Taking it to the limit

DVD and book by Peter Starr

Contact peter@starrfilm.com for details of pricing and postage

Peter Starr is an English-born American writer/director with a passion for motorcycles. In 1976 he set out to “produce the best movie yet made about the sport”. In the eyes of many, that mantle still belongs to the iconic film On Any Sunday, produced five years earlier by Bruce Brown. That film spawned a second version which was not nearly as good, plus an Australian knock-off called Naturally Free.

Starr’s film contains some interesting race footage and interviews, collected in the USA and on a couple of trips to Europe, including a sequence in the Isle of Man with Mike Hailwood in 1977, the year before his historic comeback to the TT. There is also a mixture of speedway (with Scott Autrey), road racing (featuring Barry Sheene, Kenny Roberts and Steve Baker), US Flat Track, motocross, drags, trials, ISDT, and leisure riding, plus numerous interviews.

It’s a good effort, but although the blurb on the DVD jacket says it has been hailed as “the greatest motorcycle film of its time”, I wouldn’t quite go that far. The book, a large-format 272-page affair, is essentially a printed version of the film, and contains some very nice period photographs. These days Peter Starr is a worldwide ambassador for the Prostate Cancer Foundation and in September 2014 will be in New Zealand to lecture on the subject.