database

Running on Empty (1982)

Also Known As: Wild Wheels (1982)

Fast Lane Fever (1982) (USA: video title)
Director: John Clark (III)
Producer: Pom Oliver

Production Company: Film Corporation of Western Australia

Writer: Barry Tomblin
Genre: Drama / Action
Mike loves his fast cars and his hot women. When he fancies the girlfriend of the local street racing king, Fox, he gets way in over his head in racing for his girl, his money and his life. Through racing, sex, nightclubs and small road trips the film depicts what it was like to be a teenager in Australia in the 1980's.

Runtime: 7 744 ft, 83 min
Country: Australia
Language: English
Format: 35mm / VHS Colour
Distributor: Tru Value Entertainment / Roadshow

Censorship: M
Cast (in credits order)

Terry Serio .... Mike

Deborah Conway .... Julie

Max Cullen .... Rebel

Richard Moir .... Fox

Penne Hackforth-Jones .... Dave

Vangelis Mourikis .... Tony

Grahame Bond .... Jagger

Bob Barrett (I) .... Workman

Warren Blondell .... Lee

Jon Darling .... Workman

Peter Davies (IV) .... Ram's mate

Kristoffer Greaves .... Starter

Paul Johnstone .... Lecherous garage attendant

Chris Haywood .... Photographer

Maurice Hughes .... Foreman

Tim McLean (I) .... Photographer's assistant

Brian McNevin .... Fox's timer

Sno Norton-Sinclair .... Ram's mate

Robin Ramsay .... Dad

Geoff Rhoe .... Ram

Keli Roberts .... Sheryl

Annie Semler .... Joan

Jacki Simmons .... Nurse

Gerry Sont .... Victor

Crew

Associate producer Mark Egerton

Producer Pom Oliver

Executive producer David Roe

Original Music Peter Crosbie

Cinematography David Gribble

Film Editing Stuart Armstrong

Production Design Greg Brown (I)

Costume Design Roger Monk (I)

Production Manager Barbara Gibbs

First Assistant Director Mark Egerton

Sound Department Syd Butterworth

Camera operator David Burr (I)

Director of photography (Second unit) Kevan Lind

Filming Locations: Cobar, New South Wales, Australia
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Filmography: John Clark

1997 Kiss Or Kill - Actor: Possum Harry

1990 When Will I Be Loved? - Actor: Waiter

1988 The Lords of Magick - Actor: King

1987 The Time Guardian - Actor: Didgeridoo Player

1986 Raw Deal - Actor: Newscaster

Filmography: Terry Serio

1995 Back of Beyond - Actor: Lucky Dave

1985 Shout!: The Story of Johnny O'Keefe - Actor: Johnny O'Keefe

1982 With Prejudice - Actor: Paul Alister

1982 Running on Empty - Actor: Mike

1982 Fast Lane Fever

Bibliography:

Cinema Papers magazine

Monthly Film Bulletin

CD - ROM "Australian Feature Films"

Street Machine magazine

(see end for formal referencing)

Online Presence:

Internet Movie Database

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0084616

Very basic information. Where only 17 users bothered to vote for it, only giving it 3.9 out of 10. No actual reviews.

MSN Entertainment

http://entertainment.msn.com/Movies/Movie.aspx?m=77315#

Same basic information. Where no user reviews were present at all.

Yahoo! Movies

http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&id=1800064169&cf=info

Same basic information.

Muscle Car Collection

http://www.sd455.com/moviefastlanefever.htm

Page that adores the film only for the car scenes.

Collecting Information:

My research for this film began where those of many common reviews do - the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) where I found the basic information about cast and crew and an extremely brief synopsis. Trying to move further ahead, a very lengthy internet search only turned up a few other sites that had the same basic details I had already acquired. Throughout the entire Murdoch University library I managed to find a CD - ROM entitled Australian Feature Films (RMIT 1995) that seemed to have been overlooked by many people, (including the staff) only to discover the same basic details again. The only other information I did find was two short film reviews, one in Cinema Papers (Spratt 1982) and the other in Monthly Film Bulletin (Floyd 1985). The main reasons for this lack of information I will try to account for later.

Critical Review:

Running On Empty (Clark 1982) centres on Mike who is an Australian car fanatic of the 1980's. The girl he fancies just so happens to be the girlfriend of Fox, the top of the crop in the illegal street-racing scene and for this reason, Fox forces Mike to put up stake money and race against him 3 times. Mike loses at first but only to find later that the girl, Julie, had betrayed him by informing Fox of Mikes best standing quarter mile time. Out of pocket, Mike, Julie (whose feelings are now only for Mike) and Mike's mechanic friend Tony, head to the outback to raise money by illegal street-racing in order to get Mikes car performing at faster times to take on Fox again. On their little adventure they also meet Rebel, a blind ex - racer from the 1950's who becomes Mike's new mentor.

It must be said first that overall, yes this is a bad movie. The depth of the characters is very shallow, the plot is predictable yet still disjointed and full of upstarts. For instance many times you couldn't realise exactly what was happening in a scene until the end.

Obviously here the focus of the movie is to drool over the cars. However even by classing it as purely a 'rev-head' film, it still just doesn't seem to quite cut it. There are only a handful of cars featured in its entirety and only three of them are on the screen for any descent amount of time. Personally I thought the cinematography for coverage of the vehicles was done rather poorly but that could very well be to my being used to the Hollywood big budget car movies of today. The writer of the Cinema Papers (Spratt 1982) article that was written near the time of its release said the opposite and commended the film for the shooting of the cars. A generation gap? Quite possibly. On my first viewing I just found myself getting frustrated that there were too many close-ups on the crowds watching the race rather than medium and long shots of the cars themselves.

The plot line is most often predictable and a lot of it is extremely far fetched. For example when Mike's car is wrecked they walk around in the outback and find a handful of car bodies exactly the same model as his and all without any sign of rust. Elsewhere it seems that the portrayed 'bad guys', Foxes gang, are only ever punished by none other than themselves. No one from Mike's crew ever lands so much as a punch on them and then they suddenly seem to get in some form of accident. Even while racing Mike finds he is losing and so he puts on Rebels sunglasses while driving and suddenly starts winning. Overall it was quite over the top.

The costuming, locations and props are very authentic of the Australian eighties. Large hair - do's and brightly coloured costumes abound yet there is still a flair of the 1950's present. An odd line here and there are reminiscent of Rebel Without A Cause (Ray 1995) and one of the main cars featured is a 1957 Chevy - signs of the days when illegal street racing was at its peak.

Mike who is supposedly supposed to be the rough, steel factory worker consistently wears all black as a resemblance of his hard attitude and 'cool' appearance yet his actual character is far too soft for the part. He is a well-mannered, moral Australian bloke who is nothing like what you would expect from someone with his (admittedly small amount of) background. We do wonder how much of the street-racing scene he is actually knowledgable about. For example he is unfamiliar with the terms 'chicken run' and has to have them explained to him by Rebel.

His nemesis, Fox, on the other hand is also always in black but he never smiles, or cares about anyone else for a second. He is very much the typical ring leader and pulls it off fairly well if you can get past his ridiculous 1980's costuming and the synthesised 'evil' music in the background.

Julie is very much just there as Mike's love interest, the voyeuristic female along for the ride. The only time she seems to have any depth of character is when she has an argument with Mike about the very same thing - that she is just there to be slept with. It is also worth noting that their entire reconciliation consists of only 2 lines of bland dialogue. Mike notices her black eye and says "Did I do that?" and she responds with "We did it." Immediately they are hugging and the happy romantic music suggests the audience should put two and two together. Could this have happened worse? Not likely.

Tony is portrayed very much as the 'wog boy' with his greasy, thick, black hair, strong accent and high pants with suspenders. Yet through the stereotype there lies a strong amount of sense in him, quite possibly a lot more than in any other character in the film. For example he loves cars to begin with but later is talking to Mike about leaving the car scene for good once the escapade is all over, much to Mike's shock.

The two cops are the comic relief of the film. They always take a long time to do anything and generally just lack any form of brain power. Their only smart move (and the only time one can take them seriously) is when they start hounding Fox for answers so they can close in on the final race.

The underlying themes of the movie are really only just touched upon and had much more potential. We see a conversation between Mike and Rebel where they discuss the thrill of the speed - even for Rebel who is blind but somehow manages to drive cars in straight lines in the outback. And how "it's not the speed that hurts but the stop at the end." As I mentioned earlier Tony voices his opinion on the stress and danger of it all and Julie is seen to be around mainly for her body. All this suits the Internet Movie Database synopsis that stated, "It's about hot cars, hot chicks and hot times."

The main problems with trying to source any kind of information about Running on Empty (Clark 1982) was first of all because usually the only few comments you can find about it are bad ones. The second is because there was another film with the same title released in Hollywood in 1988. This film has proved to be much more popular and is also available on DVD, unlike the Australian one. The third is reason is because it was funded by one of the small players in filmmaking - the Film Corporation of Western Australia. Combining these elements; a poor film with poor publicity and a poor budget meant poor box office sales. A blow for Australian, and particularly Western Australian, filmmaking. And just to dampen any remaining hopes the film makers may have had; another factor to consider is that it was also released around such times as Mad Max 2 (Millar (II) 1981), the Man from Snowy River (Millar (I) 1982) and Gallipolli (Weir 1981).

Looking at the film today it is important to say that it is not currently available on DVD and there is no word of it ever going to. Not only that but I wasn't able to even find a single website featuring a film review for it. The only two websites I could find that only mentioned the cast and crew were both American. Even in his book Australian National Cinema, often considered one of the corner stones of studying film in Australia, Tom O'Reagan does not even mention the film. These things aren't particularly good signs, especially considering that it was only released in 1982. These facts say a lot when trying to look at the popularity and market potential of a film today.

However despite all the bad press it has received it has received some good from car lovers of Australia and become renouned as a classic example of the Australian car / road movie. (As interest's sake, another is Metal Skin (Wright (I) 1994)). Street Machine (Fuller 2003) magazine went as far as to rank the film as second on their list of top 100 car films. The film was second only to Mad Max (Millar (II) 1979) but ranked higher than the original Gone in 60 Seconds (Halicki 1974) which took out third place.

The dominant force in film making today is obviously that of Hollywood and to a much lesser extent the United Kingdom. So much so that nowadays other national cinemas, especially those of other English - speaking countries have been forced to make films that must "compete with, imitate, oppose, complement and supplement" (O'Regan 1996, p.49) Hollywood. In the 1980's there was a large tendency for Australian films to imitate many American genres. The American road movie (also known as the car or the rev - head movie) was one such genre and Running on Empty (Clark 1982) is a classic example. It is primarily for this reason that the film managed to only just hit the American market but was for some unknown reason renamed to Fast Lane Fever (Clark 1982).

Bibliography

CD - ROM Australian Feature Films (1995)

Spratt, Mark (1982) "Running on Empty" - Review in Cinema Papers, Issue 40, October 1982,

p.467

Floyd, Nigel (1985) "Fast Lane Fever" - Review in Monthly Film Bulletin, Volume 52, number

617, June 1985, p.185

O'Regan, Tom (1996) Australian National Cinema, New York/ London, Routledge

Fuller, Glenn (2003) "Top 100 Car Flicks" Street Machine Sydney, NSW, May 2003, Volume

23, Number 5, p.60

Filmography

Mad Max dir. George Millar (II) 1979

Mad Max 2 dir. George Millar (II) 1981

The Man from Snowy River dir. George Millar (I) 1982

Gallipolli dir. Peter Weir 1981

Gone in 60 Seconds dir. H.B. Halicki 1974

Metal Skin dir. Geoffrey Wright (I) 1994

Rebel Without A Cause dir. Nicholas Ray 1995