‘Hey everybody! Lighten up! It’s all over!‘
I don’t really care for biker movies. Having a toddler in the house with only a slender grasp on what constitutes a full night’s sleep has made me really hate motorbikes in real life, in fact. But Race with the Devil promised to be a biker movie mixed with the occult and so it had my interest. It didn’t keep my interest for long…
Roger Marsh (Peter Fonda) and Frank Stewart (Warren Oates) are friends and business partners with a successful motorcycle dealership in San Antonio, Texas. After deciding to go on a ski trip to Aspen, Roger and Frank, together with their wives, accidentally witness what appears to be a ritual human sacrifice by a satanic cult.
This is a classic horror film set-up that anyone with even a passing interest in the Hicksploitation subgenre will be familiar with. It’s Deliverance. It’s Texas Chainsaw. It’s The Hills Have Eyes. All those movies. While director Jack Starrett is adept at creating an ominous sense of dread that escalates throughout the film, the narrative is also repetitive and fairly dull. There aren’t enough set pieces in this thing. Luckily, Oates delivers an incredibly authentic and lived-in performance as the more competent of the pair of friends, and Fonda does well also. Aside from that, there are some cool car chases and the third act steps things up a bit… but, ultimately, Race with the Devil doesn’t know what kind of film it wants to be. There is no such subgenre as action-biker-horror films and that’s because it’s a tonal mishmash that never really threatens to click into place – a disappointing and surprisingly dull film.
