Review of Speed Cross

Speed Cross (1980)
6/10
Better than Speed Driver
3 March 2019
A little patience is required for this film, but hang in there because the kick-ass Rollerball-like motorbike race at the end is totally worth it. I'm saying it's like Rollerball, but think Rollerball on a really tight budget. Really tight.

Hunky Fabio Testi and not hunky but keen Vittoria Mezzogiorno are two motocross enthusiasts who join up for a race in Germany somewhere (or Switzerland, I'm not sure). From the get-go it seems to Testi as the race might by a bit iffy, as a bunch of heavies lead by campily-dubbed Romano Puppo try and supress the local journalists who are voicing their suspicions causing Testi and his mate to step in. Vittoria also has an eye for the ladies, especially blonde, short-pant wearing petrol station attendant Ilga, and she might like him too, but she still beds Testi first.

The sinister dude Meyer who runs these races has the whole thing fixed and knows who's going to win already - it's Puppo, who's a bit of a swiss-army hired goon in that he wins Meyer's races and kills off nosy people on his downtime. The guy he killed off has somehow managed to ditch the evidence, but did he give it to Ilga?

Ilga ends up dead next and Testi comforts Vittoria by telling him she wasn't all that in the sack which earns him a sock in the jaw. The hired goons then turn on these two but the question is - when are we going to get to the killer, stunt filled race at the end? And will anyone pick-up impossibly good-looking hooker Lia Tanzi?

I didn't think Massi's Speed Driver was the greatest, but Speed Cross is more like it - cheesy, funky (love that song at the beginning and end!), with Testi being dumb and good looking and a violent race at the end with bikes and bodies flying everywhere. Freeze frame ending too, with some slow motion punch ups on the side. It's about as realistic as those lip filler things people keep getting but I enjoyed, so maybe those people enjoy their swollen, unnatural lips as they try and get some soup in there.
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