Pit Stop

United States

1967

92 Min

Black and White

1.85:1

English

Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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PROD Lee Strosnider, Harry Schooler

CAST Brian Donlevy, Sid Haig, Richard Davalos, Ellen Burstyn, Beverly Washburn

Combining the speed of oval track and the heavy-metal crunch of demo derby, figure-8 racing is a perfect contemporary metaphor. Round and round you go, then wham, you’re out of the race. Jack Hill’s shearing Pit Stop follows the syncro-story of Rick Bowman (Dick Davalos), a smoldering street racer who wants to go legit. Under the tutelage of track promoter Grant Willard (Brian Donlevy), jelly-rolled rebel Rick gets into the fiery fray, taking on Hawk Sidney (Sid Haig), the reigning maniac of figure-8. Smoothed by constant velocity, Rick has a taciturn simplicity-he has to get somewhere and fast cars are his vehicle. Better known for Spider Baby and Foxy Brown, director Hill collides a high-speed lust for life-the drunken revelry, the flailing fist fights, the craven couplings-with body-bending action at Ascot Park in Los Angeles. Shot in stark B&W, Pit Stop is a nonstop crack-up, literally, with more mangled wrecks than a Cronenberg film. —Steve Seid

Director

Jack Hill

Jack Hill grew up around movies – his father was a designer for Disney Studios and Warner Brothers. He went to the University of California to study film, where he was a classmate of Francis Ford Coppola – they worked together on student productions and later both apprenticed with Roger Corman, working on The Terror (1963). While Coppola went on to Oscardom, Jack continued with B-flicks. He didn’t make a lot of films, and while all were low budget they all (except The Jezebels (1975)) made money, and his early ‘blaxploitaton’ films Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974) were hits. Soon after The Jezebels (1975) he stopped making movies so he and his wife Elke could pursue meditation and he could write novels. Today his films are hailed as cult classics, thanks primarily to Quentin Tarantino, who saw Hill’s work as it made its way to video. With retrospectives and a re-release of The Jezebels (1975), his career seems to be reviving. —IMDb… read more