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The Formula 1 Grand Prix Circuit: After racing champ Joe Machin
(William Campbell) bedded his bride-to-be Monique (Béatrice Altariba),
racer-turned-writer Steve Children (Mark Damon) swears revenge - by
writing a tell-all novel about Joe - and he even befriends Joe to get more
dirt on him, and rather by accident becomes his teammate in the Lotus
racing team. The better Steve gets to know Joe though, the more he becomes
convinced that he is not just the womanizer he has taken him to be, and
the more he even comes to like Joe, and in return, Joe opens up to him
like to nobody else, and thanks to Steve's influence, he even quits his
womanizing ways, starts to cherish his wife (Marie Versini) and makes up
with his brother. And on the racetrack, Joe and Steve become perfect
teammates, Steve helps Joe to win, and Joe carries Steve to become second. Everything
would be perfect, but enter Sir Dragonet (Patrick Magee), who harbours the
exact same kind of hatred against Joe that Steve did at the beginning of
the story, and he wants to hurt Joe where it most hurts - on the
racetrack. So he heats up the almost forgotten conflict between Joe and
Steve, also be telling Joe about Steve's true motives, and as could be
expected, in the race they race only against one another and ultimately
have an accident - which leaves Joe crippled but all the wiser, and he
even remains Steve's best friend after he released above-mentioned
tell-all novel. This is by no means a perfect film: Its soap
opera plot is about as clichéd as it is far-fetched, and without director
Corman succeedingg to find the right pacing to keep things interesting,
the whole thing even gets a bit boring. But all this is forgotten once the
film switches to racetrack action, which was mostly filmed at the actual
Formula One races in Monaco, Rouen and Reims in France, Spa in Belgium and
Aintree in the UK. These scenes are just breath-taking, the (by now of
course vintage) cars used are amazing, and the action really stands the
test of time. Too bad only the film attached to these scenes couldn't have
been better ...
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