Pit Stop

VHS, Blackest Heart Entertainment
1967, 91 minutes

review by Lee Peterson

Three years after the completion of Spider Baby , independent auteur director Jack Hill wrote and directed what is quite possibly the best, most authentic car racing movie ever made. A gritty, fast-paced morality play set in the seedy world of legal car racing, Pit Stop  is stylistically as far removed from Spider Baby  as it is from Hill's followup,the Pam Grier women-in-prison classic The Big
Doll House .

Racecar promoter Grant Willard (Quatermass II 's Brian Donlevy) offers to sponsor amateur drag racer/delinquent Rick Bowman (East of Eden 's Dick Davalos), in a professional derby called the "Figure 8."
A two-loop track with an intersection in the middle, the Figure 8 is an insanely dangerous racetrack designed to cause as many crashes as possible (Hill saw an actual Figure 8 race and was inspired to document
it for posterity).

Rick is instantly at odds with reigning Figure 8 champ, Hawk Sidney (wildly over the top Hill regular Sid Haig--with a full head of wavy hair!), especially when he starts making time with Hawk's girlfriend/racing groupie Jolene (Spider Baby 's Beverly Washburn).

Soon Rick becomes the back-up driver for racing star Ed McLeod (George Washburn, brother of co-star Beverly) and sets his sights on Ed's grease monkey wife Ellen (Ellen McRae, who a year later would change her name to Ellen Burstyn and star in The Last Picture Show ). 

There's loads of authentic car-crash footage, and plenty of boss vehicles, courtesy of 60's muscle-car god George Barris (creator of the Batmobile, the Monkees' convertible and numerous others). Throw in a loose, psychedelic garage score by The Daily Flash (who?!), and you've got a perfect drive-in movie. Ironically, the black-and-white film was released the year that drive-in theatres switched to a "color features only" rule to compete with television, dooming it to commercial failure. 

Anchor Bay Entertainment presents Pit Stop  in a modestly-letterboxed (1.66:1; 16X9 enhanced) transfer that is a remarkable improvement on the VHS version Hill released a few years back (the onscreen title is The Winner ).The sound is Dolby Digital mono, and is very good. 

Director Hill is accompanied on an audio commentary track by Johnny Legend, who was instrumental in Hill's recent rescue from obscurity. The informative and lively discussion reveals, for instance, that neither Davalos nor Haig had ever driven a car before, and that the heavy-drinking Donlevy's scenes were always shot early in the day, before he'd had a chance to imbibe.

Two trailers (actually the same trailer, in black-and-white and tinted "color" versions), a still gallery, and a brief camcorded interview with Hill and Legend comprise the extras.

A great, fast-paced B-movie that would make an ideal double feature coupled with David Cronenberg's Fast Company , Pit Stop has been yanked from the junkyard of video obscurity, given a tuneup, had its engine realigned, and parked on the showroom floor with all the class we've come to expect from Anchor Bay.

Official Website:

http://www.anchorbayentertainment.com