armstrong (Ride the High Country) plays the role in a way that makes the investigation curiously serious yet clearly inclined to dismissiveness. That’s to say, from the get-go the sheriff is already assuming nothing happened, or at worst, drug crazed hippies killed an animal, and these frightened folks are merely mistaken.

The thing that sets Race with the Devil apparent from other films — horror movies tend to feature skeptical law enforcement — here there’s a sinister implication in the sheriff’s dismissal. One that isn’t lost on the protagonists. However, aspiring to check evidence out on their own soon leads to a fresh hell.

The middle of the movie shifts into a paranoid panic driven trek to Amarillo. Along the way the central characters keep encountering strange individuals who seem to be watching them. At first this could be brushed off as nerves, but when rattlesnakes hidden in the cupboards attack, there’s clearly someone stalking them with malicious intent.

Race with the Devil does this wonderful job of establishing a diminishing sense of relief. Every escape may get the group away from immediate dangers, but they are never free from the downward spiral. It all comes together in the end when a road chase turns into all out motor vehicle mayhem worthy of a respectful nod from George Miller.

Part of the delight is the nature of stunts from that era. Sure, during one or two car crackups it’s possible to see the rollbar if one knows where to look, although seeing it doesn’t dilute the sense of extremity. This isn’t like the inauthenticity of CGI scenes in movies like The Fast and Furious franchise, where reality takes a backseat. These are real cars, colliding and flying to pieces; even under ideal circumstances the stunts are terribly dangerous. That visceral component comes across tangibly throughout the finale.

The New York Times expressed the opinion, “This is a ridiculous mishmash of a movie for people who never grew up, which is not so say it’s for children… American movie production is in a bad state.”Apparently, Race with the Devil is too much of a pulpy dark adventure for some. That said, the review isn’t without merit. It simply suggests that dumb fun is less fun than elevated refined nightmare fuel.

I can’t help being reminded of a quote by novelist and film critic Anne Billson who once tweeted, “Whenever a horror movie makes a splash… there is invariably an article calling it ‘smart’ or ‘elevated’ or ‘art house’ horror. They hate horror SO MUCH they have to frame its hits as something else.” My point isn’t that Race with the Devil is secretly genius. It’s a solid popcorn movie, a rollercoaster ride that gets to the point then concludes with some sharp scares along the way. There’s no shame in calling it a beer and a pizza movie, perfect for the so-bad-it’s-good crowd. One statement from the New York Times critic, though, does bother me to the core.

The reviewer remarks on how Warren Oates (Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia) and Peter Fonda (Easy Rider), who play Frank and Roger, are too high on the acting totem pole to be in such a movie. Prior to a point in someone’s career, certain movies are acceptable. Everyone has to start somewhere. Academy award winners like Denzel Washington and Anthony Hopkins are likely to be remembered as legends. Yet few ever discuss Denzel in Virtuosity (1995), a dreadfully mediocre sci-fi serial killer action romp co-starring Russell Crowe. Rarely does anyone explore Hopkins in Freejack (1992), a painful flop where his acting failed to raise up the worthless adaptation of Immortality, INC. But once that threshold is crossed, going backward, even to make a fun movie, is viewed by many as a misstep.

Curiously, nothing similar is said about performers Loretta Swit (M*A*S*H) or Lara Parker (Dark Shadows). Apparently playing the wives was fine for these two. They were only television actresses after all. Granted, the film doesn’t give them much to do except scream. Although there is one interesting portion.

When a note is discovered, impaled on broken glass in a busted window, the strange symbols on the paper inspire the ladies to head to the library. There’s a certain proactivity there one can’t help appreciating. The attempt to decipher the note seems to prove witches are threatening the group. The clever bit here, though, is that it verifies nothing supernatural.

Despite the Satanic ceremony, Race with the Devil never does anything to suggest the occult is real. It’s entirely possible the cultists are simply a deranged pack of homicidal weirdos. What makes this idea additionally terrifying is not only the way they stalk their victims for miles around Texas, but a loose implication there is a network of like-minded individuals allowing them to operate as such. In other words, our protagonists are in an area populated by a disturbingly high amount of killer Satanists.

It ties into horror notions prominent in the 1970s. Following things like the Vietnam War, civil unrest of the ’60s, and the Watergate scandal, a prevailing distrust saturated the atmosphere of the United States. Race with the Devil essentially features a group of individuals, sliding closer to middle age, who are portrayed as previously more adventurous — wild motorcycle riders who became businessmen — becoming sharply aware they’re surrounded by sinister intentions. It’s basically the story of people who settled into the American Dream only to discover money can’t protect them from a society gone mad.

Because Race with the Devil is such a mix of various genres, the less known about the plot the better. This is the kind of movie ideally seen without a clue what comes next. It starts out as a road trip movie, almost a commercial for the Vogue Villa Grande recreational vehicle. Then it becomes a horror show courtesy of a bloody sacrifice before shifting gears into suspense thriller. Finally, the flick steers into action territory as the RV roars down the highway, Peter Fonda on the roof firing a shotgun at Satanists in pickup trucks. A glorious display of no bad ideas if ever there was one.

Action isn’t necessarily associated with horror. If there is an action element it’s often meant to emphasize the power of the antagonist. Case in point, Predator (1987) where every display of macho masculine might from gigantic, muscled men to cacophonous gunfire proves useless against the alien hunter. Horror undermines the point of actioners since the latter is typically intended as a power fantasy. Incorporating combat of any sort creates the impression the horror is not dangerous. However, that isn’t to say scary entities can’t still be horrifying.

Sequels in the Purge franchise demonstrate this. Central characters get into combat situations, yet winning doesn’t diminish the dreadful scenarios they’re in. They’re essentially surrounded by a rampaging multitude of killers, so taking out one doesn’t stop the nightmare. Zombie movies obviously operate similarly. No matter how many of the walking dead survivors slaughter, the horde remains overwhelming. The same is true with the vampire onslaught in From Dusk till Dawn (1996). And Race with the Devil largely falls into the same terrifying territory. Every escape is simply a brief pause before another hideous incident ensues. Still, the movie shows that action-oriented horror is a viable hybrid, especially when wild combat emphasizes the relentlessness of the nightmare.

While Race with the Devil isn’t some genius slice of social criticism, it does connect to certain woes familiar at the time which have weirdly resurrected. The intensely divided political atmosphere of the contemporary United States isn’t dissimilar to the metaphor of a corrupted landscape director Jack Starrett conjured. What the movie does best is show how awareness changes the perception of things.

Early on there’s a scene with Warren Oates and Peter Fonda having a drink outside. Despite the dark wilderness all around, they sit pleasantly sipping booze in the limited light of their RV. After the story shifts along sinister routes, similar stops become tense moments waiting for something dreadful to happen. The RV ceases being a modern shelter from the horrors of the world, and the dark is no longer at bay, it’s a surrounding oppressive presence full of nightmares.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out in 1974, and Race with the Devil emerged in ’75. Though the former didn’t exactly inspire the latter, the two are cut from the same Southern Gothic cloth. Both are twisted tales of a hideous danger lurking along the backroads of a blissfully ignorant nation. Anyone leaving the cities, especially the bourgeoisie, risks their lives potentially encountering rural abominations. Similar themes can be seen in The Hills Have Eyes (1977).

Race with the Devil reveals the way multiple facets from different genres can come together. The road trip movie can slip into suspense thriller if there’s no safe place to go. At the same time, the drive can become a siege movie as antagonists take to the highway in pursuit. The end of the film has more in common with Mad Max movies than similar Satanist flicks such as The Seventh Victim (1943), wherein a young woman searching for her vanished sister stumbles upon a cult of devil worshippers. Finally, there’s a possible look at human evil not unlike Deliverance (1972) since technically there’s never any indication of the supernatural.

Perhaps that last bit is the most haunting aspect of Race with the Devil. The wicked deeds done aren’t because anyone is being driven by demons. The allure of permission to be wicked is what gives way to the worst impulses. As Blaise Pascal observed in Pensées, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

Race with the Devil delivers a fun action ride. It may take a pretentious squint to see biting political commentary about dissolving trust between citizens of a disillusioned country, but those disinclined to such a perspective can still enjoy a drive-in pulpy delight. This is a fright flick meant to take people on a funhouse ride. The success of that goal is worth a thumbs up. Granted, it’s no masterpiece, however, Race with the Devil does reveal, particularly given its cult status, that horror can be injected into a variety of genres without losing speed. The only thing that makes it run out of gas is doing things poorly. Instead of treating seemingly disparate elements as impurities, filmmakers should see them as innovative opportunities.