Thunder Alley

Sure, the story is trite and Warren Berlinger is embarrassingly bad, but "Thunder Alley" manages to be a fairly decent flick. Credit Richard Rush ("The Stunt Man") for getting pretty good performances from Annette Funicello and Fabian. Diane McBain is always good, as is Jan Murray. Maureen Arthur gives the movie a poignant edge as the bubbleheaded "Babe," who can't really grasp the tragedy which has just taken place around her.

The stock racing scenes are pretty good, but never really integrate into the story, due to AIP's unwillingness to match the color and resolution.

Annette does a surprisingly good version of "What's a Girl to Do." Couldn't believe she could really sing. Annette also demonstrate some comedic skills which, sadly, neither AIP or Disney ever really put to full use.

This is one of AIP's better efforts. I saw it on FLIX, which, apparently has the extended version which includes Annette's song.

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.)

Sure there were parts of this movie - almost all of it, the more I think of it, that made you laugh at it and not with it. The stock stock-car scenes from

Daytona and Darlington were real. The acting was bad and the plot was

sophomoric. If Fabian was really having those blackouts all of the time, then he should have been locked up for continuing to drive while having them. But maybe I'm putting too much thought into this. As someone who has covered NASCAR for newspapers, the off-the-track plot stuff was more than lame. Annette did a good job; I got a kick out of the announcer; and Diane McBain is always easy on the eyes, even if she doesn't take it easy on the eye shadow.

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!

Thunder Alley finds Fabian banned from NASCAR tracks after causing the death of another driver. Stanley Adams might want to put him on his team of racers, but the other drivers aren't for having him around.

Desperate for employment Fabian hooks up with an auto stunt show owner Jan Murray who's paying him peanuts and trying to capitalize on Fabian's bad rep. He's got to take it, but Annette Funicello who's Murray's daughter provides another reason to stick around.

The rest of the film is Fabian's struggle to get back to the NASCAR circuit while at the same time juggling both Annette and his current girl friend Diane McBain. Personally, I would have taken McBain, she has it all over Annette.

Thunder Alley is helped by location shooting at the southern NASCAR tracks and good film footage of NASCAR racing. Not helped by a rather silly story which delves into the real reason for Fabian's problems and his rather unrealistic recovery from same.

Still fans of NASCAR might go for this.