September 9, 2002.

"Look out Vegas!  We're coming in!"

Starring Ron Howard, Nancy Morgan, Marion Ross, Peter Isacksen, Barry Cahill, Hoke Howell, Lew Brown, Elizabeth Rogers, Rance Howard, Clint Howard, and The Real Don Steele.  Music by Peter Ivers.  Associate producer, Rance Howard.  Executive producer, Roger Corman.  Produced by Jon Davidson.  Written by Rance Howard and Ron Howard.  Directed by Ron Howard.  Released by New World Pictures in 1977.

Sam and Paula are in love and want to get hitched.  Unfortunately, they're from opposite sides of the tracks and Paula's father is not too proud of his daughter's choice in husbands especially when you consider she's been "promised" to this flake of a chump.  Also, a scandal like this one could hurt his political career.  Daddy tries to steal the keys to his daughter's car to prevent her from running away, so she steals her father's Rolls Royce to get back at him, and to get to Las Vegas in style!

Now the couple is eloping to Las Vegas.  Unfortunately, daddy contacted the future in-laws and told them what happened.  They even go as far as offering a reward for the capture of the couple on a live radio station.  Now the station has a hot news item and are chasing everyone from the safety of a helicopter, broadcasting the play-by-play as they happen!  Will the couple reach Las Vegas in time to get married?  Or will they be captured by a mix of family members, in-laws, news reporters and amateur bounty hunters?

This is Ron Howard's directorial debut.  Up to that time, he's been working mostly as an actor on many different TV shows.  And ever since his departure from "Happy days", he always wanted to do much more than just act.  Unfortunately, no one in the industry could see beyond his boyish charms.  That is until Roger Corman, the king of successful low-budget independent movies, decided to give him a shot as the lead in a car chase movie called "Eat My Dust".  The movie did very well and it was obvious another movie would have to be made.  Only Ron was ready for this and offered Roger an interesting proposition: work for the same salary as in the first movie, and offer to direct it for free.

The movie, written by Ron and his father Rance, was to become the "vehicle" of many car chase sequences, and was arranged in such a way that the scenes incorporating Ron Howard would be filmed in a two day period, freeing him to perform all the required directing chores for the rest of the shooting schedule while still be seen as one of the main leads.  And aside for an awkward five minute period at the beginning of the movie, he's done a very good job.  The story itself is pretty basic and was inspired from other car chase movies such as "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World".  And in this context it worked well enough that the movie turned out to be just as much a success as the previous movie "Eat My Dust".  And it's easy to understand why with the engaging story, the somewhat decent acting from the cast, and the reasonably well made car chase scenes.  For a low-budget drive-in flick, it's pretty good.

Ron Howard went on to direct many more movies, eventually winning an Oscar for his work on "A Beautiful Mind".  All this because years ago Roger Corman gave Ron Howard the opportunity to show the world what he can do.

Picture

1.33:1 full frame.  And I can't pin down if this is the movie's original aspect ratio or a pan & scan transfer.  Most of the scenes including the opening credits appear to be properly framed, but some of the scenes show small tell-tale signs of a pan & scan process in action.

As for the transfer itself, it look like any other cheaply made transfer of a cheaply made drive-in second feature from the seventies.  Dull colors, poor black level, dust and dirt galore, MPEG artifacts...  One frame even has a highly visible fingerprint on it!  But overall, the transfer is still sharp enough to be reasonably viewable.  Much better than some of the ugly transfers I've seen in the past from some big name studios although the MPEG artifacts in this feature can be a bit distracting on very large screens.

Sound/Subtitles

Dolby Digital 2.0 mono.  And this movie sounds as ugly as it looks.  No bass, muddy highs, vocals a bit drowned out at times...  But just like the image, the sound is tolerable and doesn't suffer from any overly irritating defects.

There are no alternate soundtracks or subtitles aside from the closed captions embedded in the video signal.

Features

What this DVD lacks in transfer quality, it more than makes up for it in the extra features department starting with a commentary track with Roger Corman and Ron Howard which does an excellent job of describing Ron Howard's experiences as a first-time director.  Some of this information is repeated in the present day interviews which also include film critic Leonard Maltin conducting an interview with Roger Corman.  Also included is the movie's press kit, talent bios and original theatrical trailer narrated by Ron Howard himself, something I'd like to see more often in movie trailers.

Final verdict

If you rely only on my ratings for the picture and sound quality, you'll be tempted to bypass this title.  But if you take into consideration that this is Ron Howard's first professional directing job, and it's with a film company known for their low production values, you can overlook the technical problems and simply concentrate on what is actually a pretty decent car chase movie with a well established premise.  But what makes this DVD release a keeper is the high quality extra features which do a decent job of describing what it was like to be working on a low budget movie and still manage to create something decent and reasonably entertaining.

Picture		Video	1.33:1, original format unknown.
Sound		Audio	ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 2.0 (mono)
Story		Subtitles	None
Features		Features	Video Interviews Commentary track Original press kit Biographies Trailers
Value		Final word	There's going to be a lot of revoked drivers licenses...