Thunder Alley

Considering this film contains several Nascar real races you may think a priori it is an enterrtaining movie - at least for a car race fan. But no: it is one of the most boring, dull and badly made car race films I have ever watched. Even Elvis' Spinout was much better, more enterrtaining and did include much better songs. Funicello's only song is bad and at any point interest takes off. Car races should had made it but neither they do it: they are announced, prepared and... suddenly they have already began without noticing; then a few boring laps and...suddenly race is over (you only notice it because you hear Race is over!) without any emotion, no thrilling no nothing. All an all a really boring film not only because of the performances but mainly because of the terrible edition: did best cuts end on the montage room floor? We will never know but I am afraid they did not.

For someone who never had any technical training as an actress, it never ceases to amaze me how natural Annette Funicello is on screen. She's completely at ease in front of the camera, whether being feisty telling off her dad (Jan Murray), trading barbs with a surly blonde (Diane McBain), getting her face muddy, getting ripped on booze, or being funny and sexy with her leading guy (Fabian), Annette is never stiff or embarrassing. In fact, doing a little warm-up song number with a party band in her living room, she's a very sensual woman. The plot of this B-flick is strictly by-the-numbers, but the stock car racing scenes are better than the ones for Elvis Presley's "Speedway", released a year later. Credit future "Stunt Man" director Richard Rush with the tight pacing. The party-orgy looks like an outtake from a "Beach Party" flick gone awry, but it's a transition picture for the A.I.P. studios--and not a bad one. **1/2 from ****

THUNDER ALLEY is a 1967 stock car racing drama set in the south and starring onetime teen idols Fabian and Annette Funicello along with Warren Berlinger and Diane McBain. What struck me as I watched it is how similar it is to an Elvis Presley movie. In fact, two of the cast, Berlinger and McBain, had appeared with Elvis a year earlier in SPINOUT, which also had a racing theme. If you put Deborah Walley (also from SPINOUT) in Annette's role of stunt driver (a role better suited to the spunkier Walley anyway) and put Elvis in Fabian's role and gave the character a few songs, you would have had a near perfect Elvis vehicle. And if they'd allowed THUNDER ALLEY's Richard Rush to direct it (instead of one of the old studio workhorses like Norman Taurog who pounded out nine Elvis vehicles in the 1960s) and kept the edge to it, including a hot bedroom scene Fabian has with a very sexy Diane McBain, it might possibly have taken Elvis in a new direction away from all the SPEEDWAY, TICKLE ME and DOUBLE TROUBLE-type films he was doing at the time. Oh well, we can dream, can't we?

(Not that an Elvis-Annette pairing would have been a bad thing either, mind you.)

Annette tried to break away from her beach party films in this Drive- In flick! A good performance by Diane McBain and some good racing scenes help to make this period piece fun to watch! The dancing is also "COOL"! Annettes song ""Whats A Girl To Do?" is the real show stopper! Catch this on cable!

Thunder Alley. Crash! Bam! Pow! What else can you ask for? Wipe-outs, crashes, brawls, drama, romance, soap opera suds, kissing, funky sixties dances. It just too groovy and far-out man!

The story is lame. "Bad Boy" racing stud Fabien meets "Good Girl" Annette, loses girl, she meets another "Badder Boy", finds true love at the end and everyone lives happily ever after.

In between the love-making and break-ups, you have some really "exciting" race car drama. Lots of stock-film of drag races. Lots of crowd shots, lots of wipe-outs and crashes, some between racer conflicts, some shapely girls doing the go-go.

What else do you need. So, sit back, open-up a six pack (of soda!), munch on some pop-corn, chips, dip, and enjoy....Thunder Alley!