The Wild Racers (1968)

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

'The Wild Racers' as movie is as shallow as its main character Jo Jo Quillico (played by pop singer Fabian) a race car driver living on the edge. Winning a race is his only intention and everything else comes second. Traveling from circuit to circuit, from country to country he conquers the women like racetracks. Until he finds a girlfriend (Mimsy Farmer) who sticks besides him, until she sees she can't get enough love from him.The story is well written, but the most interesting part of the film is it's style - tilted camera angels and quick cuts - there are barely any shots that last more than 20 seconds, and scenes drive into scenes (we can barely set down at the dinner table when we are already back on racing track). The dialogue is minimal, but use of voice over is rather interesting - two characters are having conversation, then there is the change of the shot and conversation has turned into narration. I guess it has to do something the guerrilla style filmmaking as the crew didn't have permission to shoot on location (everything had to be canned on rush) and mixing it all real racing footage that some was colored from black and white.Despite pseudo art house style the film carries the mood and atmosphere of '60s Grand Prix racing very well. Not stylistically as pure as lets say 'Le Mans' with Steve McQueen 'The Wild Racers' is still interesting film that any fans of the genre and racing should check out when the chance.Voice of Fabian was dubbed by Dick Miller who also has brief cameo as pit mechanic, blink an eye and you miss him.P.S. Although the film is about Formula 1, the cars shown in the movie are actually Formula 2 machinery.

As a vintage racing buff, I am drawn to the movie with the vintage cars (more on that) and the views of the classic tracks in their original configurations. This film using the cars and footage from 1968.The story of an American breaking in to the European scene is not too far-fetched. In real life there were Americans in F1 in the 1960's:Phil Hill, Dan Gurney, Ritchie Ginther, Ronnie Bucknum, Bob Bondurant and Masten Gregory. Like the Fabian character,most of these guys came out of California; but were sports car drivers,not NASCAR.The story is interesting as the main character is very shallow, not likable and destructive. But I am drawn to the people around him.About the cars. While they refer to the races a Grands Prix, these are not F1 cars but Formula 2 cars. At that time F2 were very similar to F1, the displacement was 1.6 liters (F1 was 3 liters), narrower tires, and no wings. In 1968, F1 cars had high mounted wings in front and back. Good footage of the cars' internal bits, notably the Cosworth FVA 4 cylinder engine. In the 60's, F1 drivers would often race with the up and comers in F2. Stewart drove Ken Tyrrell's Matras, Rindt drove the Winklemann Racing Brabham, Jack Brabham would field a team of Brabham Hondas to name a few. The cars of the protagonist are the Winklemann Racing Brabham BT-18's with the Cosworth motor.The race footage was from the actual F2 series at the appropriate tracks.Today's racing is too corporate and sterile to make a decent film...

I had to look up the dates on Wild Racers and LeMans. For the first hour of the movie it felt like the director was telling Fabian, " Do everything the way McQueen did it in LeMans". He even drives the same car. Remarkably, LeMans was made 2 years later. While I'll never put the two movies (or Fabian & McQueen) on the same level, they both had that same "Groovy" sixties vibe. That's what I love about sixties racing movies, they're like a time capsule of culture & style. The hair, the clothes, the way they talk...it's quite entertaining. Probably because racing is perceived as a young man's game. Living on the "Edge" as it were. I don't think if they made a period movie about the sixties, they could make it as convincing as the real thing.Which leads me to the racing. While the racing footage in "Wild Racers" was excellent, it wasn't real. "LeMans" was real racing, real racers and real tension. Fabian, as good looking as he is, is no match for the hard intensity of McQueen. And McQueen was a bonified race car driver. An enthusiast of motor sports in general. Having driven and rode in competition, he had a leg up on Fabian.It would be easy to pass Wild Racers off as a vehicle to launch the heart throb, crooner, a'La Elvis Presley, but that would be doing the actual film making a disservice. It's a very hip, inventive movie that takes some cinematic chances for the era it was made. Shaky cam, interesting camera angles, and lighting,very artsy when compared to the contrived schlock of a typical Elvis movie.Perhaps, not a break out role for Mimsy Farmer, (did she ever have one?) she is breathtakingly, beautiful here. Like a vulnerable Amy Adams. I'd watch it again just for her.All in all, a pretty decent, lazy Sunday afternoon, flick. If your asking, "Should I ?" I'm saying, "Yeah, why not"

I first saw this movie when I was eleven years old. I was watching TV hoping to find some escape from the grief of losing a relative, and on that level it delivered adequately. But beyond that it meant nothing, because ultimately it's not about anything.There are two characters in this movie: Fabian's JoeJoe and the scenery of Western Europe. Yes, there are more cast members but they are only scenery to JoeJoe. Dancers to dance with, women to bed with, other drivers to run against, team coaches to argue with and so on...but none of these are really characters anywhere near JoeJoe's level. Still, he's pretty shallow and superficial, and he even admits it. In the Madrid Bullfight arena/Jarama racetrack sequence, he calls the bull "dumb" but ultimately invites the audience to compare JoeJoe's pursuit of the Checkered Flag to the bull's pursuit of the Matador's cape. Is JoeJoe's girlfriend dumb for not making the comparison herself, or wise for making the comparison internally but not telling JoeJoe what she thinks?I wonder if Robert Redford drew from this or likable movies when he made DOWNHILL RACER years later.Visually, this is fabulous stuff. The race scenes are genuinely well cut and the travelogue scenes of European cities and landscapes are well worth the effort. But unlike Steve McQueen's LE MANS four years later, or Paul Newman's WINNING two years after this movie, none of this visual art is thrown in service of a plot line. This movie is a traffic circle; it ends how it begins. Neither JoeJoe nor anything else really changes that we don't expect.The music is interesting stuff, a mix of California surf rock and Continental go-go pop for the incidentals, with some French-language pop love songs thrown in for make-out ambiance. Modern audiences would probably find the latter stuff tiresome, but don't worry about it; the two paradigms shift snappily from one to the other and back.It's not said which racing circuit the filmmakers used for this feature, but a little research let me determine that this was Formula 2, which later became Formula 3000 and is to F1 what IndyLights is to IRL and the Nationwide Grand Nationals is to NASCAR. It looks like Fabian did his own driving in some of the scenes and I didn't notice any process shots like were common at that time. The car he has on the track is a Brabham with a Cosworth engine; it belonged to a real F2 team that won five Championship season races that year.