Smokey Bites the Dust (1981)

Interesting facts

Smokey Bites the Dust is a 1981 car chase film from New World Pictures directed by Charles B. Griffith. Despite the title, the film is not connected to the Smokey and the Bandit series.

Production

Though the majority of the cars used in filming had California licence plates, the exact location of the storyline was more ambiguous; film dialogue mentioned the boonies, which generally refers to the Appalachian region, and also mentioned running off to "east St. Louis or west to Colorado". Near the end of the film, Roscoe suggests they hotwire a boat and take off for St. Louis or New Orleans, both of which are on the Mississippi River.

Charles B. Griffith had made a popular film for Roger Corman's New World Pictures called Eat My Dust! (1976). Corman wanted Griffith to make a follow-up called Car Wars using stunt footage from five old New World films. Griffith wrote a script which he later called Wham Bam, Merci, Madame, which he says Corman rejected. However a few years later he reactivated the project.

He called again and offered me a lot more money than he ever had before. I guess I got flattered, and I went ahead and did it. He had Max Apple in Texas go ahead and write a script around all the wrecks and chases. But Max wasn't allowed to see the footage. It was too expensive to rent a Movieola and send Max prints or anything else, so he had only vague descriptions written down on what the stunts were—and nothing worked.

Apple later described the experience: "They wanted four or five crashes, of which they already had the footage. It was more bricklaying than writing.

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