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A 1976 action movie about a cross-country road race. The movie is loosely based on the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash.

David Carradine plays Coy "Cannonball" Buckman, a race car driver recently released from jail for a fatal drunk driving crash. He's been tapped to drive in the Trans-America Grand Prix for the chance to win a contract with a racing team. However, the same deal has been offered to rival driver Cade Redman (Bill McKinney) who will stop at nothing to win the contract. Redman is travelling with country singer Perman Waters (Gerrit Graham) and his manager Sharma Capri (Judy Canova) while Buckman forces his parole officer/love interest Linda Maxwell (Veronica Hamel) to come along.

In addition to Buckman and Redman, competitors include German driver Wolf (James Keach), surfer Jim (Robert Carradine) and his girlfriend Maryann (Belinda Belaski), Beutell (Stanley Bennett Clay) who's driving a car he was hired to drive to New York, family man Terry (Carl Gottlieb), and waitresses Sandy (Mary Woronov), Wendy (Diane Lee Hart), and Ginny (Glynn Rubin). Shortly after the race begins, Buckman meets with his mechanic Zippo (Archie Hahn) and discovers he's built a car identical to the one he's driving to use as a backup.

Little does anyone realize, Buckman's brother Bennie (Dick Miller) has bet serious money with the mob and is resorting to murderous tactics to guarantee his victory.

Directed by Paul Bartel. Not to be confused with The Cannonball Run which was also based on the Cannonball race and released five years later.


Cannonball contains examples of the following tropes:

  • The Alcoholic: Cade Redman carries a lot of beer in the back of his Charger and Perman and his mother Sharma not only make note that he drinks beer "like a fish" but are surprised about him making a stop to buy more beer (although at least partially it is to wait for Coy Buckman to catch up to try to beat the crap out of him in the store).
  • Big Brother Instinct: Subverted. Bennie Buckman makes clear that he is helping his brother Coy because he is a sure-fire bet and nothing else. A lot of the chaos that happens during the plot are the result of said bet, too.
    Bennie Buckman: Listen, I hope you understand I'm not doing this (giving Coy the Firebird) to earn a ticket to Heaven. I hope you win.
  • Car Fu: "Cannonball" Buckman and Cade Redman try to smash their cars to pieces every chance they get. Beutell gets his Lincoln's side smashed by the van team and he delivers an accidental example when he side-swipes the car of the sniper who killed Zippo, making it squash him.
  • Character Title: "Cannonball" is Coy Buckman's nickname.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: The goon with the glasses that is a friend of Bennie is only important to the plot in two scenes: rigging the car bomb that kills Wolf and killing Zippo with a sniper rifle.
  • Chronically Crashed Car: The Lincoln Beutell drives in the race seemingly can't go one scene without crashing into something or running off the road, sometimes because of another team's actions. By the time he delivers it to his clients in New York, it's barely running and in serious need of a body shop.
  • Coitus Uninterruptus: Apropos of nothing, two scenes in the subplot of Terry and his lover are them talking about where they should be right now in their "drive" through the United States as they are bumping shoes in a motel somewhere near LaGuardia Airport.
  • Cool Car: Can't have a movie about an auto race without a few. Buckman and Zippo drive identical Firebirds, Redman has a Charger, Jim is driving Maryann's father's Corvette, Wolf has a Pantera, Beutell has a Lincoln Mark III, and Sandy has a modified van. At one point, Buckman crashes the Firebird he started the race with and a group of hot rodders lend him their car, a '69 Mustang.
  • Creator Cameo: Executive Producer Roger Corman makes an appearance as the District Attorney who gets notified the illegal race is about to begin and orders the police to get to the starting line (which they end up doing too late).
  • Darker and Edgier: In comparison to other films inspired by Brock Yates' "Cannonball Run", with three protagonist racers dead (two of them murdered, one killed while attempting murder), two dead secondary characters (who organized the aforementioned murders) and the pile-up massacre.
  • Dead Hat Shot: After Zippo is killed and crashes his car, there's a shot of his cap burning next to the wreckage.
  • Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: Redman, Bennie and Lester Marks, the Loan Shark who took Bennie's bet all do severe cheating to try to get Buckman to lose or win at various points of the film, and they all get nothing from it because Buckman decides to quit the race after he hears Bennie and Marks are reponsible for a lot of deaths and Redman gets himself killed while chasing after Buckman with intent to kill him. Terry also does a pretty impressive bit of cheating and loses because his lover is too much of an idiot to know when not to talk about said cheating.
  • Disqualification-Induced Victory:
    • After Terry flies across the country and pretends he actually drove the distance, he's declared the winner... until it comes out that he cheated and he's disqualified.
    • Invoked: Coy does a Rage Quit at the very last second to screw Bennie over and go the hospital where his girlfriend Linda is, letting Jim and Maryann (who are dead last among the protagonist teams still in the running) win the race.
  • Dreaming of Things to Come: At the start of the film, Buckman dreams about the Firebird crash that occurs near the end. Except a few details are different: Buckman's driving (and shot) instead of Zippo and Linda is blindfolded and doesn't bail out before the crash.
  • Drunk Driver: Buckman was in jail for a drunk driving accident that killed a girl. It's later revealed that Zippo was actually driving and Buckman took the blame for him.
  • Epic Race: The Trans-America Grand Prix runs across the United States as the name suggests. It starts in Los Angeles, finishes in New York, and lasts well over a day.
  • Every Car Is a Pinto: Ironically, the only actual Pinto that appears in the film emerges unscathed.
    • Bennie's men plant a bomb in Wolf's Pantera which goes off when he reaches a certain speed.
    • Redman's Charger goes off an overpass under construction and explodes when it hits the ground.
    • In the opening dream sequence, Buckman's Firebird explodes after he's shot and flips the car. And after Zippo is shot, his Firebird flips and explodes using the exact same footage.
    • Exaggerated in the pile-up. Seemingly every car involved catches fire at some point.
  • Everyone Has Standards: While Bennie and his friends are not adverse to committing murder to make sure they win the bet with Marks, and that leads to a lot of people getting hurt in the pile-up after Zippo dies, they still wish to reduce potential casualties when they place the bomb in Wolf's Pantera and set it up so it will explode once he reaches more than a hundred and fifty miles per hour, which they mention in conversation in that scene they expect to happen once Wolf reaches the highway and is far away from anybody. Sure enough, when the sabotage activates and Wolf is blown up sky-high, the only two people on that particular piece of road are him and the patrolman he was trying to escape, and the officer was plenty away from the explosion.
  • External Combustion: Knowing that Wolf Messer is one of the best drivers among the contestants, and he is entering a Pantera (which is most definitely one of the most powerful cars among the contestants), Bennie Buckman and his friends place a bomb on the Pantera designed to go off once it reaches more than one hundred and fifty MPH. Wolf reaches that speed trying to escape a highway patrolman. Boom.
  • Extremely Short Timespan: The events of the film (and thus the race) seemingly take place over two days.
  • Hurricane of Puns: Perman's song "Racing Heart" is a barrage of racing puns arranged in an awful love ballad. You can almost understand why Redman eventually smashes the guitar.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: At one point, Jim and Maryann find out their fan belt has broken and head to a shopping center to buy a new one. Unfortunately, the shopping center doesn't have an auto parts store and Maryann says the only way they'll get a new fan belt is if they steal one from one of the cars in the parking lot. They reluctantly do so and leave some money and a note explaining why they did that behind.
  • Immoral Journalist: One of the film's minor sub-plots is that the race is being followed by a TV news team who not only are reporting on what is a major criminal enterprise but they release the news early (they make a deal with the organizer to not release the news until after the race is over) because it's a slow news day.
  • Incessant Music Madness: Redman spends most of his subplot's time having to hear Perman constantly singing his song "Racing Heart" as he broadcasts it to radio stations across the nation as they race. By the night of the first day (and when they are roughly in the middle of the United States), Redman has enough and smashes Perman's guitar... and Perman borrows Maryann's guitar to continue playing. The second time he smashes the guitar at the climax, things end up much worse for him.
  • Karma Houdini: Lester Marks, Bennie's bookie, walks away a free man with at least one on-screen death (Zippo's), dozens if not hundreds of implied casualties as collateral damage of said death courtesy of the pile-up, and Bennie's soon-to-happen-off-screen death because he lost the bet he made with Marks to his name.
  • Karmic Jackpot: Jim and Maryann angst that they are going to arrive dead last in the race as they take Linda to a hospital after she gets thrown out of Zippo's Firebird when it loses control courtesy of Zippo being killed, but they admit they were not going to leave her there to die. Unknown to them, all other of the protagonist teams were disqualified or killed for one reason or another, and thus when they arrive to the finish line they are surprised to find out that they won (and got the $10,000 purse).
  • Killed Mid-Sentence: Wolf Messer, the German racer and most-probable-to-win contestant gets blown up sky-high as he is singing The Blue Danube (which he is singing as he is "dancing" with a pursuing highway patrolman. It Makes Sense in Context).
  • Laser-Guided Karma:
    • One part of Bennie Buckman's Establishing Character Moment is him placing a bomb in the car of Wolf Messer, the German racer, which kills the latter. As well, his involvement with Lester Marks directly leads to Cannonball's friend Zippo being killed. Once Cannonball discovers this, he quits the race right at the finish line in revenge, meaning Bennie cannot pay his bet with Marks, which leads to Marks' goons taking Bennie away to be killed.
    • Redman kicks Perman and Sharma out of his car just before going after Buckman for the last time. In the process, he smashes Perman's guitar. When he tries to chase Buckman over the gap in the overpass under construction, he realizes he's not going to make it and tries to stop. He's unable to slow down because a piece of the guitar is caught under the brake pedal. He goes off the overpass, crashes, and dies.
    • The man sent to stop Zippo by killing him with a sniper rifle, who also causes a humongous pile-up with dozens of fatalities as collateral damage is killed by his car (which he was hiding under) being sideswiped by Beutell in the middle of the chaos, crushing him.
    • Race contestant Terry is a Dirty Cop, two-timing his wife with an airheaded beauty, and cheating to win the race by taking his car on a cargo plane. He's disqualified right after arriving in first place by said airheaded lover saying that they cheated out loud and all of it making what may be national news.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: At one point, Lester Marks makes his goons beat the everliving hell out of Bennie Buckman as a warning that his brother "Cannonball" better win the race, while singing an impromptu song about how Marks feels sorry about acting like this.
  • "No Rules" Racing: The only true rules of the race seem to be "you have to cross the finish line to win" and "no taking an airplane".
  • Perpetual Frowner: Cale Redman spends the whole film in a white-hot rage as he is driven to win at all costs. Notably, the only moments he is seemingly happy are when he is trying to hurt Cannonball.
  • The Rival: Cale Redman to "Cannoball" Buckman, and boy, is he a top-notch example of one: he is a complete maniac willing from the get-go to try to kill Buckman if that's what it takes to get him out of the race and is not adverse to tiny moments of gleeful sabotage like smashing Buckman's headlights or tossing away his car's jack.
  • Running Gag: Perman trying to sing the country song he composed during the race, "Racing Heart", on a radio broadcast, and being constantly interrupted by Redman's demented attempts to take out Buckman or Redman being angry at the former's atrocious singing, culminating with smashing Perman's guitar (Perman manages to get a replacement). The montage of racers finally arriving to New York has the uninterrupted song playing as background music.
  • Sacrificial Lamb: Wolf Messer is boasted a lot about being one of the best contenders at winning the race, so Bennie rigs his car to explode, assassinating him at the approximate 15-minute mark and very early in the race.
  • Sacrificial Lion: Zippo, Coy's best friend, is murdered when the race is approaching New York City, approximately 15 minutes away from the film's end.
  • Saying Too Much: Terry flies across the country and spends the duration of the race with his mistress. He then arrives at the finish ahead of everyone else. After being declared the winner, he looks for the champagne he brought to celebrate but can't find it. His mistress says "I think I left it on the plane." Cue disqualification.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: The van team makes it to New York City, but gets lost looking for the finish line and gets side-swiped by a car when they enter a back alley and the van is wrecked. Beutell also makes it to New York, but his car is so badly damaged and he is so far behind that he decides to deliver it as he was supposed to do and let its owners boggle at the wreck as an apparent last laugh. It's pretty heavily implied that many non-protagonist teams were arrested off-screen, making them an example as well.
  • Suspect Is Hatless: On a lark, Zippo decides to enter the race with a near-exact replica of Coy's car and him wearing similar clothes, and twice he and Buckman are attacked (Cannonball is attacked by a guy trying to prevent Zippo from winning, Zippo by bikers hired by Redman to prevent Cannonball from winning), purely because the description they got is "man on red Firebird".
  • Taking the Heat: Buckman was in jail for a drunk driving accident. Zippo later reveals that he was driving instead and Buckman took the blame and sentence because he didn't think Zippo could survive in prison.
  • Underling with an F in PR: Terry's lover is a complete airhead that casually blurts out they flew to New York when Terry cannot find the champagne to celebrate their victory, getting them disqualified. The last we see of her is her doing a happy "oops!" face in response to Terry's annoyance.
  • Wacky Racing: The race the whole film revolves around is breaking the law and all of the racers are performing it in the fastest cars they could get their hands on (with one team using a souped-up van and the film's Butt-Monkey using a car that was supposed to be delivered to New York). Cheating really gets out of hand as well, up to attempted (and actual) murder.
  • Watch the Paint Job: Beutell enters the race with a Lincoln Mark III that he's been asked to deliver to some rich folks in New York. The car gets repeatedly battered by other drivers trying to get him out of the race, one accident courtesy of Beutell falling asleep at the wheel, and being one of the cars that get hit in the pile-up in the third act, and when he arrives to the hotel the rich people are staying in in the film's epilogue, the car is holding together by a wing and a prayer. Beutell just gives the rich people the keys, makes a quip about how the car may need some bodywork, and walks away.

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