Smokey Bites the Dust (1981) New World/Action-Comedy RT: 88 minutes Rated PG (language, comic violence, vehicular mayhem) Director: Charles B. Griffith Screenplay: Max Apple Music: Bent Myggen Cinematography: Gary Graver Release date: October 1981 (US) Cast: Jimmy McNichol, Janet Julian, Walter Barnes, Patrick Campbell, Kari Lizer, John Blyth Barrymore, Kedric Wolfe, Bill Forsythe, Charles Howerton, Mel Welles, Michael Green, Don Corey, Dick Miller, Linda Gary, Adriana Shaw, Rance Howard, Beach Dickerson, Robert Beecher, Nancy Parsons, Dan Sturkie, Angelo Rosito, Joe Anthony Cox, Jessica Griffith, Teda Bracci, Angelo Grisanti, Gene Le Bell, Mickey Fox, Ben Frommer, Cary Michael Cheifer, Charles B. Griffith, David McLure. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ***
You must be thinking Movie Guy 24/7 has finally lost his mind in liking Smokey Bites the Dust, a low-rent Smokey and the Bandit knock-off starring Jimmy McNichol (California Fever) as a Bandit wannabe who leads law enforcement and others on a wild, high-speed chase through several Southern small-town counties. To be honest, I’ve been questioning my own sanity for years. The fact that I enjoyed this movie confirms what I’ve suspected all along. I must be crazy.
Directed by Charles B. Griffith (Eat My Dust), Smokey Bites the Dust is cheap, corny and dumb. It exists for no other reason than to show 101 ways to wreck a car. It makes any entry in the Smokey and the Bandit look like Shakespeare. This one didn’t open in Philly. I would have been all over it if it had. At 13, I wouldn’t dare miss a PG movie with wall-to-wall vehicular mayhem. I didn’t see it in its entirety until ’92 when I rented it from West Coast Video for $1. I didn’t care much for it then. I fully expected to have the same reaction when I opted to revisit it on Amazon Prime the other night. Instead, I had a pretty good time with it. I forgot Smokey Bites the Dust is a Roger Corman production. That name carries a lot of weight with yours truly as you well know.
McNichol, older brother of Kristy (The Pirate Movie), plays high school rebel/car thief Roscoe, a joyriding hellraiser who enjoys tormenting local law enforcement with his automotive antics. Typical of a small Southern town, the police department consists of a pot-bellied sheriff (Barnes, Every Which Way But Loose) and a dimwitted deputy (Wolfe, Up from the Depths). The chase begins when Roscoe kidnaps homecoming queen Peggy Sue (Julian, Humongous) who just happens to be the daughter of the insanely overprotective Cyco County (as in psycho) sheriff who immediately begins hot pursuit. He’s joined in the chase by team quarterback Kenny (Forsythe, Raising Arizona), a sanctimonious jerk suffering from a case of unrequited love. The best friends of Roscoe and Peggy Sue, Harold (Barrymore, Drew’s older half-brother) and Cindy (Lizer, Private School), are also trying to catch them.
The sheriff can’t drive worth a damn. He manages to total every vehicle he operates. This includes a cruiser he “commandeers” from neighboring Knotsie County PD (as in Nazi) which incurs the wrath of the rival sheriff (Howerton, Eat My Dust). Another subplot has local bootlegger Lester (Campbell, Saturday the 14th) selling his secret moonshine formula to a group of Arabs for “one million clams”. Being that it’s pre-PC 1981, the Arabs are of the stereotypical variety complete with tunics, sabers and hookahs. And what of our couple on the run? Well, you know how it goes. Peggy Sue’s initial dislike turns to love as she starts to enjoy what’s happening.
I cannot defend Smokey Bites the Dust as fine cinema. It’s totally NOT! It’s easily one of the dumbest movies I’ve ever seen. That’s what’s so good about it. It doesn’t even try to pretend it’s anything more than a silly, simple-minded car-crash picture with lots of vehicular mayhem and destruction. I’m not exaggerating when I say a car gets destroyed every five minutes. Property isn’t safe either. More than one structure falls victim to reckless driving. If you have all that, there’s no need for trivialities like acting, character development and competent filmmaking. It’s all equally bad. The only praiseworthy element is the stunt work. That aspect of Smokey Bites the Dust is A-1 stuff.
Smokey Bites the Dust is what I call stupid-funny. It’s so idiotic, you have to laugh at it. It’s also likely to raise a few eyebrows in these more enlightened times. I’m referring to the scenes showing a little girl smoking cigarettes. She cons Roscoe and Peggy Sue into buying them for her in exchange for letting them steal her father’s car. She gets off one of movie’s best lines during the climactic free-for-all when she muses from the sideline, “What, I ask you, is the point of growing up?”
You want to know the secret to enjoying Smokey Bites the Dust? It’s easy really. Watch it late at night. It’s like one of those low-budget jobs that frequently showed up on the late movie on UHF channels in the 70s and 80s. Because it’s a New World flick, keep an eye out for Dick Miller. He usually shows up in these things. Although he’s not that great an actor, it’s always fun to see Jimmy McNichol, a true teen relic of the 70s. Janet Julian is easy on the eyes. It’s cool seeing the great William Forsythe in a very early role.
I guess that’s all there is to say about Smokey Bites the Dust. It’s great low-budget fun that I won’t call an insult to the viewer’s intelligence. How can I when it doesn’t require any of the viewer to begin with?
