Race With The Devil

Peter Fonda was a cultural icon back in the early 70s as the fall out from his groundbreaking feature Easy Rider continued, allowing the actor to work on whatever project he pleased. After teaming up with Warren Oates for the Hippie-Western The Hired Hand, the pair worked together again on this low budget, Drive-in exploitation movie.

Although it keeps any violence or gore to minimum, instead focusing on bike stunts and car explosions, it's creeping atmosphere of conspiracy and dread makes this an effective hybrid of horror film, road movie and stunt flick. The rather basic premise, that a two couples spending their holidays in a mobile home stumble across a midnight sabbat, far away from the prying eyes of civilization, is more than enough of a framework to hang a simple pursuit film, in which the acolytes of Satan chase the four innocent men and women across the states in an attempt to silence them permanently.

Peter Fonda's love affair with rebel motorbike imagery is still in evidence, his character is a bike racer on the up, taking a break from all the high speed thrills with his wife and friends, so fans of Hippy road trip movie, Easy Rider and his classic biker gang flick, The Wild Angels will be happy to see him back in the saddle for this one.

A great example of the kind of quick, easy, low budget horror films that the big studios funded in the 1970s, it's strong cast, including Loretta Swit, who played "Hot Lips" Houlihan in the long running US TV show M*A*S*H, and taut storytelling make this a great example of the genre.