Fast Company-
2-Disc Limited Edition
(Blue Underground Region 0 NTSC DVD)
(1979)
review by Head Cheeze

Who'd have figured David Cronenberg for a closet gearhead? In 1979's Fast Company, a long buried treasure recently unearthed by Blue Underground, we are introduced to a very different side of the Canadian master of the bizarre!

William Smith stars as Lonnie "Lucky Man" Johnson, an aging racer sponsored by the FastCo Motor Oil company. Represented by Phil (Saxon), a corrupt FastCo track manager, Lonnie is essentially a corporate image placeholder. Phil refuses to give Lonnie's crew the budget to actually win any races, citing that the sponsor is only interested in maintaining it's visibility at race events and can't afford the upkeep on a truly competitive vehicle. When Lonnie's signature dragster explodes, Phil assures Lonnie that the dragster will be repaired, but he needs to keep racing, and pressures Lonnie into using his teammate Billy's (Campbell) funny car as a temporary fix. This isn't a popular decision, especially from Billy's perspective, but Lonnie is Billy's mentor, and the team comes first. However, when Lonnie finds out that Phil has no plans to repair his vehicle, he becomes furious, and starts a public smear campaign against Phil and FastCo, which prompts Phil to dump the team and replace them with a cheaper and decidedly more sinister bunch. Lonnie and the crew retaliate by entering a major race as independents for a final showdown against the corrupt FastCo rep and his new team.

Fast Company is a fascinating offering from Cronenberg simply because it's such a mainstream movie. He calls it an important film in that it was his chance to show that he was capable of more than horror, and one wonders what would have become of the director's career had this movie not fallen into distribution hell. Cronenberg, who also co-wrote the film, does a fine job of capturing the essence of the nomadic lifestyle of his subjects, painting their existance as something akin to family as they travel from race to race, and town to town. I was impressed with some of the innovative techniques that were employed to capture the intensity of the races themselves. Cameras mounted inside the vehicles really give the viewer a sense of being in the thick of things, and while I've since seen such techniques used in televised racing events, I don't recall seeing anything like this on film. It gives Fast Company the urgency of a racing documentary, and the film really shines when it keeps things on the track.

In this 2-disc Limited Edition set, Blue Underground pulls out all the stops with a really impressive array of extras. Disc one features the film with a very clean widescreen anamorphic transfer, as well as Dolby 6.1 DTS and 5.1 Dolby Digital sound. There's also a very entertaining commentary track by Cronenberg that features a pretty hilarious moment in which he sadly describes a scene he thought forever lost only to see it had been restored by Blue Underground. Rounding out the features on the first disc are an interview segment with Smith and Saxon called "Inside the Character Actor's Studio", a short interview with Cronenberg Director of Photography Mark Irwin, and a text bio dedicated to the late Claudia Jennings.

Disc two is the big bonus for Cronenberg fans, as it features two of his early student films; "Stereo" (1969) and "Crimes of the Future" (1970). Stereo feels like Cronenberg channeling Godard, but it's an interesting visual experiment. Shot in black and white, Cronenberg gets around not having crystal sync sound by employing a nifty narration trick which features "doctor's" discussing the subjects on the screen. It gives the film the feeling of some sort of futuristic anthropology documentary, and it's really well done. Crimes of the Future uses a similiar technique, in which it's main character narrates the film, but it doesn't have the visual flair of Stereo and, at 75 minutes, runs a bit long. While casual viewers may be puzzled by these odd early works, Cronenberg fanatics will eat these up, and Blue Underground presents them with transfers that look nearly as good as the main feature.

Fast Company is not your typical David Cronenberg film, but that is precisely why it's such an interesting treat. It may not be the sort of film that his fans would normally gravitate toward, but it's another side of the director that demands to be seen. Factor in the bonus disc of his early work, and you've got yourself an essential purchase for the Cronenberg afficionado.