Evil Knievel (1971) - George Hamilton, Sue Lyon, Dub Taylor, Rod Cameron
The movie starts with George Hamilton dressed in Evel's signature leathers and cane giving a speech to the camera (ala George C. Scott in Patton). Evel's life story is then told through a series of flashbacks, while Evel waits pensively to make a jump over 19 cars in front of 150,000 fans.
I don't know who came up with the back story for this, but it portrays Evel as one larcenous dude. I think a lot of things are really exaggerated or down right false.
We see his first jump over two pickups parked end to end in a run down rodeo owned by Dub Taylor. Evel talks Dub's character into letting him do the jump for $50. While wating his turn to perform Evel gets aquainted with Rod Cameron's character who dies riding a bull just a few moments before Evel's big jump.
We see him as a teenager making a nuisance of himself with the local cops and his someday wife Linda (Sue Lyon). He rides his cycle up to her dorm room after the dorm mother tells him no men after nine.
He robs a local department store on a lark. Tries to rob the city hall by blowing his way into the tax office with dynamite only to wind up in the men's room. A little later he's successful.
There is a montage of footage of the actual Evel doing various stunts and real footage of him jumping the fountain at Caesar's Palace. It makes you hurt watching him get twisted like one of those rubber figures with the wire inside. This put the real Evel in a coma for a month but in the movie his friends smuggle him out of the hospital and put him on a motorcycle the same day he has sugery to put pins in his hip.
George Hamilton is a strange choice to play this part. He is way to suave looking to be Evel. The movie is all over the place from serious (Evel contimplating his fame) to campy and then downright silly in parts.
Most of the movie was filmed in Evel's hometown of Butte Montana. There is a funny scene in the beginning when he's explaining how the ground under Butte is zig-zagged with mine tunnels.
It was good to see old western actors Dub Taylor and Rod Cameron, but their part only constituted about 5 minutes of the movie.
If you never see the film you haven't missed much. It was definitely made as drive-in fare for the early 70's.
The real guy is far more interesting. I remember getting out of the Navy in 1977 and driving across the Snake River in Idaho and thinking of Evel's attempt to cross the Snake River Canyon in his jet cycle. He technically made it across but the wind caught the parachute and carried him back into the canyon. He also came up with a crazy scheme to jump from a airplane onto a haystack, sans parachute. I don't think he ever tried it.
Evel was an American Icon for his time. Read about him
here.
