Eat My Dust!

With the camera on the bumper and David Grisman's country swing on the soundtrack, the opening sequence of this movie raises false hopes that it will offer some sort of distillation of the 'hot-car' cycle put out by exploitation studio New World. Griffith's directorial debut - after 20 years of scripting for Corman - does deliver the expected race/chase/demolition derby mayhem, but every time the focus switches to Ron Howard's adolescent romantic worries, it stalls. Strange that a writer's movie should rely so heavily on stunting and second unit work; sad that it does so little new with its regulation good ol' boys and dumb cops.