Cinema Revisited: Fireball 500 (1966)

Fireball 500

Directed by William Asher. Cast: Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Fabian, Chill Wills, Harvey Lembeck, Julie Parrish. Released June 7, 1966. American-International Pictures.

Sixties teenage culture didn't really start until Beatlemania happened in 1964. The earlier 60s was sort of a 50s hangover period. But things got more wholesome. Elvis came out of the army and softened his rock and roll rebel image considerably. Chuck Berry went to prison, Little Richard entered a monastery, Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran were dead. In their place, the music charts featured the likes of Frankie Avalon, Fabian, and The Beach Boys.

The Beach Boys sang about the beach and cars, so when the box office receipts for the wildly popular beach movies started to fall off around 1965, there was an attempt to see what could be done with cars. "Fireball 500" is the result.

American-International lined up the actors, the director, and the screenwriters of the beach series and the result was an interesting, colorful programmer, with action and songs. Frankie and Annette are given roles to play that mine a bit deeper than the characters they portrayed in the beach movies. They are bolstered by the talented Harvey Lembeck and Linda Parrish, and the veteran Chill Wills. Lembeck, who had been a fixture on the Phil Silvers "Bilko" series, and stole every scene as the hilarious Brando sendup Eric Von Zipper in the beach pictures, plays a southern crook who uses the drivers to run moonshine on the side. His fight scene with Avalon is remarkably well played.

Avalon and Funicello don't really play different characters than they had in the beach movies, they are just allowed to stretch a bit as actors. This isn't a light musical comedy. There are a couple of songs, but no real comic relief. "Fireball 500" is a more serious drama, the crew's attempt to make an actual movie, per se. The overall plot is darker, edgier, and the action sequences are nicely done. In fact, for NASCAR fans, the stock footage or actual stock car racing will likely have a historical interest.

When "Fireball 500" was released in the summer of 1966, it played mostly drive-in theaters, and its target demographic was teenagers. But with the more serious approach to the acting and the edgier script, it was likely an attempt to draw in adult audiences as well. There are even some scenes that might be considered risque in this context (a group of girls following Fabian around were played by actual Playboy playmates. Lembeck and Avalon fight because of a woman up in Avalon's apartment the night before).

"Fireball 500" was a significant box office success, and the studio believed it could successfully move away from the fading beach movie market and enter a series of race car films. Plans were made to star Fabian in a higher budgeted feature, "Thunder Alley." Unfortunately, when 1966 became 1967 the sixties culture changed rather drastically. The Beatles released the Sgt Pepper album. The Stones came out with "Their Satanic Majesty's Request." Light pop groups like Herman's Hermits faded away, to make room for the likes of Jimi Hendrix, who was a sensation at the Monterey Pop festival. The youth culture changed. The depiction by the likes of Frankie Avalon and Fabian became archaic. "Thunder Alley," released in 1967, was a box office flop despite being, arguably, an even better movie.

Now, in the 21st century, "Fireball 500" is a cultural artifact. It is a 60s movie that enjoyed good box office the year before cinema started releasing films like "The Graduate" for this same age group, while "Bonnie and Clyde" gave real-life Depression-era gangsters the wild child attitude of the 1960s. On its own terms, it is competent and harmless entertainment.