Death Car on the Freeway (1979)

          Former stuntman Hal Needham scored two hits out of the gate as a director, because Needham’s buddy Burt Reynolds starred in Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and Hooper (1978). Yet Needham’s first picture without Reynolds, the Wild West comedy The Villain (1979), was a dud. Perhaps that’s why Needham downgraded to TV movies before reteaming with Reynolds for the inevitable Smokey and the Bandit II (1980). The first of Needham’s telefilms, Death Car on the Freeway, is as laughably obvious as its title. Pitting an intrepid TV reporter against a psychopath who uses his vehicle to kill people while they’re driving, Death Car on the Freeway is enjoyably vapid made-for-TV dreck, with a parade of familiar actors enacting simplistic scenarios against a backdrop of automotive violence and explosive stunts. Always stronger at choreographing mayhem than guiding performances, Needham suffers for the casting of Charlie’s Angels beauty Shelley Hack in the leading role, because she offers only her usual robotic line readings. Similarly, the story is so formulaic and predictable that there’s never much suspense, except perhaps when Needham steps on the gas to simulate vehicular jeopardy. Still, with its lip service to women’s liberation and its stubborn insistence on showing a car wiping out every 15 minutes or so, Death Car on the Freeway never pretends to be anything but disposable entertainment.

          Hack plays Jan Claussen, a Los Angeles newscaster looking for a hot story. She connects two seemingly unrelated incidents and dubs a public menace “The Freeway Fiddler” because survivors recall hearing bluegrass music emanating from his van. (Yes, the film’s title is a misnomer, because the subject is actually a death van on the freeway.) Jan clashes with the usual opponents—an ex-husband (George Hamilton) who doesn’t believe in her potential, a stubborn cop (Peter Graves) who resents that she spotted a crime pattern before he did, and a kindly boss (Frank Gorshin) who can’t protect her from advertisers wary of the anti-automobile stance that Jan takes during editorials. And, yes, you read that right. Somewhere along the line, Jan morphs from a reporter to a public crusader, and she inexplicably determines that car ads linking speed with virility are the reason the Fiddler started attacking people. Better to ignore the plot twists while gawking at the cool chase scenes and the random guest stars. Others appearing in Death Car on the Freeway include Harriet Nelson, Barbara Rush, Dina Shore, Abe Vigoda, and Needham himself, who acts the small role of a defensive-driving instructor.

Death Car on the Freeway: FUNKY

1980 Week: Smokey and the Bandit II

          Discussing the frothy action/comedy hit The Cannonball Run (1981), a snide critic once said that the picture seemed like an incidental byproduct of an enjoyable party, as if playing characters and telling a story was a secondary consideration for those involved. To a certain degree, the same observation could be made of all the lowbrow movies that stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham made with his buddy, leading man Burt Reynolds. The duo’s first effort, Smokey and the Bandit (1977), is a goofy romp made somewhat tolerable by lighthearted performances and spectacular car jumps. Their second and best movie together, Hooper (1978), comes dangerously close to having a heart, since it’s a loving homage to stuntman. But then comes the slippery slope comprising Smokey and the Bandit II, The Cannonball Run (1981), Stroker Ace (1983), and Cannonball Run II (1984). Each is dumber and lazier than the preceding. The problem, of course, is that Needham never really left his identity as a stuntman behind, so he offers little except the ability to stage automotive disasters and fistfights. Smokey and the Bandit II, for example, so enervated that the plot is virtually the same as the original picture’s narrative.

          While trucker Cledus “Snowman” Snow (Jerry Reed) and his escort driver, Bo “Bandit” Darville (Reynolds), haul illegal cargo through the Deep South, redneck Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason) follows them “in hot pursuit.” Meanwhile, Carrie (Sally Field) once again leaves Justice’s idiot son at the altar in order to join her once-and-future lover, Bandit, on the road. The “twists” this time are as follows: the cargo is an elephant, a wacky Italian doctor (Dom DeLuise) tags along to care for the elephant, and Justice enlists his two brothers (both played by Gleason) for aid in the final showdown. Smokey and the Bandit II comprises 100 mindless minutes of car crashes, country-music performances, drinking scenes, redneck clichés, slapstick, and (thanks to Gleason) unbearable overacting. It’s hard to know whether Field and Reynolds returned for the party or the paycheck, or simply out of loyalty to Needham, but even describing their participation as half-hearted would require exaggerating. The elephant probably gives the picture’s best performance. Incredibly, Smokey and the Bandit II made enough money to warrant a third installment, the execrable Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983), which was produced without Needham’s participation, and in which Reynolds makes only a brief cameo appearance. A decade later, Needham somewhat pathetically resurrected the franchise with a quartet of TV movies (all originally aired in 1994) featuring Brian Bloom as “Bandit.”

Smokey and the Bandit II: LAME

The Villain (1979)

          Revered stuntman Hal Needham made a successful transition to directing by helming a pair of hit comedies starring his buddy Burt Reynolds, Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and Hooper (1978), and the team scored once more with The Cannonball Run (1981). Unfortunately, the rest of Needham’s directorial filmography is quite grim, and the downward spiral began with this ghastly Western. Starring Kirk Douglas as an inept outlaw who tries to bushwhack a young woman carrying a strongbox filled with money, The Villain represents a sad attempt to piggyback on the success of Mel Brooks’ outrageous Blazing Saddles (1974). Even in his prime, Douglas wasn’t particularly well suited to comic material, and by the time he made The Villain, Douglas had succumbed to an excessive style of acting that approached self-caricature. Worse, The Villain was clearly conceived as a live-action cartoon in the style of classic Looney Tunes, so the middle of the picture comprises numbingly repetitive vignettes of Douglas falling off cliffs, getting run over by boulders, and receiving the full blasts of dynamite explosions. Think Wile E. Coyote, but without the wiliness.

          The allusions to vintage Warner Bros. cartoons are so overt that Douglas actually spends the last moments of the film bouncing up and down, in wearisome fast-motion photography, while the Looney Tunes theme plays on the soundtrack. It’s all as painful to watch as you might imagine, and yet the juvenile textures of Douglas’ performances aren’t the only eyesores in The Villain. Ann-Margret gives a vapid turn as the imperiled young woman, “Charming Jones,” and Arnold Schwarzenegger costars as Charming’s escort, “Handsome Stranger.” The unfunny running gag with these characters is that Charming is so hot for Handsome that she’s virtually salivating in every scene, but Handsome is too dim to notice. Even Ann-Margret’s beguiling cleavage fails to make her scenes interesting. Campy actors including Foster Brooks, Ruth Buzzi, Jack Elam, Paul Lynde (as an Indian named “Nervous Elk”), Robert Tessier, and Mel Tillis populate the periphery of the movie, though none is able to elevate the infantile rhythms of Robert G. Kane’s script. Bill Justis’ godawful score—which punctuates every would-be gag with an over-the-top horn blast—merely adds insult to injury.

The Villain: LAME

Hooper (1978)

          While this may not sound like the most enthusiastic praise, Hooper is better than most of Burt Reynolds’ myriad car-chase comedies of the ’70s and ’80s. However, because Reynolds’ good-ol’-boy charm was among the most appealing textures in mainstream ’70s cinema, noting that he was at the height of his powers when he made Hooper underscores why the movie works: Despite a story so thin it sometimes threatens to evaporate, Hooper offers 99 minutes of comic escapism driven by the macho charisma of its mustachioed leading man.

          One of several late-’70s/early-’80s film and TV projects celebrating the work of Hollywood stuntmen, Hooper stars Reynolds as Sonny Hooper, an aging daredevil who realizes a career change is imminent because his body can’t take much more abuse. When we meet him, Sonny is employed as the stunt double for Adam West (who plays himself) on the 007-style action picture The Spy Who Laughed at Danger. Despite being a pro who regularly delivers spectacular “gags,” Sonny clashes with the movie’s asshole director, Roger Deal (Robert Klein), since Deal demands impossible results on budget and on schedule, then takes credit for the footage Sonny and his team make possible.

          Sonny is involved with Gwen (Sally Field), the daughter of a retired stuntman (Brian Keith). Because Gwen has seen firsthand what stunt work does to the human body, she’s adamant that Sonny quit, but Deal’s pressure and Sonny’s own vanity become obstacles. Then a hot new stuntman, Delmore “Ski” Shidski (Jan-Michael Vincent), arrives on the scene. Although Sonny recognizes that he’s being replaced with a younger model, he insists on going out with a final super-stunt. The gentle drama of the picture, which obviously takes a backseat to action scenes and jokey interplay, stems from the question of whether Sonny will push his luck too far or succeed in providing Deal with the gag to end all gags.

          Hooper was a bit of a family affair for Reynolds, and the pleasure he presumably derived from making the picture is visible onscreen. The movie reunited Reynolds with his longtime buddy, stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham, following their success with Smokey and the Bandit (1977), and Field was Reynolds’ offscreen paramour in addition to being his frequent costar.

          Needham’s intimate familiarity with the stunt world benefits the movie greatly, because many details—from the preparations of car engines for jumps to the application of Ben-Gay on aching knees—feel effortlessly authentic. And while the character work and dialogue are as simplistic as one might expect from this sort of picture, the key actors are so watchable that we want Deal to get his comeuppance, we want Sonny to succeed, and so on. Plus, of course, the stunt sequences are fantastic, like the elaborate bit during which Sonny and Ski drive a sportscar through an entire town as it’s being demolished.

Hooper: GROOVY

Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

          Probably the most popular of the innumerable trucker flicks that blazed across American movie screens in the late ’70s, this Burt Reynolds hit was the No. 2 box-office success of 1977, topped only by Star Wars. On one level, it’s not hard to see why audiences embraced the action-packed comedy, because it delivers almost nonstop juvenile amusement through car crashes, cartoonish characters, and curse words—to say nothing of rebelliousness and then-trendy CB jargon. However, laughing at Smokey and the Bandit is a bit like laughing at the bad kid in high school who shoots spitballs when the teacher isn’t looking: You know it isn’t really funny, but you can’t help smiling every so often by reflex.
          The directorial debut of veteran stuntman Hal Needham, Smokey and the Bandit tells the silly story of a quest to illegally transport a truckload of beer across state lines in the Deep South. Bandit (Reynolds) drives a hot black Firebird Trans Am as a “blocker” for his trucker pal, Snowman (Jerry Reed), meaning it’s Bandit’s job to drive so fast that cops chase him while Snowman’s rig cruises by unnoticed. When Bandit picks up a sexy runaway bride, Carrie (Sally Field), he also picks up a persistent pursuer: redneck sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), father of the schnook Carrie left at the altar. Therefore most of the movie cuts between scenes of Bandit and Carrie getting frisky and scenes of Justice and his idiot son zooming down the highway in a police car that gets demolished piece by piece as the movie progresses.
          Needham’s daring auto stunts are fun for those who dig that sort of thing (cars soaring over rivers, crashing onto the backs of flatbed trucks, and so on), and Gleason aims for the cheap seats with a stereotypical performance (he shouts things like, “Nobody makes Sheriff Buford T. Justice look like a possum’s pecker!”). Gleason’s characterization would be unbearable if the actor wasn’t blessed with such meticulous timing, although it’s a bummer to see “The Great One” saddled with not-great material. Beyond Gleason’s shtick and the highway high jinks, the most appealing aspect of the movie is the easygoing dynamic between Field and Reynolds (who were an offscreen couple at the time), and the similarly loose buddy-movie vibe between Reynolds and country-singer-turned-actor Reed.
          Plus, there’s no denying that when he made this picture, Reynolds epitomized a certain ideal of über-’70s macho swagger—he’s like a never-ending party crammed into a lean, 5’ 11’ frame. After the huge success of Smokey and the Bandit, Reynolds’ comedies mostly devolved into uninspired variations on a theme (like 1980’s awful Smokey and the Bandit II), so it’s interesting to study this flick as the moment when he simultaneously perfected his good-ol’-boy act and began squandering audience goodwill by generating lackluster product that was probably more fun to make than it is to watch.

Smokey and the Bandit: FUNKY