The Last Chase

I started watching this movie on svod because of the title and Lee Majors. I was on the verge of giving up when there was this scene with quarantine and epidemic. No more cars. Well it was dystopian in '81. No more in 2020. So not the best movie ever, but worth a try.

Was an interesting experience to rewatch this 1981 early cable staple in 2022.

Lee Majors stars as a retired race car driver in a future where gas is outlawed, there are no cars and people rely strictly on mass transit. Fed up with living under a stifling regime he rebuilds his Porsche and heads to 'free America' in California aided by a hacker revolutionary, Chris Makepeace.

In '81 it was pretty mundane 'near future' sci-fi about a U. S. that has given up its dependence on oil and gas powered vehicles. 40 years ago the future was represented as the struggle between an environmentally balanced nation and individuality/ freedom of choice.

I think the movie is actually more prescient today when the pandemic and Ukraine war have pushed gas prices over $5 a gallon and California just introduced legislation that by 2035 all cars must be electric powered. It is interesting to see the environmentalist government portrayed as fascists hell bent on stopping Lee Majors from inspiring an uprising for freedom of choice.

Also, I was a big fan of Chris Makepeace when I was a kid and wish he had continued making movies.

First of all, it has a great score by Gil Melle. He did cool synthesizer stuff with stuff like The Questor Tapes and Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and he doesn't disapppoint here. Even at the dullest moments, you can count on the score to give you a jolt or two.

The main problem is that everything in this movie is just...slightly off-key. Give it a better actor than Lee Majors as the "hero," and a better old fogey/jetfighter than hammy Burgess Meredith, and do a little more than just rehash Farenheit 451 with gas instead of books, and this might have worked. Chris Makepeace is okay (although the juvie bad boy/computer hacker stereotype was already overdone by '81), and the plane vs. car action sequences aren't too badly done.

*shrug* I liked it. It wasn't better than Cats, but otherwise it works for me.

With a silliness index comparable to that of Death Race 2000, and none of the political insight, The Last Chase starts off with two strikes against it. Nevertheless, this film scored a base-hit with me and earned the "somewhat watchable" rating of 5.

If you have ever wanted to see Lee Majors siphoning regular gas from tanks abandoned 40 years ago and using it in a Formula I Car while chased by Burgess Meredith in a Sabre Jet, this is the film for you. I'm afraid that if you have never had this particular fantasy, you might want to avoid this film. Majors plays a professional race car driver forced to give up his career and dismantle his car by a US government which has outlawed petroleum use. Now let's just play along here and lets ignore the fact that the petroleum and defense industries have been the most valuable players in the election of most of the US's recent right-wing executives, and a few of the lefties too - so let's ignore this impossibility of the basic premise - and let's not even ask how these people are generating electricity, etc. I didn't notice any nukes.... Anyway. Steve Austin...ummm sorry.... Lee Majors' character decides to leave for, of all places, California, where people have not realized that petroleum use is a desire, not a right, and are carrying on the same sort of destructive culture the rest of the USA has apparently disavowed. Believability is, of course not an issue here, as the viewer is never challenged to accept any of this absurdity.

Instead, you just let it go along from ridiculous scene to ridiculous scene. And if you start to wonder how Mr. Majors kept such a straight face throughout this film, just think back on his run in The Six Million Dollar Man. And when you get bored with the Roger Corman-like 2 minute pans across screen following the ancient Burgess Meredith and his Sabre Jet, just imagine him cackling like the Penguin, or focus on the other bizarre animal noises he keeps uttering in his aerially induced euphoria.

This film is remarkably good for what it is. The script is not bad, the directing and editing are fine, the acting is decent, and the soundtrack is even acceptable. It does get boring at times, but, given the utterly ludicrous plot, it's not nearly as bad as it should have been.

This was a staple of 1980s Canadian television, not because it's particularly good (though I like it), but because it was made with Canadian dollars. Thus allowing it to fit in with the country's strange (to non-Canadians anyway) Canadian Content broadcast regulations.

Lee Majors takes time out inbetween his Six Million Dollar Man/Fall Guy gigs and races around the countryside near my neck of the woods, while Chris Makepeace blows the head off a statue real good and Burgess Meredith talks to his kite. All this, plus a decent supporting role from Harvey Atkin as the orgy-frequenting conformist co-worker who frowns upon Lee's free-thinking spirit. What's not to like?

Adding to the enjoyment is playing the game of "spot the location" and comparing places I've been to to how they're shown in the movie. The sight of dozens of extras bicycling around the Yorkdale shopping centre on their way towards a big clean Utopian bubble city (or a matte painting of it, anyway) always raises a smile.

Avoid the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of this, it's really not funny, although the last line "aw, no wonder it sucks, it's Canadian!" is a good one.