My review was written in September 1983 after watching the IUD video cassette.
"The Delta Fox" is a theatrically unreleased 1977 production (currently on view via the home video market) that aspires to the mood of the 1940s film noir (in 1970s setting) but lacks the required narrative skill. Besides its familiar roster of name actors who pop up frequently in B-pictures, it features an early leading role for Priscilla Barnes (of tv's "Three's Company") and an unusual tortured hero performance by familiar screen heavy Richard Lynch.
Most of the exposition here is provided in lengthy, typed-out opening and end credits, with the film proper conforming to the streamlined structure of 1970s action films such as the classic "Vanishing Point". (Low-budgeter also relies heavily on Ma Bell dialog, with star-billed Stuart Whitman literally phoning in most of his performance.)
Lynch portrays David Fox (with "Delta Fox" nickname), a con let out of prison (to exploit his stock car driving ability) to aid the government in catching a San Francisco-based tax shelter specialist (Stuart Whitman) wanted for tax evasion. Lynch hops into his Camaro which he proceeds to destory in various chases around the Miami harbor.
Stealing Priscilla Barnes' landscaping truck, he also acquires her (in true road movie fashion) as a teammate and bedmate, traveling through Georgia (to pick up his exquisite Porsche) to an idyll in New Orleans. Justice Department agent Johnson (John Ireland) is on Fox's back seeking results, but the hero is torn between his mission and seeking revenge against whoever killed his brother years before.
With somewhat confusing continuity, pic climaxes back in Florida, with the expected Whitman-Lynch showdown and an uncovincing happy ending (disclosed mainly in the end titles).
Lynch is impressive here in a surprisingly sympathetic role for the man who terrorized Al Pacino memorably in "Scarecrow" over a decade ago. Another switch is the camera's unsparing display of his heavily-scarred neck and chest, used as a film noir plot point when Barnes comments on his disfigurement in an apres-sex scene, Lynch blaming it on "the war".
Barnes is lovely and feisty as his romantic sparring partner, though, as with her other 1977 starring role in the Telly Savalas-helmed "Mati", stuck in a film vehicle which did nothing for her career, being left on the shelf. Rest of the cast, despite top billing, is along for the ride, with a certain amount of reflexive in-joking going on. Whitman, for example, tells a client to silence his investors, clamoring for a return, by saying their money was invested in a flop movie. In context, he's pretty convincing.
