Greatest Film Scenes
and Moments



The Cannonball Run (1981)

 



Written by Tim Dirks

Title Screen
Movie Title/Year and Scene Descriptions
Screenshots

The Cannonball Run (1981)

In director Hal Needham's classic, illegal cross-country car race film - an iconic early non-PC 80s movie - with an all-star cast of caricatured, daredevil drivers in one or two-person crews:

  • the modified 20th Century Fox logo in the film's opening - a police car chasing a red sports-car into the logo's monument
  • the all-star cast of caricatured individuals - daredevil drivers in one or two-person crews: Dom DeLuise as Victor Prinzim/Captain Chaos and Burt Reynolds as ambulance driver J.J. McClure (the defending champ), Jackie Chan as Japanese high-tech/martial-arts expert in a Subaru, Jamie Farr as an Arab sheik in a Rolls-Royce, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. as two disguised drunken priests Jamie Blake and Fenderbaum in a red Ferrari, a country-boy duo of "stuttering" Mel Tillis and beer-guzzling Terry Bradshaw in a red "Hawaiian Tropic" Chevrolet stock car, and Bond's Roger Moore as Seymour Goldfarb Jr. in an Aston Martin
Pamela Glover (Farrah Fawcett)
  • the vacuous, brain-dead and vapid environmentalist/reporter Pamela Glover (Farrah Fawcett), conspicuously braless throughout the movie, who thought "cannonballers" were a bowling team, and told race representative Arthur J. Foyt (George Furth) about her love for trees and everything natural: ("I love anybody who loves trees....You know what I like best about trees?...That you can lie under them on a moonlit night with the breeze blowing, ball your brains out"); when J.J. McClure met her for the first time, he tried to guess her name: "Melissande, Juliet, Betty" and then decided: "I'll just call you Beauty, okay?" after which she dumbly asked: "Are you one of those volleyballers?"
  • the series of cop encounters when two sexy Lamborghini babes in tight pants-suits with zipper fronts were stopped in their car for speeding, and busty, cleavage-revealing driver Marcie Thatcher (Adrienne Barbeau) used her sex appeal with male cops to be released without charges, but then was strictly treated by a female cop (Valerie Perrine): ("Well, hello, Hotpants! I don't suppose you have a driver's license tucked down in there somewhere, do you?")
  • the closing credits - composed of wacky and very funny out-takes

Modified Logo

Dom DeLuise as Captain Chaos

Jamie Farr as Arab Sheik


"Hawaiian Tropic" Car

Marcie Thatcher
(Adrienne Barbeau)


100's of the GREATEST SCENES AND MOMENTS

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