Jack Starret’s rollicking mix of Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974), The Devil Rides Out (1968) and The Exorcist (1973) is a lot more fun than its sometimes lowly reputation might suggest. It’s more of an action film than a horror (the genre elements are almost incidental after a while) but it’s exciting stuff with plenty of incident to keep the increasingly paranoid storyline chugging along nicely.
Six years after Easy Rider (1969), Peter Fonda is back in the saddle as speedway racer Roger Marsh who sets off from San Antonio, Texas in a recreational vehicle for a skiing holiday in Aspen Colorado with his wife Kelly (Lara Parker) and business partner Frank Stewart (Warren Oates) and his wife Alice (Loretta Swit). They haven’t got far before Roger and Frank witness a nocturnal Satanic ceremony that ends in the sacrifice of a young woman. The Satanists spot them and give chase, forcing the group to stop off at a nearby small town to report the incident to Sheriff Taylor (R.G. Armstrong). Becoming increasingly paranoid, the group set off for Amarillo, increasingly nervy about the people they meet, unsure if they’re part of the cult pursuing them. They survive an attempt to kill them using rattlesnakes and flee but the cultists are still in hot pursuit…
There’s an ominous sense of the malignant presence of the Satanists almost right from the start. They’re there almost the entire time, lurking around the edges of the action. Whether everyone the group meets are really involved in the conspiracy doesn’t matter – the fact that they might be is what makes it all so chilling. Everyone from revellers at a swimming pool to local law enforcement might be in on it and neither the holidaymakers nor us have any way of knowing who to trust. When they do break cover, they’re frequently like the zombies in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) or the later gang members in John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), a faceless mob, their anonymity only heightening the sense that they could be just about anyone. They’ve certainly been busy and spread their malicious wings over a wide area – they’re there in a trailer park (in the guise of overly friendly neighbours), a rowdy country and western bar and halfway across the State as the pursue their quarry through off the beaten tracks roads.
The final act is a thrilling car chase that seems to have inspired George Miller’s Mad Max 2 (1981) with its scenes of relentless Satanists swarming over the speeding RV desperate to get inside. There’s a hint or two of Steven Spielberg’s Duel (1971) too, that paranoia of meeting someone or something implacable on a lonely road miles from help or safety. These action scenes tend to be rather better done than the horror elements – aside from a moodily shot human sacrifice beneath a desiccated tree, the horror tends more towards the psychological than the visceral. The Devil isn’t even featured let alone raced with.
Race with the Devil is in direct line of descent from Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) via Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), another portrayal of the American South as a hotbed of wrongdoing and evil intent. The Winnebago full of city slickers out where they don’t belong would turn up again in Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and setting the film in the Lone Star State inevitably recalls Hooper’s film. Wander too far from the city limits, the film seems to be cautioning us, and you’re on your own. It all culminates in one of the bleakest and most striking endings in any of the post-The Exorcist “Devil movies” as the Satanists finally catch up with the interlopers.
There’s nice chemistry between Fonda and Oates who had worked together on the excellent western The Hired Hand in 1971, bringing an easy and convincing comradery with them though sadly, Swit and Parker are required to do nothing but scream at rattlesnakes and look twitchy wherever they go. There’s a nice little turn from R.G. Armstrong as a local sheriff so hospitable and willing to help that you just know he’s a wrong ‘un. Director Starret turns up in a small role as a gas station attendant while co-producer Wes Bishop (who had previously given the world House on Bare Mountain (1962), Love Camp 7 (1969) and The Thing with Two Heads (1972) among others) plays Deputy Dave.
Though met with mixed reviews – and attitudes haven’t changed much over time – Race with the Devil has proven influential, with Kevin Smith claiming that it influenced his 2011 horror film Red State. In 2005, a remake was announced, written by Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan with Chris Moore set to direct but nothing ever came of it. The Indian film Kazhugu (1981) is an unofficial remake.
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