The Big Picture

David Cronenberg’s
Fast Company
deviates from his horror style with a commercial, action-packed racing film.
The movie has a simple plot that ultimately embraces a hangout vibe rather than deep symbolism.
Despite lacking his signature tone, Cronenberg’s solid camerawork and documentary-style shots enhance the racing action.

If you’re in the mood for a movie that will make you throw up, all you need to do is dig into the sick works of David Cronenberg. For decades, Cronenberg has shocked audiences, mutilated bodies, and blown the heads off of characters in one dumbfounding horror classic after another. Everyone knows the heavy hitters like Scanners, Videodrome, and, of course, The Fly, but Cronenberg has much more to his name than that. Genre fans shouldn’t miss his bizarre debut, Stereo (Tile 3B of a CAEE Educational Mosaic). They should also be sure to check in on his low-budget zombie vampire hybrid, Rabid — an absolute trip in and of itself. Don’t forget his late-stage return to gross-out cinema with 2022’s Crimes of the Future. Cronenberg’s movies are always steeped in symbolism. Whether he’s exploring disease, critiquing aspects of the hippie movement, or the trials of divorce, Cronenberg is rarely one to shoot his ideas straight. Genre films often work in this mode, but few filmmakers push their projects to be this gross and this deep at the same time. Cronenberg isn’t just a gore head, he’s a genius who takes pop culture iconography, pushes it to its grossest extreme, and makes you think the whole time, too. No one does it like David.

What happens when the man himself doesn’t play his own game? Well, you end up with an anomaly like Fast Company. Cronenberg has directed a good number of non-horror films, but never before has he strayed from his signature voice quite like he did here. Fast Company is a straight-up racing movie! It’s filled with high-speed cars, death-defying stunts, loads of beer, sports rivalries, and a blue-collared American cast of characters. Despite all of these high-octane goods, the picture has a near-anonymous authorial stamp. Anyone could have directed this movie! That might make it stick out like a sore thumb in Cronenberg’s filmography, but it also proves that he’s a more versatile director than most people give him credit for. He might be the king of body horror, but with Fast Company, Cronenberg proves that he is capable of bringing together one hell of a B-rate action ride.

‘Fast Company’ Is a Surprising Entry in David Cronenberg’s Filmography
Image via Paramount

Fast Company was released in theaters in 1979. By that point, Cronenberg had been working for a decade as an independent filmmaker, with his avant-garde, black and white, feature-length debut, Stereo, being released in 1969. He would never again go nearly as left-field as that movie, but that doesn’t mean that his pictures went on to become all that commercial. While Stereo and its successor, 1970’s Crimes of the Future, were two exercises in no-budget science fiction filmmaking, Cronenberg would truly find himself in his third film — Shivers. That film found him going head first into body horror, a subgenre that he would come to be acknowledged as the king of. His fourth film, Rabid, further solidified his ability to repulse audiences.

A full decade and four films in, Cronenberg was officially a force of exploitation filmmaking to be reckoned with. What did he decide to do for his fifth project? Well, he decided it was time to make a little money, that’s what! Cronenberg dove head first into Fast Company, a career move that no one in the past or present could see coming. His reasoning makes this career pivot more understandable, though. First and foremost, it was an opportunity to better financially support his family. Besides having to succumb to the suffocating grip of capitalism, this film would also give him the chance to explore his fascination with cars and drag races. Let’s get real, this jump to commercial art isn’t a total head-scratcher in the grand scheme of his filmography. Cronenberg has made a zombie flick, a Stephen King adaptation, a remake of a classic ’50s monster movie, and the list goes on. The only thing is that Fast Company has none of its filmmaker’s usual metaphorical brainpower fueling its engine. This thing is all bite, but that’s also why it kicks ass.

‘Fast Company’ Is a Vibe-Forward Racing Movie

The story for Fast Company is about as simple as it gets. After a racer is let go by his sponsor and replaced by his rival, he decides that it’s time to steal the car and race it himself. That’s the basic synopsis, but this movie isn’t about the story. Fast honestly just operates as a hangout movie. A lot of the time, we’re just chilling out around drag strips watching cars rev their engines, enduring explosive auto accidents, talking smack about our opponents, and sipping on a nice Budweiser (or six) with our pals.

This is the definition of a “trucker hat movie.” Everybody on screen is gripping a beer and wearing a trashy, netted ball cap, and it’s a good hang, as are most trucker hat movies. Cronenberg isn’t the only one of his kind to have taken on one of these movies in this odd, made-up corner of cinema. Another horror legend, John Carpenter, had his own with Starman, which is just about the most laid-back movie that the Halloween filmmaker ever crafted. This movie might not technically be as good as Carpenter’s, but it’s also nothing to turn your nose up at. Starman has a heart, but Fast Company kicks its alien ass.

This all goes down easily with a cool cast made up of B-movie icons. William Smith plays the lead, Lonnie Johnson, a character that feels most like Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) in the years to come with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Western, kung-fu, and horror legend John Saxon is diabolical as the villain, Phil Adamson, who only has small potatoes to play with as a corporate dirtbag. Still, he makes the most of this opportunity.

David Cronenberg Shows a New Side of Himself With ‘Fast Company’

Cronenberg might not be doing his thing in Fast Company, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not turning in solid work. While I previously said that there’s no authorial stamp here, that really just means that his trademark grim tone and subject matter are nowhere to be found. This movie has much more in common with the sports movies of the late ’70s and ’80s than it does The Fly. One thing that he does carry over from his horror films is his tendency to stand back and let the action happen without getting flashy in his camerawork.

There are moments in Fast that feel like a straight-up documentary. Cronenberg often places a camera a good bit back from cars revving their engines at the starting line. The cinematographer will lightly zoom in and out, setting the perfect frame for the action to come. Then, when they take off, the camera just pans and tracks their movements. Hardly ever does Cronenberg cut to different angles, and if he does, those successive shots linger as well. There is the occasional exciting shot that finds the camera strapped to the hood of a car and fixed on the driver or instances where we watch the race from inside the vehicle. There’s also the ending of the movie, which, despite Fast Company’s independent roots, goes out with a Hollywood-style bang.

Cronenberg would never return to anything even remotely close to Fast Company. There are elements of action filmmaking in Scanners and A History of Violence, but never again would he make something that is as accessible as this. Honestly, that’s for the best. There are tons of filmmakers out there who can make movies like Fast Company. No one can drum up cerebral body horror like David Cronenberg. Keep making us grab our thinking caps and barf bags, sir.

Fast Company is available to stream on Tubi in the U.S.

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