There’s nothing quite like RV horror. Inspired by an expanding national highway system and the proliferation of motor parks in the 1960s, this distinctive subgenre offers a unique blend of classic genre fare. Part home invasion, part road trip tale, part hicksploitation with a smidge of folk horror, the recreational vehicle becomes a home away from home and offers the illusion of safety while traversing strange locales. Jack Starrett’s Race with the Devil is arguably the first great entry in the RV horror tradition, a criminally underseen film following two suburban couples on a road trip to hell.  

Friends and business partners Frank (Warren Oates) and Roger (Peter Fonda) have just set out on an adventurous road trip from San Antonio, Texas to a ski vacation in Aspen, Colorado. Traveling in style, Frank shows off a brand new RV with all the comforts of home: color television, microwave oven, roman bath, and a fully stocked bar. Wheeling into a picturesque valley, their wives Alice (Loretta Swit) and Kelly (Lara Parker) prepare a nice dinner as the guys race motorcycles through the rolling hills. Later, while taking in the late night air, they spy a burning tree off in the distance. Mysterious chants waft over from across the creek and the two frightened men witness a group of hooded figures stabbing a passive woman to death. With their location accidentally revealed, Roger and Frank rush the oversized vehicle out of the valley as members of this satanic cult climb onboard and try to break in. They manage to escape in the nick of time, but this disturbing incident sparks a harrowing chase through the backroads of Texas as the frightened couples desperately retreat to the safety of civilization. 

Released just one year after Tobe Hooper’s masterpiece, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Starrett benefits from a perceived corruption of the rural south. With the tale of Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) and his depraved family top of mind, urban dwellers became convinced that venturing onto old dirt roads away from the safety of crowded cities would be a death sentence. Starrett plays with this emerging brand of US folk horror by presenting an American heartland no longer welcoming to strangers. Those who can’t handle the pragmatic violence of country life should go back to the cities where they belong. Wes Craven would sharpen this critique with his 1977 film The Hills Have Eyes, a harrowing story which also sees an RV-owning family attacked by a clan of inbred cannibals.

Ironically these clashing ecosystems were highlighted six years earlier in Fonda’s iconic Easy Rider. Directed by co-star Dennis Hopper, the Oscar-nominated film follows a pair of idealistic hippies motorcycling across America only to meet opposition at every turn. Wyatt (Fonda) and Billy (Hopper) are eventually murdered by angry locals dismayed by their flagrant bohemian lifestyle. Starrett includes similar rhetoric in his action-packed film and Race with the Devil feels like a spiritual sequel to the award winning classic. Both stories feature a pair of motorcycle enthusiasts who find themselves rejected and destroyed by villainous members of rural America. 

No longer a free-wheeling hippie, Roger feels like the ill-fated Wyatt all grown up. He now has a wife and a thriving business, having translated his hobby into a capitalistic venture; the motorcycle dealership he owns with Frank. Roger’s home is not the open road, but a mobile house lending nominal stability to his transient lifestyle. Unfortunately, this progressive idealist once again finds that he doesn’t belong. He may have cleaned up his act and cut his hair, but he’s still rejected by the Americana he seeks to understand. Swapping a satanic cult for violent locals, Starrett’s film also punishes Fonda’s character for trespassing in a violent country he thought he knew. 

These dual versions of the American south pull Race with the Devil into folk horror territory. Roger and company are outsiders who encounter ancient mysticism lurking in inhospitable rurality. Their large and intrusive vehicle corrupts the natural landscape while they treat local tradition with disdain. Roger plans to take a piece of blood-soaked cloth snatched from the crime scene to his “big city police” while Alice and Kelly steal a reference book on occult practices from the local library. They are outsiders in a foreign land they believe they have a right to traverse, but find themselves swallowed by ancient customs.

Building on the unholy horror of Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, Starrett blends Aztec mythology with traditional witchcraft to create a nonspecific brand of satanism. These influential films center women attempting to survive in the modern world, undone by satanic forces infiltrating the family home. Race with the Devil continues this conversation by moving an updated residence onto demonic ground. As in the aforementioned films, it is Starrett’s female characters who first notice the threat. Kelly in particular embodies the national paranoia of the era when she begins to sense danger in each tiny town along the road. Following decades of civil unrest and a growing distrust of the American government, Starrett justifies her fears and posits that the country we’ve been told to rely on does not actually have our best interests at heart.  

Adding to the terror is a heavy sense of unease that pervades the film. An opening scene follows the RV past the Alamo–the 1936 setting of a 13-day siege–foreshadowing the political horrors to come. Having reported the murder, Roger and Frank are shocked when the small town’s sheriff seems to have advanced knowledge of the crime scene’s location. A repairman listens in as they plan their next move and a phone operator has suspicious trouble placing their calls. A red truck seems to be following them from town to town and fellow motorists take an unnatural interest in their evening plans. Everywhere they go, the ill-fated couples seem to attract unwanted attention. Alice and Kelly take a dip in a motor park pool only to find everyone staring at them while they swim. Men and women alike gawk at the outsiders, convincing Kelly that something is dreadfully wrong. 

Complementing this intense paranoia is Starrett’s unique twist on the home invasion film. Though spacious compared to more standard vehicles, Frank’s RV is nonetheless a vulnerable home offering little more than the illusion of shelter. During a night out at a local bar, satanists pry the door open and murder Kelly’s dog Ginger, leaving her poor body hanging over the open door. The park’s other motorists simply stare in silence as Roger asks if they witnessed the crime. Moments later while fleeing the park, they discover two rattlesnakes tucked into kitchen cabinets. The RV crashes into a tree as the frightened passengers frantically defend themselves against the deadly reptiles. 

This unique home on wheels may seem stable and sturdy, but it actually presents the worst case scenario. Roger does have the ability to drive away, but the RV is subject to the rules of the road. While fleeing the ritual in the dead of night, the RV’s back tire becomes stuck in the mud. Roger and Frank must get out and push with murderous locals hot on their heels. Not only dependent on gasoline, they must slow down for traffic or debris on the road and something as simple as a slashed tire or broken axle could cost them their lives. Rather than a fortress on wheels, they have become a large and lumbering moving target.

No road trip horror film would be complete without a climactic car chase sequence and Starrett’s film does not disappoint. As the frightened foursome desperately try to reach Amarillo, a city large enough to offer real protection, the sinister red truck appears on their tail. They find themselves blocked in by tankers and toe trucks all determined to push them off the road. Hopping onto the mobile home’s roof, cult members try to break through the windows while pouring gasoline through a vent in the roof. By turns Frank and Roger try to evade these threats while firing a shotgun at the window, reversing Easy Rider’s tragic conclusion. This thrilling chase sees trucks driving on two wheels, attackers felled by low overhangs, and exploding cars careening off bridges. While clinging to the RV’s back door, Roger fires the shotgun at an approaching truck then drops his treasured motorcycle into the road, causing the pursuing vehicle to swerve and roll. A string of crumpled cars and trucks litter the Texas roads as the RV desperately speeds towards safety. 

This high-octane destruction precedes an extremely dark conclusion and a somewhat cruel bait and switch. We believe our heroes have escaped the cult and finally made it to Amarillo, but a broken headlight seals their fate. With night falling soon, they pull into an open field to make repairs but wind up driving into a trap. Starrett follows the damaged RV straight into the path of the setting sun which appears to form an ominous ring of fire around this transient home. Roger begins to make celebratory martinis–the driest of their lives–as chanting begins not too far away. A nihilistic conclusion presents this idyllic countryside as an inescapable hellscape populated by duplicitous villains. Despite their extravagant resources and admirable strength, these idealistic urbanites are ultimately defenseless against the dark heart of the US south.