RACE WITH THE DEVIL (1975) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Jack Starrett
Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Loretta Swit,
Lara Parker, R.G. Armstrong, Clay Tanner
Fonda and Oates play a couple of middle-class guys who take off on a road trip with their wives in a shiny, new motor home. The first night out, they're parked in the middle of nowhere getting pleasantly drunk, when they witness what appears to be a ritual murder. After that, they're on the run across a backroads landscape where everybody they meet, including the cops, could be out to kill them, and every sedan, school bus and pickup truck appears to be part of a plot to drive them off the road. A relentlessly creepy, low-budget study in paranoia, and nobody could play paranoia like Warren Oates. "Duel" meets "Rosemary's Baby" in this. Good car-wreck stunt work.
Peter Fonda
(1940-2019)
