On the latest making-of documentary for Arrow Video, legendary exploitation director Jack Hill explains that Roger Corman requested that he should make a stock car film, capitalizing on their success at the time. Hill only accepted if Corman allowed him to make an art movie, the result was Pit Stop. While Jack Hill’s 1968 film is far from art, it is undeniably of more substance than the typical factory production line than Corman was responsible for with American International Pictures, with Hill writing, directing and editing a film with a tangible, long-lasting legacy.
Rick Bowman (Richard Davalos) is a player, he takes part in street races, plays fast with the law and with women – he’s on a fast track to jail. That is until he has beats Grant Willard’s racer (Brian Donlevy, in his last screen performance). Willard makes his money from all forms of motorcar racing and he sees Bowman as a promising youngster who he can make money out of. With his interest piqued, Willard introduces his new talent to the latest driving sensation, figure 8 racing. The description says it all – a frenetic race around a figure 8 with a life and death junction crossing both roads. This junction is the cause of countless crashes and injuries, for everybody except Hawk Sidney (Sid Haig) – a wild dog and the man to beat on the Ascot Park Figure 8 scene. Fuelled by competition and the challenge of this insane spectacle, Pit Stop portrays the rise and rise of Bowman.
For Hill’s script to find its greatest power in the unspoken exchanges, well… perhaps he made an art film after all
PIT STOP
Hill focuses in on Bowman’s persistence in a way that has since become hardwired into the coda of the sports film. While Bowman is good as the single-minded pretty boy, there’s not much one could say about his role beyond obvious platitudes. His rival, Sid Haig’s Hawk gives the film a more dependable sense of danger, complimenting the insanity of figure 8 racing. Without going into too much detail, the endgame is of a Faustian quality that sees Bowman lose himself in the arrogance and megalomania he was battling as well as betraying the implicit, unspoken Motorsports code. For Hill’s script to find its greatest power in the unspoken exchanges, well… perhaps he made an art film after all.
Like any exploitation film attached to Roger Corman, Pit Stop is made with a small budget and quick turnaround. With those restrictions, it’s miraculous what Jack Hill managed. The film is a feat of guerrilla film-making and editing. As highlighted in the previously mentioned High Rise Productions making-of documentary, Crash and Burn! Hill and his crew turned up at the Ascot racecourse for several days with 5 cameras and the result seen in Pit Stop is a selection of edited highlights.
That could have seen the more exciting set-pieces turn out like a TV sports highlight package, credit to Hill’s edit that he developed a coherent narrative from these unconnected snapshots. Not only is it astonishing that the destruction derby of Figure 8 racing still stands up as an entertainingly odd instance of ‘only in America’, but in Hill’s treatment you can also find the DNA of any number of fast and furious films or carsploitation movies. With its rebellious blues score, Jack Hill intended this to be an art movie which lives and die in the moment – instead, he developed a prototype that which informs films made some 46 years later. Under-rated that Jack Hill.
PIT STOP IS OUT ON ARROW VIDEO BLU-RAY
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