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Roger Corman was one of the best pro­duc­ers when it came to find­ing tal­ent and giv­ing them early oppor­tu­ni­ties.  As a result, he pro­duced a lot of won­der­ful mate­r­ial for New World Pictures dur­ing the 1970’s and early 1980’s.  However, you can’t have hits all the time — and even Corman was prone to grind­ing out the occa­sional clinker in his search for cost-effective thrills.  Smokey Bites The Dust is a note­wor­thy exam­ple of what could hap­pen when the New World machine was lean on inspiration.

This is a shame because Smokey Bites The Dust has a decent enough premise for a drive-in pro­gram­mer: Roscoe (Jimmy McNichol) is the hot­shot dri­ver at his local high school and Peggy Sue (Janet Julian) is the school’s home­com­ing queen.  She also hap­pens to be the daugh­ter of Sheriff Turner (Walter Barnes), who is wildly over­pro­tec­tive towards Peggy Sue and can’t stand Roscoe.  Thus, it’s inevitable that Roscoe will break up the home­com­ing cel­e­bra­tion to kid­nap Peggy Sue and speed off in the home­com­ing vehi­cle.  The Sheriff gives chase, as does a col­or­ful gang of locals — includ­ing Kenny (William Forsythe), a deeply reli­gious quar­ter­back who is sweet on Peggy Sue.  Cue a car chase and keep repeat­ing it until you reach the end credits.

Unfortunately, all these ele­ments are thrown onto the screen in the least inspired man­ner pos­si­ble.  Max Apple’s script is slap­dash in its exe­cu­tion, learn­ing on weak humor and never tak­ing any inter­est­ing direc­tion with the stock char­ac­ters and sit­u­a­tions.  The height of inven­tion here is a sub­plot involv­ing a jail­bird try­ing to sell a syn­thetic oil for­mula (based on moon­shine, of course) to a sheik named Habib A-Boo-Ha-Bee-Bee-Boo-Boo.  You don’t get any bonus points for guess­ing the Sheik speaks a frac­tured ver­sion of English.

The chaotic direc­tion from Charles B. Griffith doesn’t help.  Griffith was very impor­tant to Corman’s early suc­cess as a writer but as his work on Up From The Depths proved, he wasn’t much of a direc­tor.  The good news is Smokey Bites The Dust is more excit­ing than that film because it’s basi­cally one big chase after its set-up and is thus peri­od­i­cally dot­ted with vehic­u­lar may­hem that will wake the audi­ence up.  The bad news is Griffith sub­sti­tutes fre­netic chaos for a snappy pace and films it all in a cheap-looking, poorly-choreographed style.  The end result moves fast… but between the bad jokes and limp direc­tion, it will lay waste to your brain cells.

The few bright spots in Smokey Bites The Dust come from the young per­form­ers in the cast.  McNichol and Julian aren’t con­vinc­ingly rural for a sec­ond but they’re a like­able pair with decent chem­istry — it’s a shame that the script gives them lit­tle to do in terms of per­for­mance.  William Forsythe is amus­ing as a religion-obsessed quar­ter­back but again the script fails to give his inspired work the sup­port it needs.  Elsewhere, Barnes seems to be chan­nel­ing Strother Martin (in an unin­spired way) and Kedric Wolfe is a lousy as he was in Up From The Depths as a dimwit­ted deputy.

Simply put, Smokey Bites The Dust rep­re­sents the car-chase com­edy at the end of its cre­ative rope.  Any ran­domly selected episode of The Dukes Of Hazzard is slicker, bet­ter pro­duced and likely more inspired than any­thing going on here.  Unless you’re a genre com­pletist, you can pass this one by.

Action-Packed Collection [Triple Feature]

Action-Packed Collection [Triple Feature]

var addthis_config = {“data_track_clickback”:true};Georgia Peaches: Two sis­ters run­ning an auto repair shop and their moonshine-running boyfriend are extorted into becom­ing under­cover gov­ern­ment agents to out­wit the Dragon Lady of the Southern crime belt. Starring singer Tanya Tucker, Dirk Benedict (The A-Team), Sally Kirkland and Terri Nunn (lead singer for the group Berlin), this action-packed com­edy was pro­duced by Roger Corman as a pilot for a pos­si­ble tele­vi­sion series.The Great Texas Dynamite Chase: Candy (Claudia Jennings, Gator Bait, DeathSport) and Ellie Jo (Jocelyn Jones, Tourist Trap) are a pair of sexy bank rob­bers who blast their way into small-town banks with a car­load of dyna­mite! When they take Slim (Johnny Crawford, Valley Of The Giants) hostage, it begins a thrill-packed crime spree across the state of Texas.Smokey Bites The Dust: fol­lows the rivalry between a small-town Southern sher­iff and a small-town delin­quent who steals cars and then destroys them with the sheriff’s daugh­ter by his side. Starring Jimmy McNichol (Night Warning), Janet Julian (King Of New York, Humongous), William Forsythe (Raising Arizona) and Walter Barnes (High Plains Drifter).