Satanists pursue an RV across Texas in 1975's Race with the Devil. If you successful forget about an impressively nonsensical plot and don't mind poorly edited action scenes, the film does build some nice tension and features good performances from Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, and Loretta Swit.
The film also stars Lara Parker as Fonda's wife (Swit plays Oates'), rounding out the group of four vacationers. Her performance isn't as good but she's a lot prettier than Swit which director Jack Starrett sees as reason enough to give us closeups of her frightened face that linger just long enough to be a little confusing.
Swit, of course, was Hot Lips on MASH and, while she does give a good performance, it feels very much like a TV performance, bound by TV smarminess a little smaller than the scope of horror the film tries to invoke. However, Fonda and Oates as old buddies who stumble on a Satanic orgy that ends in human sacrifice, are pretty great.
It's for witnessing this orgy the Satanists decide to ruin the quartet's vacation, so begins the pursuit. The four try to make it to civilisation, the city of Amarillo, before the Satanists can finally kill them. If you stop at any point to ask questions like, "Why don't the Satanists just shoot them?" or "How did the Satanists track them to the middle of an empty desert?" a lot of tension is lost as the film's ill-considered manipulative techniques fall apart. But some of the quieter scenes where there characters interact with suspicious townsfolk are pretty effective.
No comments:
Post a Comment