Cannonball! - Or Belly Flop!

Getting from here to there has never been so dangerous! Dom Delouse wouldn't have survived 30 feet from the start line. So yeah, its a Cannonball run. That's about all it has in common with the Burt Reynolds classic. This isn't much of a laugh goofball screw fest. What we have here is something in between Deathrace 2000 and Cannonball Run. Its not really funny. Its not really that campy. But its not really a race movie either. Its like a little bit of everything. But wow does it have a lot of Hal Needham shenanigans that is missing from most Corman movies. Speaking of Corman, talk about a huge amount of cameos. Corman himself, Don Simpson, Martin Scorsese, Sly Stallone, Paul Bartel and Dick Miller! Wahhoo. I think what Cannonball suffers from is a very bad job explaining what the heck Dick Miller's character, Bennie, is up to. It turns out that he's trying to help his brother Coy win, but it appears up to about 9/10s of the way through that he's trying to kill Coy. So maybe people just couldn't really put together what was going on and that's completely up to the fault of the editor. And there's quite a bit of bad editing here. Carradine's kung fu is quite terrible. The car chases are moderate. And the driving is lack luster. But when it gets to its second climax (this movie has too many of those) it lights up on fire. It's no Deathrace 2000 but this isn't exactly a pile of dook either.