With a snazzy Trans Am and snazzier mistress, big-city New York bizman Ray Harper (a feature-debuting Omar Tucci) drives to rural Crawford County to convince the local yokels of a $150 million project to develop their rural farmland. This pitch goes over as well as a Scientology service, but said mistress, Brooke (fellow first-timer Marlene Malcolm), cheers his spirits by gifting him a brand-new compass. Foreshadowing alert!

So Ray and Brooke are kidnapped by a trio of rednecks who pray for societal collapse and whose leader, TJ, looks uncannily like multishirted serpent Steve Bannon. “What’s this aboot?” asks Ray, revealing the movie in all its Canadianness, as the couple is boated to a nearby heavily wooded island for a lovely picnic.

Totally kidding; this ain’t no picnic. Instead, Ray and Brooke become unwilling participants in the most dangerous game: the one in which they’re hunted like animals — a Death Hunt, one might say.

Quoth TJ, “Once you’ve hunted humans, animals just don’t cut it,” so their craven disregard for life at least was built with purpose. Director Neil Mackay (the similar Battleground) needn’t have shown the Confederate flag for us to understand that TJ (Terry McDonald, Mackay’s Sixty Minutes to Midnight) and his gang are evil, but I’ll take it.

As the game begins, Ray doesn’t run so much as lightly shuffle toward a pleasant jog. Brooke fares better — much better — even in capri pants and a cami crop trop. With squibs aplenty, Death Hunt is simple, lean and adds nothing unexplored to the subgenre. Still, I give Mackay credit for not taking this into I Spit on Your Grave territory; refreshingly, rape isn’t even on the minds of the men — much to the bafflement of Brooke, who’s told by an offended captor, hilariously, “We’re married!”

In part because Mackay has stripped the premise to its core elements, but more because Malcolm gives it everything she’s got, this flick works. It’s also beautifully photographed, which rings of irony considering it’s “aboot” the ugliest of humanity. —Rod Lott

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In a high-profile kidnapping case that crosses international borders, whom would you trust for a rescue mission?

You answered, “Dallas supporting cast member Morgan Brittany,” too, right? Well, we’re 14.3% correct; she’s part of Stunt Seven.

In John Peyser’s slimly plotted but convivial made-for-CBS movie alternately known as The Fantastic Seven (I guess “magnificent” was taken?), actress Rebecca Wayne (Elke Sommer, The Wrecking Crew) is abducted from a film shoot. She’s taken to the sovereign state of Freeland, which exists as a few wooden structures on stilts in international waters. Mastermind and contemporary pirate Boudreau (Patrick Macnee, A View to a Kill) demands a $10 million ransom within 72 hours … or Rebecca dies.

The movie studio doesn’t want to front the funds for Rebecca’s release, but justifiably: because her last two pictures fizzled. And no U.S. government agency will claim jurisdiction due to Freeland’s establishment in lawless international waters. You know what that means: Stuntpeople, assemble!

Sheet of sandpaper-voiced stuntman Hill Singleton (Christopher Connelly, Strike Commando) spends two-thirds of Stunt Seven recruiting six others to form an extraction team. He starts by skydiving so he can parachute down to a hang-gliding pal: “Horatio! Have I got a crime for you!” Next thing you know, Hill and Horatio (one-and-doner Brian Brodsky) scale the FBI building in daylight — no worries; it’s Saturday — to break in and steal the highly confidential Freeland file, unmistakably labeled and in the open on an agent’s desk.

Joining the crew are an explosives expert (a pre-typecast Christopher Lloyd in a cowboy hat), a weapons specialist (Olympic gold medalist Bob Seagren), a kung-fu bartender (Soon-Tek Oh, Collision Course), a good swimmer (the aforementioned Brittany) and another good swimmer (Juanin Clay, WarGames). Barely planned, the actual reconnaissance operation is as easy as counting to the titular number while blindfolded. The end! What’s our next assignment?

Clearly, Stunt Seven intended to kick-start a weekly series, which I would have watched since director Peyser (The Centerfold Girls) packs this 90-minute outing with action aplenty. Biplanes! Sharks! Bar brawls! Diving! Scuba diving! Cadillac driving! Truck driving! Fisticuffs! Explosions! Whistling lessons!

All stunts were performed by such fall-guy brand names as Dar Robinson, Dick Warlock, Buddy Van Horn and Dick Durock. Some of their stunts also were performed by an 8-year-old me and the next-door neighbor kids the afternoon after this aired, and we thought we’d be cool by jumping from a tree. —Rod Lott

Let Stingray be a lesson to all coke dealers who, fleeing a deadly vice raid, temporarily hide $1 million worth of smack in a little red Corvette overnight: The used car lot is under no obligation to protect your contraband inventory.

Hoping the heat has cooled, the criminal duo (The Sword and the Sorcerer’s William Watson and Stewardess School’s Bert Hinchman) returns the next morning to retrieve the stash, only to witness the titular convertible being purchased by fine young pals Al (Christopher Mitchum, Savage Harbor) and Elmo (Les Lannom, Shoot to Kill). As was the wont of Smokey and the Bandit imitators, a movie-long chase ensues.

Distinct and memorable, Al and Elmo’s pursuers soon number four with the addition of a greasy hit man (Cliff Emmich, Hellhole) and their lady boss (Sherry Jackson, The Mini-Skirt Mob); the latter is disguised as a nun, prefiguring Shirley MacLaine and Marilu Henner’s cloak of choice in Cannonball Run II. (Speaking of clothing, Elmo spends the movie in a bumblebee-striped shirt made of terrycloth, like a cheap child’s bathrobe.) Throw the cops in there, too, and we lose count of the amount of heat on Al and Elmo’s combined tail.

Dollar for dollar, minute by minute, of the many Bandit also-rans, Stingray ranks among the finest — or at least the “funnest.” Well-executed in the same can-do manner as the tragically few films of H.B. Halicki (1974’s Gone in 60 Seconds), it wastes no time going from zero to 60, as the characters encounter various rural rats, hippies, the occasional bulldozer, a student driver, Playboy Playmate Sondra Theodore and, in a rather inventive bit, an ill-timed trip through an automatic car wash.

Somehow the only feature for writer and director Richard Taylor, Stingray continuously plows forward as a four-cylinder good time, due to his keen sense for stunts and the ability to stage them. Part of what makes them so impressive is the palpable danger viewers can sense as people jump out of the way of speeding vehicles at the Very Last Second, or as a motorcycle zig-zags through the woods in a sequence so immersive, you can smell the exhaust. There’s something admirable about Taylor’s casual depiction of recklessness, with such juxtaposition as live grenades thrown at farmers while the soundtrack busies itself with hoedown circus music — and admire it I do, as a scrappy yet standout example of ’70s car-fetishization cinema where whoever sits behind the wheel matters not a lick. —Rod Lott

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In the de-evolution of humanity, Evel Knievel resides somewhere between P.T. Barnum and the dudes of Jackass. One of the more singular phenoms of 1970s pop-culture ephemera, Knievel carved out his own showbiz niche via death-defying motorcycle jumps over everything from the Caesars Palace fountains to the Snake River Canyon. He was equal parts professional wrestler, Vegas-era Elvis and Captain America all wrapped up in the fractured frame of a Montana-born huckster – the allure of which, such as it was, is nicely encapsulated in 1977’s Viva Knievel!, in which Evel plays a fictionalized version of himself.

It marks a somewhat sad swan song for Gordon Douglas, a better-than-average B-movie director best remembered for two other films with titles ending in exclamation points: the giant ant sci-fi Them! and They Call Me Mr. Tibbs!, the ill-begotten sequel to the Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night. Douglas knows how to move a camera, so Viva Knievel! is imbued with a surprising level of competence, at least in terms of choreographing action.

The script, however, is a different story. It is replete with dialogue and situations as nuanced as an anvil dropped on one’s head, which might just be how screenwriters Antonio Santean and Norman Katkov prepped to get inside the mind of one Robert Craig Knievel. In terms of plot, suspense and characterization, it all plays out a little like a live-action version of a Scooby-Doo cartoon.

For his part, Evel is mostly convincing as himself, whom the movie depicts as a big-hearted lug with sideburns to match. What does it say when a guy who thought he could jump the Grand Canyon (a boast he thankfully never attempted) turns in a better performance than the ostensible actors? Lauren Hutton is especially ill-served as Evel’s love interest (!), while the rest of the cast – including Red Buttons, Leslie Nielsen, Frank Gifford and Marjoe Gortner – reads like a roster of Love Boat special guests,

Viva Knievel’s biggest head-scratcher is Gene Kelly as Evel’s aging mentor now fallen on hard times. Did Kelly have gambling debts during the ’70s? It is hard to understand why the then-65-year-old dance legend would subject himself to this humiliation but, then again, the guy did do Xanadu.

Yeah, I’m thinking gambling debts. —Phil Bacharach

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A Filipino version of the Cannonball Run, the Manila 1000 is a three-day, off-road race involving everything from jeeps and dune buggies to stock cars and stocky Joe Don Baker (The Living Daylights) as driver Walkaway Madden. It also features motorcycles — or “motor-sickles,” if you wish to pronounce it as does race promoter Bo Cochran, played by Larry Hagman (TV’s Dallas) in a hat pilfered from Carmen Sandiego’s entry hall.

Before the start, in a setup soon to be swiped by Safari 3000, a plucky journalist from Stratus magazine (Susan Sarandon, the same year she did The Great Smokey Roadblock) pokes her nose around for a story, so Cochran forces Madden to let her ride shotgun. Dressed in a lumpy-butt jumpsuit that’s less Evel Knievel and more Elvis ’77, Madden is furious, like, “A yucky woman? Phooey!” so you just know they’ll bicker and bitch until they fall into something approximating love or lust. Worry not — we’re spared the sight of a Sarandon/Baker sammie.

Storywise, Checkered Flag or Crash actively works against itself, as if settling to let Harlan Sanders’ boot-scootin’ theme song do all the plotting: “Checkered flag or crash / Goin’ for the heavy green, gonna beat ’em / Checkered flag or crash / There ain’t no in between / So do me right, you damn machine.”

The slight variation from that outline arrives with news of an upcoming stretch of the route suddenly becoming impassable … so Cochran doubles the prize money. This should clear the way for director Alan Gibson (The Satanic Rites of Dracula) to turn in a film that feels faster and more dangerous, yet over and over again, he demonstrates how ill-suited he is for the job.

From Macon County Line’s Alan Vint to Playboy centerfold Daina House as a masked rider, Gibson has all the ingredients within reach to make a rip-roarin’, race-brained hicksploitation pic. Instead, he botches the recipe with confusing staging and editorial choices that are particularly flabbergasting for this subgenre — for instance, slowing down and removing frames from some of the more extreme-speed stunts, which is a technique one level above a photo flipbook.

Plus, with pacing akin to the driving skills of my late, not-so-great stepgrandmother — lay on the accelerator, let up, lay on the accelerator, let up, ad infinitum — you’re better off watching an autocentric film that wastes more gas than it wastes your time. —Rod Lott

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