Steel Arena (1973) on Netflix
Dropped off in rural Kentucky with no cash, Dusty Russell takes a job driving bootleg moonshine. After the run goes wrong, he and a stranger named Buddy Love enter a demolition derby.
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- Netflix2.6/5
- IMDb5.2/10229 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
Left outside a rural Kentucky bar, transient Dusty Russell orders a drink he cannot pay for. The bartender offers him a hundred dollars to drive a tanker, a souped-up car used to run bootleg moonshine. The run goes wrong and Dusty escapes in the owner's 1939 Dodge, rolling it and spilling the load. Returned for his pay, he is refused and set upon by bouncers; a stranger fights beside him, and he leaves with Jo-Ann, a waitress. The stranger is Buddy Love, who wants to enter a demolition derby but has no car. Dusty offers the bootlegger's Dodge, and the two become partners. Dusty wins the derby, catching the eye of promoter Gene Drew, who runs the Circus of Death, a troupe of auto daredevils. Drew hires both men.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Steel Arena (1973)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Stunt driver Ed "Chromedome" Ryan worked on Steel Arena while an escaped convict wanted for armed robbery; the truth emerged after the film's release, he was arrested, and the movie was later shown to the inmates at the prison holding him.
SPOILER
The film's closing stunt, a 100-foot dive bomber jump that Dusty Russell performed and that his character dies making, actually broke the real world record, just as it does on screen.- Mark L. Lester spotted Dusty Russell and the other performers of The Circus of Death at an auto daredevils show in Berkeley, California. He had planned a documentary about them on tour but instead signed the real daredevils to star in a fictional story, doing all their own stunts.
- Lester said the stunts were filmed at real daredevil events, using steel cars from the 1960s; he said the cars of today would collapse if they rolled over and crashed the way they do in the movie.
