Fireball 500 is a stock car racing

Stock car racing

Stock car racing is a form of automobile racing found mainly in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain, Brazil and Argentina. Traditionally, races are run on oval tracks measuring approximately in length...

 film, blended with the beach party film

Beach Party film

Beach party movies were an American 1960s genre of feature films created by American International Pictures with their surprise 1963 hit, Beach Party, and copied by virtually every other studio...

 genre. A vehicle for stars Frankie Avalon

Frankie Avalon

Frankie Avalon is an American actor, singer, playwright, and former teen idol.-Career:By the time he was 12, Avalon was on U.S. television playing his trumpet. As a teenager he played with Bobby Rydell in Rocco and the Saints...

, Annette Funicello

Annette Funicello

Annette Joanne Funicello is an American singer and actress. She was Walt Disney's most popular cast member of the original Mickey Mouse Club, and went on to appear in a series of beach party films.-Early life and early stardom:...

 and Fabian

Fabian (entertainer)

Fabiano Anthony Forte , known as Fabian, is an American teen idol of the late 1950s and early 1960s. He rose to national prominence after performing several times on American Bandstand. Eleven of his songs reached the Billboard Hot 100 listing.-Early life:Fabian was the son of Josephine and Domenic...

, it was one of a string of similar racing films from the 1960s. Written by William Asher

William Asher

William Asher is an American television and film producer, film director, and screenwriter. He was one of the most prolific early directors in the budding television industry, producing or directing over two dozen of the leading television series.With television in its infancy, he introduced the...

 and Leo Townsend, and directed by Townsend, it tells the story of Dave Owens (Avalon), a stock car racer forced to run moonshine

Moonshine

Moonshine is an illegally produced distilled beverage...

.

Production notes

The "Fireball 500" is a 1966 Plymouth Barracuda

Plymouth Barracuda

The Plymouth Barracuda is a 2-door car that was manufactured by the Plymouth division of the Chrysler Corporation from 1964-1974.The first-generation Barracuda, a fastback A-body coupe based on the Plymouth Valiant, had a distinctive wraparound back glass and was available from 1964-1966.The...

, heavily customized by George Barris

George Barris (auto customizer)

George Barris is a designer of custom cars.-Early history:George and his brother Sam were born in Chicago in the 1920s. After the deaths of their parents, they moved to Roseville, California as children to live with relatives. Both were good students, interested in drama, music, and design...

, with a 1966 Hemi 426 Plymouth engine that develops up to 425 h.p.

Footage from Fireball 500, specifically shots of the 4B car (Jim Douglas' car) toppling over on its roof, show up later in the demolition derby scenes at the beginning of The Love Bug

The Love Bug

The Love Bug is the first in a series of comedy films made by Walt Disney Productions that starred an anthropomorphic pearl-white, fabric-sunroofed 1963 Volkswagen racing Beetle named Herbie...

. When making the film AIP would hire a race car driver and install cameras in the front and rear of his car to obtain shots.

Funicello and Fabian starred together again (without Avalon) the following year in AIP's follow-up feature, Thunder Alley.

Cast

• Frankie Avalon
  Frankie Avalon
  Frankie Avalon is an American actor, singer, playwright, and former teen idol.-Career:By the time he was 12, Avalon was on U.S. television playing his trumpet. As a teenager he played with Bobby Rydell in Rocco and the Saints...
  
   as Dave "Fireball" Owens
• Annette Funicello
  Annette Funicello
  Annette Joanne Funicello is an American singer and actress. She was Walt Disney's most popular cast member of the original Mickey Mouse Club, and went on to appear in a series of beach party films.-Early life and early stardom:...
  
   as Jane Harris
• Fabian as Sonny Leander Fox
• Harvey Lembeck
  Harvey Lembeck
  Harvey Lembeck was an American comedic actor best remembered for his role as Cpl. Rocco Barbella on The Phil Silvers Show in the late 1950s, and as the stumbling, overconfident outlaw biker Eric Von Zipper in the beach party movie series during the 1960s...
  
   as Charlie Bigg
• Chill Wills
  Chill Wills
  Chill Theodore Wills was an American film actor, and a singer in the Avalon Boys Quartet.-Biography:Wills was born in Seagoville, Texas in 1902. He was a performer from early childhood, forming and leading the Avalon Boys singing group in the 1930s...
  
   as Big Jaw Harris
• Julie Parrish
  Julie Parrish
  Julie Parrish was an American film, stage and television actress....
  
   as Martha Brian
• Sandy Reed as Race Announcer
• Douglas Henderson
  Douglas Henderson (actor)
  Douglas Henderson was an American film and television actor....
  
   as Hastings
• Baynes Barron as Bronson
• Ed Garner as Herman
• Mike Nader
  Michael Nader
  Michael Nader is an American actor of Lebanese descent, known for his role on the ABC primetime soap opera Dynasty from 1983 to 1989 as Farnsworth "Dex" Dexter, the third husband of Alexis Colby .Nader's first soap opera role was opposite actress Marie Masters playing the character of Kevin...
  
   as Joey

Music

The film's soundtrack is by Les Baxter

Les Baxter

Les Baxter was an American musician and composer.Baxter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory before moving to Los Angeles for further studies at Pepperdine College. Abandoning a concert career as a pianist, he turned to popular music as a singer...

, and features six songs written by Guy Hemric and Jerry Styner. Frankie Avalon sings "Fireball 500," "My Way" (not to be confused with the song made popular by Frank Sinatra

My Way (song)

"My Way" is a song popularized by Frank Sinatra. Its lyrics were written by Paul Anka and set to music based on the French song "Comme d'habitude" composed in 1967 by Claude François and Jacques Revaux, with lyrics by Claude François and Gilles Thibault. Anka's English lyrics are unrelated to the...

), "Turn Around," "A Chance Like That" and "Country Carnival." Annette Funicello sings "Step Right Up."

Further reading

• Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide 2006, p. 428. New York: Penguin/New American Library, 2006.