Fast Company (1979) 91m.
While FAST COMPANY appears to be an unremarkable racing picture to the casual viewer, it's of some interest to film buffs because it is a most unusual entry in the oeuvre of horror director David Cronenberg. If you were unaware of his filmography, you'd probably think that this was his debut feature - it certainly has that New World Pictures look about it, as if Cronenberg was part of the stable of up-and-coming film-makers recruited by Roger Corman during the 70s. Its B-movie elements are also supplemented by a soundtrack of original rock tunes (which sound like a mixture of Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen) and co-starring roles from exploitation regulars John Saxon and Claudia Jennings.
The vehicles driven in FAST COMPANY are drag cars - fuelers and funny cars - which are an unusual subject for a film because their races are over as soon as they've begun, leaving little in the way of visuals. It's this blink-and-you'll-miss-it factor that influences the documentary look of the racetrack scenes. The cars look like hunched predators ready to strike, roaring, shuddering, and spitting fire as if they were machine-gunning each other. They run not on gas, but a mixture of nitro and alcohol, and their edgy jockeying for position gives us the feeling of an imminent explosion - which their sudden, furious bursts of speed become. Throughout, we're waiting for the crash that must be coming. Racetracks generally make good metaphors for the film characters that inhabit them, but there's no endless looping around a static circuit in FAST COMPANY. The short bursts of speed - their preparation, buildup and release - would fasten themselves easily enough to repressed, inarticulate characters, but paradoxically the drivers in FAST COMPANY are likeable and easy-going. As the protagonist Lonnie 'Lucky Man' Johnson, William Smith doesn't display any passion for racing. Instead he's simply resigned to spending his life on wheels, whether racing or in his lavish trailer (when he has conversations with people they always take place in or around vehicles). This is America, as evidenced by the constant red-white-blue coloring of the film, and car culture is the thing that it's built on. Cronenberg, who took on the project because of his interest in motor racing, doesn't attempt any of the body/machine collisions he is famous for in his work, but is settles for a more purely psychological approach: that in a motorized, mechanized age, those who make their livings around machines become consumed by them.
There's little to distinguish FAST COMPANY from other speedway films, B-movie or otherwise, but it's still agreeable viewing and has a few interesting moments. Somewhat uncharacteristically, Jennings is the only female member of the cast to keep her clothes on. This would turn out to be her last film - ironically she would die behind the wheel in a car crash soon afterwards. Cronenberg, of course, would go on to direct CRASH several years later, the seeds perhaps already having been sown by this earlier project. As it turned out, FAST COMPANY became a victim of legal problems and the film's cinema release lasted about as long its drag races.
sburridge@hotmail.com
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