THE YOUNG RACERS

Friends or enemies? Mark Damon and William Campbell

THE YOUNG RACERS (1963). Director: Roger Corman.

Stephen (Mark Damon of Young and Dangerous) is a writer who discovers that his fiancee, Monique (Beatrice Altariba), has been seduced and abandoned by a famous Grand Prix driver named Joe Machin (William Campbell of The High and the Mighty). Stephen's initial intention is to write an expose of the married, womanizing sleazeball, and to that end befriends the man and even joins his team. Joe is unaware of Stephen's history with Monique, but discovers it just before the climactic race, with surprising results.

Marie Versini and William Campbell

The Young Racers is an odd, strangely unconvincing picture that somehow manages to hold the attention -- it helps that the pace is fast -- but just never builds up to anything especially explosive (despite the car wrecks in the movie). Mark Damon would have been better cast as the married playboy driver, but he gives a disconnected, unemotional performance -- probably because for some reason his every line was dubbed by William Shatner! -- and Campbell is only somewhat better. You sometimes get the sense that the actors in this were given the script pages only moments before stepping in front of the camera, which may well have been the case. Marie Versini is appealing as Joe's neglected wife, Sesia, but R. Wright Campbell, who wrote the screenplay for this and other Corman films (such as Masque of the Red Death) and was William Campbell's brother, is pretty wooden as Joe's brother, Bob, who hates him but loves his wife. It's no surprise that Wright Campbell never acted in another movie.

Mark Damon

Although Luana Anders [Dementia 13] , who plays Stephen's secretary, Henrietta, can be very effective in other movies, in this she just seems weird, even giving off-kilter line readings. Christina Gregg and Margrete Robsahm make a better impression as two of Joe's girlfriends. Also notable is Patrick Magee, who plays another man whose wife was stolen away by Machin. The action in this veers from Monte Carlo to France to England, and the race at the climax is well-edited and fairly exciting, but this has too much flat acting and a rather inferior script despite its interesting premise.

NOTE: Francis Ford Coppola, who has a bit in this film and was assisting Corman, was allowed by the boss to shoot his own movie with the same crew, set and actors -- Anders, Campbell, and Magee -- as long as it didn't interfere with the shooting of the main picture. The result was the aforementioned Dementia 13, which is lots better than Young Racers.

Verdict: Even Vincent Price couldn't have saved this one. **.