Cannonball Run
Cannonball Run was a campy, screwball comedy released in
1981 that starred
Burt Reynolds,
Dom DeLuise and
Farrah Fawcett-Majors. Hal Needham was the director and had an uncredited role as an emergency medical technician. The film is a sequel to the earlier
Cannonball and is very similar to the earlier
The Gumball Rally (both
1976).
Based on a true story, the movie is about a cross-country rally from Ohio to the pier at Redondo Beach, California organized by automotive journalist Brock Yates. Since the entire point of the rally was to get to the finish line as quickly as possible, it's safe to assume that many speed laws were broken along the way.
Reynolds and DeLuise play has-been race driver "J.J. McClure" and his mild-mannered mechanic "Victor Prinzim" (with a superhero alter ego, "Captain Chaos") who run the Cannonball in an ambulance, a heavily modified Dodge Tradesman van which was actually used in the original running of the Cannonball. In an attempt to appear legitimate to law enforcement, Victor hires "Doctor Nikolas Van Helsing," an inebriated physician of questionable skill played by Jack Elam. They kidnap a young photographer (Farrah Fawcett-Majors) nicknamed "Beauty" to be their "patient." Though Beauty protests her apprehension at first, she eventually comes around to the idea of being a participant in the race. A scene where the ambulance is stopped by law enforcement for speeding to California since the patient was "unable to fly" is based on an actual event.
Cast
Cannonball Run had its share of stars. Among them:
- Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr as a washed-up lounge singer and Las Vegas gambler respectively who run the race in a Ferrari while disguised as Catholic priests. Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder played their bookie.
- George Furth played "Arthur J. Foyt." Despite his name, Foyt was an anti-automobile fanatic who tried to have the race stopped. Instead, he wound up in a number of hilarious predicaments.
- Roger Moore played "Seymour Goldfarb, Jr." as a self-parody of his role as James Bond. Goldfarb is a character who thinks he's Roger Moore. His car is an Aston Martin DB5 like the one in the original Bond films. Molly Picon portrayed his mother.
- Jackie Chan played the driver of the Japanese entry, a Subaru that was constantly getting lost despite all the high-tech gadgetry aboard.
- Michael Hui played the Japanese engineer and navigator.
- Jamie Farr appeared as a wealthy Arab sheik determined to win the race even if he has to buy it. Bianca Jagger makes a brief appearance as his sister. Farr's racer is a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow.
- Terry Bradshaw and Mel Tillis are a couple of "good ol' boys" whose thinly disguised NASCAR stocker doesn't even make it out of the starting gate. It winds up in the swimming pool of the hotel which the race started from.
- Adrienne Barbeau and Tara Buckman were Spandex-clad "hotties" in a black Lamborghini Countach. That same Lamborghini was used in the opening credits of the movie as it was being pursued...unsuccessfully...by an Arizona Highway Patrol car. Valerie Perrine has an uncredited role as a state trooper who successfully stops the duo later in the film.
- Peter Fonda had a cameo role reprising his character in Easy Rider. The appearance of Fonda and his motorcycle gang during a halt in the race caused by a road closure was the perfect excuse to cut Chan loose in a kung-fu fight sequence.
- Bert Convy played a wealthy but bored executive who planned to run the Cannonball by motorcycle with the help of an old friend, "Shakey Finch" (played by Warren Berlinger), once the world's greatest cross-country motorcyclist. The two planned to disguise themselves as newlyweds, presumably to try and make themselves appear legitimate. However, his friend had gained a great deal of weight over the years forcing them to ride a "wheelie" all the way across the continent.
A "cult classic" today and fairly well-received by the public (but savaged by critics), Cannonball Run sparked a sequel, Cannonball Run 2 which reprised most of the original cast. It would also be Dean Martin's final film before his death.
External link