User Reviews

Thanks again to my friend Hoss for finding this one - early Mark Lester is not easy at all to track down!

Lester was able to get a bunch of stunt drivers - Dusty Russell, Buddy Love, Gene Drew, Dutch Schnitzer, Speed Stearns, Ed Ryan, Big Tim Welch and Dan Carter - and instead of making just a clip collection of stunts, he created a narrative around all the car damage.

Lester told The Pink Smoke, "I was at the Sacramento River on vacation, just river rafting. I ran into a group of guys there who looked like Hell's Angels. And I said 'What do you do?' They said "We're the Circus of Death." They traveled the circuit putting on shows. So I went to some of those and just thought, "Wow." Originally I wanted to make it as a documentary, then I realized "I know all the real people, I'll just write a narrative around it.""

He also called this movie a post-Vietnam parable, with gladiators in cars. Kind of like Knightriders, except eight years earlier and no one holds Lester in the same esteem as George Romero. Well, you know. Except me.

I really dug the rambling nature of this film, as well as the open ending. If you can find it, take the time to enjoy it.

If there is anyone out there that saw this movie, please let me know...I am trying to figure out a movie I saw at the Drive-In around 1973 or so, about a guy who did 'jumps' over cars....he had a girlfriend that begged him not to keep living this dangerous lifestyle...In one scene, some guy goes, "Lets get some beer"...I don't know why I remember that line, but I just do. I believe he made bigger and longer jumps as time went on...and near the end, he made a jump over some cars and was killed. The last scene shows the girlfriend flying back home in silent thought....I have spent years trying to figure out what movie this is...and I think 'Steel Arena' may be it!!!! Mark Ewing (devoboygo@yahoo.com)

Writer/director Mark Lester's immensely enjoyable Southern-fried 70's drive-in yarn spins the semi-autobiographical tale of Dusty Russell, a former moonshine runner turned acclaimed professional automobile daredevil who made his name jumping over an increasingly large number of cars in the traveling daredevil show "Circus of Death." Russell's eagerness and fearlessness wins the respect and approval of his fellow daredevils with the exception of jealous washed-up has-been Dangerous Dan Carter, who sparks a bitter rivalry with Russell which leads to a tragic ending.

Lester, who got his start making documentaries, relates this very basic and uncomplicated story in a spare, minimalist, unaffected verite style: John Arthur Morrill's plain cinematography, Don Tweedy's judiciously applied jaunty country folk score, the leisurely pacing, the relaxed, unmannered acting from a cast who mostly play themselves, and the straightforwardly presented daredevil stunts lend this picture a most disarming and effective quasi-documentary aura. The car stunts are every bit as exciting and nerve-rattling as they ought to be. The movie's vivid, evenly balanced portrait of the tight camaraderie, macho gamesmanship, occasional dreary lulls between shows and crazy feats of cocky daring-do that are significant components of the daredevil lifestyle neither glorifies nor vilifies said lifestyle. Real-life ace World Champion daredevils Russell, Carter, Buddy Love, Dutch "Atom Man" Schnitzer, Big Tim Welch, Speed Stearns (who subsequently appeared in "Joyride to Nowhere"), and Ed "Chromedome" Ryan do their harrowing white-knuckle stunts with commendable bravery, while Gene Drew gives a funny, robust performance as the show's gruff, irascible, motor-mouthed owner (Drew also acted in both "Truck Stop Women" and "Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw" for Lester). This breezy, amiable ode to bold, brash, red-blooded all-American male recklessness, restlessness, and gallantry would make an ideal double feature with the equally cool "Death Riders."