Best movie ever!

Awesome Movie

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I saw this in the theater, back in the day, and I thought it was awesome. The basic story still holds up OK...gotta love it though, if you can access a little latent paranoia. I mean, nowadays people google things but back in the day you had to go to the library and hope it had the book you needed. Back in the day the phone lines were down...now we have cell phones. Suspend disbelief a bit. Pretend there's no wifi and no signal.

Review contains a few spoilers.Just about everybody in this film is good to excellent especially Lorretta Swit (of TV's Mash--see my review on that show). The action sequences when hoods come on the motor home while its moving and unsuccessfully try to destroy it are sensibly filmed and well-crafted. All that ruins this film is Lara Parker's terrible performance as Peter Fonda's wife. She makes 100% amateurish, lousy, overblown faces trying to act scared. Swit on the other hand makes perfect countenance in every minute she acts frightened. Swit proves totally that Parker is a terrible actress. Maybe,say, Susan Strasberg should have had Parker's role. Or maybe Swit's character could have been the sole wife in the motor home. Parker was such a mistake in this film!

One of the quintessential Satanist films of the 1970s, RACE WITH THE DEVIL is a B-movie which is up there with the best. Moving swiftly along a nice, simple plot, the film is an exercise in sustained tension - it starts off slowly, to build to a frenzied and violent finale in which our survivors fight for their lives. It's actually a film with little in the way of gore - much of the violence is obscured or kept off screen, but it pushes the same buttons as DUEL and THE TERMINATOR in its portrayal of unstoppable evil.For fans of action and horror, like myself, this was a dream come true. With some real spine chilling moments, which pose unanswered questions like "who's out there in the dark?", mixed in with GREAT action sequences (the car chases and battles with shotguns are in particular, show-stopping), I couldn't have wished for more. While some of the moments do veer into tackiness - the mugging Satanists running about naked, the hysterical over-reaction to a snake attack - for the most part this is intense psychological turmoil. And just when you thought it was safe... guess again! The acting, from Peter Fonda and Warren Oates, is great, and the pair excel as the rugged, down-to-earth middle class men who are doing their best to survive. The actresses in this film are, however, extremely annoying, and their purpose is only to scream at every available opportunity, which soon becomes grating. Apart from R.G. Armstrong, who fits the role of a small-town sheriff like a glove, there aren't really any other cast members of note, as people come and go.Fans of THE X-FILES and fear-filled films like ARLINGTON ROAD will relish the paranoia served up in this dish, as it becomes clear that nothing and absolutely nobody is to be trusted - not the police, not gas station attendants, not even car crash victims. Anyone could be a murderous Satanist, and frequently is. Plus, on top of all this, there's the standard (for the '70s at least) downbeat ending, which remains ambiguous and leaves much to your imagination. RACE WITH THE DEVIL is the B-movie which unexpectedly became an A-rated film...at least in this humble fan's opinion.

The premise here is pure grindhouse. Two couples on a vacation take the wrong turn of the road and see something they weren't supposed to see, the cops are not too quick to assist them, the locals are suspect, and before they know it devilworshippers are on their path. Reason I came to Race with the Devil is that inveterate badass, Warren Oates, thinking I may find another little gritnik gem in the raw. This is no Hired Hand Oates did again with Peter Fonda, it's certainly no Monte Hellman although it tries to resemble a road movie, and it's generally forgettable to the point that even Oates and Fonda seem to be generally nonplussed by the material. Some may find it entertaining as a satanic cult paranoia b-movie or an action road flick where beatup vehicles speed up in empty roads and slam at each other. Me, I came looking for something this movie is not, no harm done though. I don't exactly lament my wasted time because sometimes you take chances and not all of them will pay off.