Every now and then Hollywood decides to make a film about car racing. One can understand why – it’s a popular sport, good promotional tie-ins, you go to the races and see the cars whizzing by, the charismatic drivers, smell the burning rubber. Why then, have there been no great or even reasonably popular car racing films – Days of Thunder, Le Mans, Grand Prix? The main reason is that the cars just go around in circles. You can crash a car occasionally but that’s it. (cf car chase films, where you can crash heaps of cars an have people trying to kill each other). It’s kind of like films about models – you go to a fashion show, see all these sexy chicks wearing great clothes (or nothing), all the behind the scenes bustle, and go “this would make a great movie”. But it never does because at the end of the day models just wear clothes (eg Models Inc, Pret a Porte).
The plot of this OK racing film is about a former racing car driver turned writer (Mark Damon from Fall of the House of Usher) who follows an egotistical driver (William Campbell) around the circuit to write a book. It is really a love story between two men – Damon initially thinks Campbell is a wanker but comes to admire him. There is a lot of high falutin’ dialogue about death and being a race car driver, and some footage of real races in Europe (the best thing about the film).
The most interesting thing about the film is the way it was shot: producer-director Roger Corman filmed it in Europe, going from race to race and city to city, allowing the crew (who had to pay their own way over there) to have a holiday in between). A nice way to make a film! The crew included Francis Coppola (doing sound), Menahem Golan, Robert Towne and Charles Griffith.
During one of the filming breaks, Coppola persuaded Corman to let him make a film in Ireland – Dementia 13, which starred many of the Young Racers cast. So although it wasn’t much of a movie, it has its place in history.
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