Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Texas, our Texas?
Last night, as I was driving down Highway 281 across the Texas Hill Country from Marble Falls to suburban San Antonio, my way home was illuminated by a September harvest moon. It was an unusually cool late summer evening, indicating the chill of an early fall and evoking an ambience of ominous serenity. During my drive south, my mind wandered to an obscure yet thrilling film from 1975: Race with the Devil.
Set in south-central Texas and filmed on location in San Antonio and various Hill Country burgs like Bandera, Castroville, Leakey, and Tarpley, the film stars Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Loretta Swit, and Lara Parker. Fonda and Oates portray the owners of a motorcycle shop in San Antonio who, in mid-January, decide to drive their new $36,000 motorhome up to Aspen, Colorado with their wives for a much-needed vacation. The film unfolds innocently enough, with the two couples motoring through downtown San Antonio past such landmarks as the Alamo and the Cenotaph and then out into the countryside. As evening approaches, instead of heading to an RV park, the main characters drive off of the road and park next to a remote river, hoping to enjoy some pastoral peacefulness and solitude. They find just the opposite.
Later that night, while Fonda and Oates are outside of their motorhome taking in the chilly Texas winter evening as their wives prepare for bed, they notice a bonfire off in the distance. Drawing closer, they observe what they think are a bunch of hippies celebrating some kind of nature festival. Odd, but apparently harmless. That is, until a young, nubile woman is stabbed through the heart in an act of human sacrifice. At just that moment, one of their wives opens the door to the motorhome, illuminating the outdoors by the light within. The satanist hippies notice and start coming after them. The “race” is on.
Fonda and company escape the murderous flower children and pull into a small town early the next morning. They immediately report what they saw to the authorities, but when they return to the scene of the murder with the local law enforcement, there is little evidence of what transpired the night before. Disappointed, they leave the town and continue their drive north.
As they head deeper into the Hill Country, the region becomes ever darker and foreboding, and before long the couples realize that the satanists they encountered were no mere cult, but the adherents of a dark faith shared by much of the area’s denizens. And the natives don’t want word of what the young couples witnessed getting out.
As the film goes on, it becomes apparent that while the main characters are in Texas, it is not our Texas, but an alternate reality version thereof. Unlike in our reality, the Hill Country of the Race with the Devil universe is much larger, extending across nearly the entirety of the western half of the state up into the Panhandle, Lubbock apparently does not exist, and the only city of any size between San Antonio and Aspen is Amarillo, which the couples are hoping to reach so they can report the atrocity they witnessed to the state police.
I will stop there, for I do not want to spoil it for you all by revealing the ending. The film is a forgotten gem, and features a thrilling car-chase sequence comparable in intensity to those in The French Connection and Mad Max. And for dedicated country music fans, there’s even a cameo appearance by the legendary Arkey Blue singing his hit “Living on Credit.”
Check it out.
Published in Entertainment
A far more believable scenario for the Texas Hill country in that day and time: The travelers accidentally spy a bonfire and discover it was an Assemblies of God youth group burning their rock and roll records.
Addendum: And then the travelers would be hounded across the state by those kids trying to witness to them with tracts and teach them the chord changes to “Kumbaya.”
As a long-ago, brief, but happy resident of Lubbock, I am amused by the phrase “Lubbock apparently does not exist.” Of course it does. And if a movie moving panoramically through Texas failed to admit this, I’d notice! I’d say, or rather exclaim, “What IS this bullsh?”
I’d also put in a word for Snyder. I think I should, since this movie almost certainly failed to. I’ll say four things. First, even though Snyder is the seat of a dry county and that is always unwelcome news on a long bicycle trip, I forgive you. Second, it was about as far as the grandly named Roscoe, Snyder, & Pacific Railway ever got. Third, when I was in graduate school in San Antonio, a good ol’ country-girl medical student from Snyder once said to me, “Want to see my body?” Of course I did; and of course she took me down to the anatomy lab. Rimshot! Also: one night in Austin, I took a sick cat to a clinic, and the vet on duty was a guy who was actually commuting down from Snyder for the extra work and pay. He was perfectly capable, but I got the idea his preference was for large-animal medicine. He took the adorable little Abyssinian in his big rancher’s hands, and stared at it. I wondered if he was just tired from his long drive. Or maybe he was just asking himself, “Where do you put the saddle on this thing?”
Hollywood people always shoot their Texas movies along the same stretch of road between San Antonio and El Paso. So now the whole world thinks Texas is one big brown expanse of caleche (hardpan) and tumbleweeds, cactus and scorpions hahaha. Let ’em. Sounds like a great movie, which I will look for this afternoon.
Well, OK, in a classic 70’s Peter Fonda kind of way. My take-away from the movie — Duct Tape.
Hot Lips Houlihan!
Yep, that happened with the recent Alamo miniseries (Texas Rising) on the History Channel. They showed the Texas-Louisiana border as being in the middle of a desert. Ridiculous.
Of course, that would be a complete dystopia for me. No Tech football or Tech cheerleaders!
Everytime I’ve been to Lubbock, thankfully when I was young and single and more able to appreciate it, every woman I met was gorgeous. I don’t know if they have ugly or normal women there, but if so they do a good job of hiding them.
Hmmm. Maybe removing Lubbock in the movie was their way of keeping anyone from knowing of the human sacrifices by the hippies I never saw there either. Very curious.
We are damn near neighbors, I live over in Fischer just north of Canyon Lake. If you want the total Arkey Blue experience I recommend you drop by the Silver Dollar Bar in Bandera Texas, still one of my favorite watering holes. Luckenbach still holds its own, but time has passed it by some. If you’re looking for a little “Texas Roadhouse” flavor, let me recommend the Devil’s Backbone Tavern (https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x865b606a4b3f7a09:0xb7198cbfc406703d!2m22!2m2!1i80!2i80!3m1!2i20!16m16!1b1!2m2!1m1!1e1!2m2!1m1!1e3!2m2!1m1!1e5!2m2!1m1!1e4!2m2!1m1!1e6!3m1!7e115!4shttp://wesferguson.net/2015/legend-of-the-devils-backbone-tavern/!5sdevil%27s+backbone+tavern+-+Google+Search&imagekey=!1e1!2shttp://wesferguson.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/7026001647_74d0a1dc1f_h-940×705-1024×585.jpg&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj38pvluJbWAhXr0FQKHZWDBHkQoioIhgEwDg ). You should go before the Austinites completely ruin it. If the Backbone is a little too salty for you, go next door to Riley’s on the Backbone (https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g55837-d5843643-Reviews-Riley_s_on_the_Backbone-Fischer_Texas.html ). It has been totally gentrified now. Here’s a little Jason Boland and The Stragglers to get you into the mood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKColXKpgeM ).
This is a great flick. Especially considering for what was probably peanuts spent on putting it together.
I saw it on VHS so many years ago. Add another movie to my list that should have been released on Blu-Ray, but isn’t. Another one is The Whole Nine Yards – really? It makes me wonder how many movies are out there that haven’t gone Blu.
However, I could buy it on Amazon on DVD – it’s part of an “Action Double Feature” with Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. Good times.
I’ll wait for the Blu-Ray.
I’m pretty sure this is a Baxter Black joke.