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.

A very inspired and briskly effective handy dandy genre-blending combo of your typically creepy devil worship fright flick and a slam-bang exciting Southern-fried downhome car chase action thriller about two vacationing married couples traveling cross country in a deluxe, self-contained luxury RV who accidentally witness a black-robed Satanist cult in the bloodthirsty act of making a human sacrifice. The cult, whose members are frightfully legion, immediately realize that their allegedly secret ceremony was seen and pretty soon everything goes to hell, with pay phones proving to be inoperative, the couples' dog getting strung up, rattlesnakes springing forth from the cabinets, and the cult giving hot, tire-squalling, dust-kicking, metal-twisting pursuit in pick-up trucks.

Directed with customary "no muss, no fuss, no pretense whatsoever" headlong efficient battering ram style by B-movie ace Jack ("Run, Angel, Run!," "Cleopatra Jones") Starrett, who took over the direction a few days into the shoot after original director Lee Frost got canned by the producers for doing too much in-camera editing and refusing to overshoot a single scene (Frost still receives a co-screen writing credit for the tightly constructed script he penned with longtime collaborator Wes Bishop, who also co-wrote Frost's "The Thing With Two Heads" and "Dixie Dynamite"),"Race With the Devil" works like a charm, thanks to Starrett's fiercely economical directorial finesse, Robert Jessup's lively, constantly active cinematography, breakneck pacing, Leonard Rosenman's pile-driving score, dynamically staged car chases (the final chase with several Satanists hopping onto the speeding RV especially smokes),punchy editing, an increasingly tense and moody sense of all-pervasive dread and paranoia, fine acting all around, and a splendidly black, nihilistic surprise twist ending.

After teaming up in the excellent, unusually sensitive feminist Western "The Hired Hand" and Tom McGuane's terrifically off-kilter seriocomic delight "92 in the Shade," Peter Fonda and Warren Oates in their third cinematic pairing have developed a warm, easy, comfortable rapport that translates beautifully well on screen, making the friendship between their characters seem completely believable and engaging. "M.A.S.H." 's Loretta Swit and Lara Parker of "Dark Shadows" fame also hold their own as their wives. Popping up in nifty bits are veteran character actor R.G. ("Evilspeak," "Children of the Corn") Armstrong as a disbelieving sheriff, Bishop as Armstrong's dippy deputy, Starrett as a curious gas station attendant, and Paul A. Partain (the obnoxious fat cripple in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre") as a member of Fonda's motorcycle pit crew at the very start of the picture. Often given extremely negative reviews in most film guides, "Race With the Devil" is a whole lot better than its undeservedly poor reputation would suggest and well worth checking out.

Two couples vacationing together in a new Vogue R.V. from Texas to Aspen, Colorado are terrorized after they witness a murder during a Satanic ritual.

Some of the decisions made by the characters in this film defy all reason. The bad driving, the ritual sacrifice within view of others campers... and some just silly mistakes. But all the silly plot is made up for by the action, chases and explosions. This is sort of like "Duel" in an RV.

The most interesting thing is how the film starts with dirt bikes and you quickly assume the "race" must involve the dirt bikes. And yet, not even halfway in, the bikes are destroyed and serve no real point to the plot. A tank of oil (or gasoline) does, though.