Car Movies

Plot

Reynolds plays has-been race car driver J.J. McClure, and playing his mild-mannered mechanic counterpart, Victor Prinzi, is DeLuise (with a superhero alter ego, Captain Chaos, always waiting in the wings). Together, they participate in the Cannonball Run in an ambulance–a heavily modified Dodge Tradesman van which, incidentally, was the same vehicle driven by director Hal Needham during the running of the real Cannonball. In an attempt to appear legitimate to law enforcement, Victor hires Doctor Nikolas Van Helsing, a frightening, goofy (yet loveable) physician of questionable skill played by Jack Elam. They kidnap attractive young photographer, Pamela Glover (Farrah Fawcett)–who later in the film earns the nickname “Beauty”–to be their cover patient. Though Beauty vehemently opposes this at first, she eventually warms to the idea of being a participant in the race and to her unlikely “captors.”

The movie is based on the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, an actual cross-country outlaw road race from the Red Ball Garage in New York City (later Darien, CT) to the pier at Redondo Beach, California, just south of Los Angeles, organized by automotive journalist and the movie’s screenwriter Brock Yates. Some of the more interesting aspects of the movie based on real life include the ‘ambulance’ entry and the ‘all female entry’.