Pit Stop

Rick Bowman makes his living on the street as a drag racer, which brings him to the notice of Grant Willard, a businessman who sees potential in him. Willard gets Bowman out of jail and offers to sponsor him as a stock car driver. Bowman takes the deal and enters the world of figure-eight racing, a form of competition closely related to demolition derby. As he climbs the ranks, his loyalty to the people around him fades, replaced by an obsession with winning.

Pit Stop is a 1969 American action drama directed and written by Jack Hill and produced by Lee Strosnider. It appeared in the middle of Hill's directing career, between Macabre Serenade and Alien Terror, several years before the run of films that followed in the early 1970s. Brian Donlevy plays Grant Willard and Richard Davalos plays Rick Bowman, with Ellen Burstyn as Ellen McCleod, Sid Haig as Hawk Sidney, Beverly Washburn as Jolene and George Washburn as Ed McCleod.

The film runs 91 minutes. It drew little attention at the time, and its ratings on IMDb and TMDB remain modest, with 6.7 out of 10 from around 1,200 votes and 6.9 out of 10 from a much smaller number of votes respectively. Those figures point to a small but reasonably appreciative audience for a low-budget genre picture.