1964 Action Featurette DEMO DERBY played more than 6,000 screens with A HARD DAY'S NIGHT

DEMO DERBY sprang from a story idea by young Travis Pike. Stationed overseas when the film was made, DEMO DERBY is his first original song to be used in a movie and was arranged by Arthur Korb and performed by the Rondels.

Demo Derby Featurette In NE Multiple Openings

    BOSTON -- A 28-minute featurette, "Demo Derby," filmed on location around Boston on demolition derby crashes, produced by Jim Pike, Pike Productions, opened at the Paramount, Boston; Capitol, Worcester; Allyn; Hartford; and Paramount, New Haven, June 25. It was on the bill with "Robin and the Seven Hoods" at the Paramount, Boston, and with the new Elvis Presley film, "Viva Las Vegas," in New Haven, Hartford and Worcester.
    Pike, a former film producer for WNAC-TV, Boston, formed his own company in Newton Center to produce commercials for network and spot television, plus special purpose films, but became interested in the photographic challenge of demo derby action. It's Pike's first theatrical motion picture.
    Edward Ruff Film Associates is distributing the film which was made in in Norwood, Millis and Dover, Mass. A record from the original score of the sound track has been pressed with "Demo Derby," title song and on the flip side, "Kathy," the love theme from the picture.

    If the old Romans had been able to photograph the audiences to bait the gladiators, they might have come up with the same faces one sees in "Demo Derby, locally-made production. Nobody gets burned to death or is killed, but this is what the audience seems to be waiting for. One of the cars is burned to a crisp and the others look as if they'd been in a five-car colliision on the Fourth of July. But this adds up to the grins on those absorbed faces.
    The film, which is a series of crashes on various nearby tracks, is rather terrifying to people who hope the younger generation is learning to drive safely, rather than to ram into one another. But the youngsters love it as releasing some sort of destructive compulsion and becoming famous at the same time.
    Their local hero, Don McTavish of Dover, battles with Glenn Legere of Braintree for a $500 prize.
    Producer Jim Pike has come up with a remarkable film which is one of the most galvanic expressions of modern life and teenage recreation I have ever seen on the screen. Arthur Korb composed the effective, and subtly crashing score.