Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 7:3	Budget Big

Wow! A drag racing film written and directed by David Cronenberg! One can only imagine the odd contraptions and weird devices under the hood. But, there aren't any. In fact, this is really a very straight forward racing film. Having just re-watched Le Mans, there is no doubt that Cronenberg used some of the same notions in this film. The focus on the crowds, the long periods of no dialog (in the early part of the film) and way the drivers react to each other are similar in both films.

While the opening credits roll, we see what is possibly the Canadian Rockies. (I love the mountains, so I am already in a good mood). Soon we are at a drag strip and watching Billy "the kid" (Nicholas Campbell) and Gary "the blacksmith" Black (Cedric Smith) race Funny Cars. Billy loses and Gary needles him about spinning his wheels at the start line. Soon, Lonnie "lucky man" Johnson (William Smith) is up in his Top Fuel car. About halfway down the track, the car's frame fails and the car explodes. Lonnie walks away to the cheers of his teeming fans. Phil Adamon (John Saxon) yells at Elder (Don Fancks) and blames him for the crash. After launching into a lecture on the cost effectiveness of not winning, Phil stomps away while Elder looks upset. Lonnie makes a call to Sammy (Claudia Jennings) and they discuss a few plot points. As he hangs up the phone, Lonnie looks studiously at some engineering diagrams. At the race the next weekend, Phil tells Lonnie that he will have to race the Funny Car. Lonnie does not want to displace Billy, but does anyway. Gary is upset that Lonnie is racing in his class. Over the next couple of weeks, Lonnie's car has some suspicious problems and when he calls the team car builder he finds out that Phil has cancelled work on his new top feuler. Phil decides to fire Lonnie, bypass Billy and hire Gary to race for his company. Gary accepts but Lonnie and the guys take back their car, put Elder's new "Quad vane" device on it and race it to the finals against Gary. Despite being a loser, Gary has figured out that someone on his team has been sabotaging Lonnie's team and purposefully drives through a booby trap meant for Lonnie. His car explodes, Lonnie causes Phil's plane to crash and then goes looking for financing to keep the team together.

First of all, I really liked this film despite the horrible, stupid ending. Cronenberg's directing is amazing at times. The scenes at the race tracks are nicely paced to get both the slow build up to the staging of the car and the insanely fast trip down the strip. There is one scene where the director superimposes a timer over a shot looking out the window of the funny car. After giving us time to recognize what is going to happen next. the car takes off with a thunderous roar. Less then seven seconds later, the car crosses the finish line and the engine shuts down as the driver slows down and we can hear the assorted pops and clunks as the car comes to a stop. Other than the credits, this is the longest continuous shot in the movie. The transfer of the movie to DVD is excellent. Someone must have had a pristine negative as there is no dust or dirt or loss of detail. Every frame of the movie looks great.

That is not to say that the movie is without faults. I have already mentioned the stupid ending. In detail the ending goes like this. Before the final for the funny car division, Phil and Meatball talk and Meatball says "make sure Gary is in the left lane". The next couple of scenes are interlaced shots of Phil making the officials give Gary lane choice and Meatball pouring racing fuel on the track and himself. The race starts and Gary bumps Billy's car out of the way and hits the fuel and explodes. Billy jumps out of his car and notices Meatball on the side of the track and hits him. This apparently causes Meatball to catch on fire. Billy then grabs a fire extinguisher and puts him out. Phil jumps in a car and heads off to where he parked his plane. Lonnie notices that Phil is trying to get away and jumps into the funny car and manages to hit the plane just enough so that it crashes into Gary's new trailer and explodes.

An abbreviated list of problems with this ending: 1. In order to affect the outcome of the race, Meatball would have to put the fuel down on the track before the finish line which means he would be in full view of the 20,000 spectators. 2. Lane choice is hugely important in drag racing and the rules are carefully spelled out beforehand. 3. I am not sure how Gary managed to bump Billy out of the way without wrecking him. 4. Before the race we watched both cars do a burn out using fuel that was set on fire, no explosion. Yet when Gary went across some fuel at 200 mph his car exploded instantly. 4. If Billy had a fire extinguisher on hand, don't you think he should have used it on Gary's car?. 5. Why is Phil running away? This was at least the fourth car to explode during the movie. 6. Lonnie (you know the good guy) purposefully causes a small plane to crash at a crowded race course. We are supposed to believe that only the Phil was killed during the crash and subsequent explosion. But the biggest reason the ending is stupid is because despite it all, there was a lot of subtlety in the movie. The only reason for this ending was so that things could go boom. Yes, I know that is a good enough reason normally, but I really hoped this film would rise above it.

Another irritating feature of the movie is the music. The title song blatantly rips off Bruce Springsteen and is played several times during the movie including an extended saxophone solo. At one point the truck hauling the car has a flat tire and we are subjected to some odd country hoe down music. Much like the video transfer, the audio transfer is superb and while this is great for the normal sounds during the movie, when the music kicks in it is enough to blast you off the couch. The musical director (Fred Mollin) would go on to work on many movies and produce records for Dan Hill, Kris Kristopherson and Frank Stallone.

It is amusing to see how Cronenberg followed the usual B movie rules. The first is the Gary rule. For some unknown reason, any character named Gary in a film (or for that matter TV) is going to be a loser. In support of this I would cite that Gary is the first name of the lead characters in "Weird Science" and "The Last American Virgin". From there it is all downhill. Also in evidence is the Plane Rule. If there is a small plane in a film, we will watch it land.

A final note on Cronenberg. Fast Company was done after Shivers and Rabid but before Videodrome. Fast Company does not have the quirky characters that are generally associated with Cronenberg, the story line is straight forward and predictable and there are no gruesome dismemberments. This was the first of several collaborations with Cinematographer Mark Irwin and it could be that Irwin should get most of the credit for how good the film looks. I would not peg this as a Cronenberg film if I did not know he was the director. However the film is so well done from a photographic and set design perspective, that I can really see that Cronenberg knows his stuff. While this is in many ways a throwaway film, that did not keep Cronenberg from really putting some effort into it. In the hands of a lesser director this could have been a really hokey movie, but the very tightly edited race sequences and the mostly low key plot points keep the film interesting. Still I would not recommend it for most Cronenberg fans as it is drastically different than his usual fare, but I would strongly recommend it for Cronenberg fans that want a bit more background of the man.

This would also be Claudia Jennings last film. A few months after the film was completed, she died in a car accident in California. Claudia might well have become a B movie queen, in the eight years she was acting she appeared in 17 movies and several TV shows including the Brady Bunch.

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