Les bolides de feu

Fireball 500 (1966)

** (out of 4)

Dave Owens (Frankie Avalon) is a stock car racer who soon finds himself working for the law who are wanting to know about some country folks running bootleg alcohol. Soon he is also butting heads with another driver (Fabian) over his girlfriend (Annette Funicello).

With the previous year's HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI ending the Beach Party series, AIP needed to put their two leads in a new film so they decided to mix things up. This here is basically a watered down version of something you'd expect to see from Elvis and THUNDER ROAD, the Robert Mitchum film. FIREBALL 500 isn't a complete success but it's certainly more interesting than the last couple Beach Party movies.

The big change here is the fact that this isn't just bubble gum kids stuff. No, FIREBALL 500 has tried to make things a tad bit darker and this includes more drama with the Avalon character who certainly has a great number of flaws. There's also a few darker elements that pop up throughout the film but at the same time there's no doubt that AIP didn't want to get too far away from the "characters" or type of characters that fans had come to expect of the teen idols.

Avalon and Funicello aren't wonderful here but I thought both of them did enough to help keep the film entertaining. Avalon has several songs throughout the film, which really takes away from the "drama" but the songs aren't too bad. Funicello also has one song, although it's not all that memorable. Fabian probably gives the best performance in the cast but Chill Wills easily steals the picture.

FIREBALL 500 isn't a masterpiece or even a good movie but fans of Avalon and Funicello should find it to be light entertainment.

Nice racing sequences and to my knowledge the only feature film to have both those kids from Philadelphia Frankie Avalon and Fabian in the cast are the attractions that Fireball 500 has. The title comes from the logo that Avalon has on his car.

Avalon is a professional racing driver and has arrived in North Carolina to try his hand at the stock car circuit where local boy Fabian rules. Fabian also runs a little moonshine on the side and of course is wary of the revenuers. These two as in the teen idol business were rivals in those late Eisenhower/ Kennedy years.

The women they are rivals over are Annette Funicello and Julie Parrish, you watch the film to see who gets who. There's someone else in the picture who would like to eliminate both these guys. I won't reveal but it won't be hard to figure it out.

Avalon is slightly miscast in a film that I think Elvis Presley might have had first dibs on and rejected. Or Colonel Parker probably rejected for him.

Two very colorful character players Chill Wills and Harvey Lembeck are in the cast. Wills is Annette's uncle and Lembeck is most definitely not doing Erich Von Zipper.

For aging fans of the leads like myself.

"Fireball 500" (1966) is technically the best production to ever come out of "American International". The cinematography looks as good as the best Hollywood productions from that period; with unexpectedly good shot selection and nice close-ups that you would expect to see now but were highly original back in 1966.

This is a film that should be shown to would-be film and video editors, as there are few finer examples of matching stock footage with first and second unit output; all done by linear editing (try it some time if you want a real challenge). When a low budget film tries to be high budget by inserting stock footage it is usually a disaster, but here there is a pretty good match of film stock and the track announcer's audio makes the action sequences easy to follow. You might recognize Fred R. Feitshans Jr's editing style from the old "Adventures in Paradise" television show.

The story is ordinary-straight action adventure and romance, no comedy like AIP's beach movies even though it does feature alumni Frankie, Annette, and Harvey Lembeck. There are three good Hernrig and Styner songs: "Fireball 500", "My Way", and "Turn Around"; sung by Frankie with help on the last one from Julie Parrish. Annette sings "Step Right Up" which mostly leaves you amazed that anyone ever bought her records.

As usual Annette is very buttoned-up and chaste but Parrish is hot enough to carry the whole film. Interestingly Annette pairs up with Fabian and Frankie gets Julie. Fabian also has a group of racetrack groupies who follow him around, four of the them are mid-60's Playboy centerfolds with one of those the Playmate of the year.

Frankie gets into a serious fight with both Fabian and Lembeck. These are decently staged and cut but unnecessary to the story and rather comical when you consider the participants. Casting these two singers was apparently an attempt to expand the target audience from teenage boys and stock car fans by including something for teenage girls. This was at best a lame idea since by 1966 those two were considered wimpy has-beens compared to "Herman's Hermits", let alone the "Beatles" and the "Stones".

There is tons of interesting stock car footage, making "Fireball 500" a nice historical archive. Overall it was a fun film to watch but nothing you would take very seriously.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

This is a fairly innocuous little movie. No one rented tuxes for the 1967 Oscars for this one, but then no one is paying large sums of money to suppress it, either. It feels like a "Perry Mason" or "Route 66" TV episode.

For vintage erotica fans, there is a (mostly) accurate portrayal of the "Girlie Shows" that were once carnival staples. Fabian's character, Leander, has a group of young women following him around (Four of them period Playboy Playmates) and there is a seductive (slightly) older widow. The sex and romance is far from explicit (welcome in a movie with Chill Wills in it!) and is generally hinted at with meaningful glances.

For NASCAR fans there are some pretty good scenes of stock car racing 40 years ago, including some of the Daytona 500. Drivers that year apparently were racing for a $85,000 purse. (2006: $18 million).

It's well worth a rental. I bought mine as a two-sided DVD with "Thunder Alley" for under $15, and I feel the money was well-spent.

"Beach Party" leads Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, and Harvey Lembeck do what they can with C-minus material involving an ace stockcar racer who gets involved with moonshiners; the Internal Revenue wants him to work both sides, but he's more interested in finding out who's thwarting the midnight runs by playing chicken with the drivers. Barely involving 'grown up' effort from American International, not as good as their later stockcar comedy-drama "Thunder Alley", however Avalon and Annette both get to sing (his number, "My Way" is one of the best tunes Avalon ever got in an AIP film). There's a pretty good brawl between Frankie and Harvey Lembeck, but Fabian, as Frankie's nemesis, is under-used, as is Annette. Good photography by Floyd Crosby, cute opening Claymation segment by Clokey Films, but the story is so muddled we never know where we stand with these one-dimensional characters. *1/2 from ****