Hey race fans, check (HA!) this out: what if I told you that there’s an exciting crime drama about industrial espionage and murder that was filmed in Italy during the second-to-last running of the greatest road race in all history, the original Mille Miglia? And what if I told you that the folks that made that movie were clever enough to work the race into the plot of the film, so that this crime drama wasn’t just about murder and industrial espionage, but about the race as well? Do you think you might find that a bit interesting? 😉
Welcome to the second installment of Drag City’s Theatre of the Less Obvious, where we’ll take a look at some of the really cool car and racing-related movies of the past that aren’t as well known today as they probably should be! This installment’s focus is on a British production from 1956 called “Checkpoint,” and even the title should give you an idea that racing runs through the plot of this film! Watching “Checkpoint” today is about as close as you can get to teleporting into the past to observe one of the all-time great races, as this film is filled with the sights and sounds of many of the most beautiful and most valuable sports racing cars of the golden era, shown doing what they were built to do when they were new! It is an amazing feast for the eyes and a joy for gear heads and car spotters, and on top of all that, the plot of the movie is both exciting and, if you stretch a little, almost seems plausible!
The film opens with a break-in at a car factory which results in a shootout that ends in a massive fire and multiple deaths (although the factory in question is supposed to be in Italy, the sequence was actually filmed at a Rootes factory in England, and you can see what appear to be Sunbeam Rapiers or Singer Gazelles, unfinished, on the assembly line). The safecracker responsible for the conflagration, a dangerous “criminal for hire” named O’Donovan (Stanley Baker in an unusual performance as a villain) escapes and goes into hiding at a villa in Italy owned by a business associate of a wealthy British industrialist named Warren Ingraham (excellently played by James Robertson Justice).
Ingraham has built a racing car of his own and a team to drive them, and is pursuing a world championship win, but is repeatedly thwarted in his intentions by the cars of fictitious rival Volta D’Italia. After failing to lure Volta’s engineers and designers over to his own company, he makes the bad decision to hire O’Donovan to steal the plans for their latest “fuel intake” system, never thinking that it might go horribly wrong and result in multiple murders and the destructive fire.
As the Italian police start a nationwide manhunt for the English criminal who did so much damage, Ingraham is faced with the possibility that O’Donovan might “go rogue” and expose who hired him to do the deed. Ingraham and his inner circle develop a plan to get O’Donnovan out of Europe entirely, but to get him out of Italy, they need to transport him across the border undetected. With great shame, Ingraham decides to sacrifice one of his two team cars to this scheme, replacing one of his drivers-against his will-with O’Donovan, who, disguised as a racing driver, will pilot one the two cars across Italy into Switzerland, where he can then be snuck onto a plane and flown off to India.
This brings us to the big race day, where one of Ingraham’s drivers, who is already infamous for excessive carousing, is drugged as if he were drunk to the point of collapsing, allowing Ingraham and his underlings to substitute O’Donovan for him in one of the cars. Unfortunately, the team co-driver’s girlfriend is Ingraham’s Italian secretary, and she knows who O’Donovan is! When she catches sight of him at the hotel dressed in the team’s light blue jumpsuits, the extent of the plan becomes clear to her, but she is too late to warn her man, driver Bill Fraser, of the danger he is in before the start of the race. She pours her heart out to Ingraham’s race team manager who was kept in the dark by his boss like nearly everyone else, and, horrified by the realization of what has happened, the two of them jump into his Aston Martin DB2/4 convertible and take off over the mountains in an attempt to literally head the racers off the at the pass: the big checkpoint in Milan, where they hope to intercept the team car carrying O’Donovan and convince Fraser to pull out of the race so that O’Donovan can be dealt with by the Italian authorities.
Wound into this exciting action is absolutely boffo footage of the Mille Miglia taken in both 1955 and ‘56, showing the cars lining up for the start and roaring out of Brescia and out on to the open road. It is SPECTACULAR! You almost can’t keep count of all the Ferraris, Oscas, Alfa Romeos, Maseratis, Fiat specials, Porsches, Mercedes-Benzes, Jaguars and Aston Martins you will see in action!
Aston Martins play an especially big role in this film, because the two team cars presented as those belonging to Ingrahm Racing would be worth watching this movie for alone: they are the only 2 existing Lagonda DP115 racers, V12-powered cars designed and built by the David Brown company as larger-engined companions for the company’s inline-6 Aston Martin DB3S, which was itself doing very well on racing circuits in these days.
Developed by engineer Frank Feely in 1952 and ‘53, the DP115 was Brown’s brainchild to compete with big-bore heavy hitters from the likes of Ferrari, Mercedes, and others with a larger displacement engine. The chassis was a modified DB3S model and the coachwork of the car had a similar shape, but it was a very different machine mechanically. The 4.5 liter engine featured dual overhead cams and dual ignition with 2 plugs per cylinder…that’s 2 distributors and 24 spark plugs! How’d you have liked to tune that engine? The idea was not only to win races but also to develop the engine for production, but although it showed initial promise in a run @ LeMans in 1954, the project was eventually deemed too costly for the tiny company to pursue, and was eventually abandoned, leaving only the 2 cars built.
BOTH of these awesome rare cars appear in this film as Warren Ingraham’s team cars, with the grilles slightly modified to disguise them, as the DP115 originally had a very distinctive front-end appearance. You will get to both see and hear these rare cars roaring along in this film, and Oh! What a sound they make! Fortunately, the film’s final scene, in which one of the cars is pitched over a cliff into a lake, used a cheap fiberglass mock-up; I’m happy to say that despite some crashes in their early racing careers, both these cars have survived to this day and are currently in the hands of wealthy private collectors and appear at vintage racing events in England and Europe.
Now, I will grant you the some of the dialog is a little cheesy (it was the mid-50’s, after all) and some of the acting isn’t at the Oscar-winning level, but c’mon, dear readers, that’s not why you’re here! I never even knew this film existed until I was in my early 30’s when one day I found it online almost by happenstance, and since then I’ve researched it and watched it countless times. Here’s the great news, race fans: so can you, because a high quality upload of the entire movie is readily available on YouTube for the whole world to enjoy on demand! Grab your friends, your popcorn, and your beverage of choice, but you might also want to bolt some seatbelts onto the frame of your sofa: you’re gonna need ‘em!
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