Review of Race with the Devil (1975) by Dawdlingpoet — 28 Nov 2021

This is quite a spooky movie, although by todays standards its certainly not very scary in terms of visual shocks. Its a bit similar to The Wicker Man in that there's a constant eeriness in the people that they come across and the feeling that communities are hiding a big secret - also the satanic references, of course.

There are some fairly thrilling car chase scenes but they don't make up the majority of the movie, otherwise its mainly the characters interacting with people they come across on their road trip. Somewhat stereotypically, the women (/wives) end up as the delirious ones, shrieking about most everything, while the men try to save the day.

It is quite sinister in parts, although some scenes may seem a little mundane at first. When shocks do come, they are fairly sudden but their spaced out, so don't expect a constant stream of scares, this movie is more about building an overall feeling of paranoia than anything else.

Towards the end of the movie, the action really hots up with a frantic chase scene that seems rather implausible but it certainly quite thrilling and entertaining to watch. Some camera angles make it particularly engrossing, watching what happens from various cars point of view as well as from further back. There's a heavy reliance on the musical score during the shock scenes (as it were) and chases, which is quite sinister at points.

Personally I felt that the supposed shock twist ending was a bit obvious (although also quite sinister) and so a slight disappointment - it felt that this movie was very much modelled on The Wicker Man (as previously menioned), indeed that came out two years prior to this movie, according to IMDB. It does a good job of making the viewer question alot, its fairly creepy although I wouldn't say its by any means entirely original but then of course it dates from the 1970s and there would have been fewer similar movies then.

The acting overall I'd say is mediocre - I didn't think it was particularly great, it didn't stand out as such, although I felt the movie did become somewhat engrossing in parts, so I suppose thats partly due to a decent enough cast, so I guess its mediocre to average at best. I do think there are good aspects of this movie, it was quite entertaining by the end so I thought it was fairly good but not especially good - this is a movie that I'd give a 3.5 star rating if such a rating were allowed on Ciao - as it isn't, im going with a 3 star rating instead (I hope this makes sense).

One thing I liked about this movie is that its not too long drawn out, lasting barely an hour and a half, making it fairly short but sweet.