Hooper (1978)
Hooper is a fan favorite film meant almost exclusively for fans of Burt Reynolds and the down-home country boy humor he was known for in the late 1970s. Most of the films he did...
Tagged: Hal Needham
Smokey and the Bandit II (1980)
I’m not sure what it is about Hal Needham that he can make a couple of fun and entertaining films like The Cannonball Run and Smokey and the Bandit, and yet completely lose his mind when trying to...
Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
A huge success at the time of its release (only Star Wars made more money in 1977), Smokey and the Bandit was the right movie at the right time, riding the wave of Burt Reynolds’ popularity, rascally...
The Cannonball Run (1981)
The race from Darien, Connecticut, to Redondo Beach, California, is called the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, named after daredevil driver Erwin “Cannonball” Baker in the early 20th century. This outlaw race stretched nearly 2,900 miles across the country. The record run was 32 hours and 51 minutes, averaging an insane 87 miles an hour. It started in 1971, when Brock Yates and Formula One star Dan Gurney won the very first one. In all, only five of these races were ever run. Across those years, drivers racked up more than a hundred speeding tickets, but remarkably, there were no accidents involving innocent bystanders. The entries were as wild as the concept: in 1971, the Polish Racing Drivers of America showed up with a van carrying 300 gallons of fuel so they could drive nonstop—though one mistake could have turned them into a rolling fireball. You...