The sad news hit today of Robert Carradine’s death, which immediately made me think of the actor alongside Belinda Balaski in Cannonball (1976), playing a couple of sweet surfer kids taking part in a road race. Their gee-whiz approach, kindness to other drivers, and giddy shock when they end up winning through a bizarre string of circumstances, all make for an incredibly winning part of a film that seems to get lost between Death Race and The Cannonball Run. It’s a favorite of the genre.

Carradine was best known for Revenge of the Nerds, but I loved his work in films like The Long Riders and The Big Red One. He will be missed.