This may be the "Citizen Kane" of drag racing movies, but for the sin of disappointing a 12-year-old boy and his 8-year-old brother through misleading advertising, this movie is hereby and forever condemned to Cinema Hell.
Who knows if this movie is really any good or not, it's been 31 years since I've seen it. But since that day, the words "Funny Car Summer" will always elicit a groan in my family. I was 12, my brother was 8, and we BEGGED our dad to take us, because the commercial on TV was SO COOL. So off we went to the only theater in town that was playing it. That should have been hint #1. Hint #2 was the fact that may 10 people were in the theater on a summer afternoon.
I don't recall much about the movie, but I seem to recall that the commercial showed endless scenes of drag racing. And those scenes were about all the drag racing that was in the movie. The rest was all talking. Maybe it was a searing portrait of the dark underbelly of American drag racing as seen through the eyes of one family, but that's not what I wanted to see, and that's not what the commercial showed. It was the end of my innocence in believing movie advertising. For that sin alone, this movie will forever top my Worst Movie List.