Saturday, December 26, 2020

Evel Knievel (1971)

A motorcycle daredevil is about to perform a great stunt and he recalls his early life and how he got where he is now.

This is a conventional biopic except for the unusual fact that the subject matter was still alive and only 32 at the time of its release. I really cannot find anything useful to say about the film, which is watchable in a trivial way but has all the banal clichés one usually finds in biopics. In fact I was led to watch it due to a probable mistake: I had read a mention to it (by Christopher Mulrooney) which probably meant to refer to another movie -- the later Viva Knievel! (1977) -- and got the titles mixed up. I think the only thing I will remember from this film is how impressed I was by the vocals on the two songs which play during the movie (one during the opening and closing credits and another during the film proper), and how intrigued I was that the name of the singer was absent from the film's credits, and even from the IMDB and Wikipedia pages. It was not very easy to find that name by searching the web, but I did find it (here): it is Jim Sullivan. Here is a piece on him and the mystery surrounding his disappearance.

Rating: 31

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