Eat My Dust! (1976)

Turns out to be a Halloween movie.

To impress a girl, Ron Howard steals Dave Madden's stock car and leads police on a series of high speed chases. There's no way he was insured. Howard's father is sheriff so he orders the cops not to kill him. I found the scene where they destroy a Chinese restaurant especially offensive. And was that a baby carriage he ran over? It only had a pumpkin in it, but he didn't know that.

They made a compromise on the movie poster. Ron Howard wears a Civil War cap throughout the movie. They gave him one in blue instead of the traitorous, racist, pro-slavery gray, but on the poster, they put a miscolored Confederate flag on the front.

I think it was because of the flag I that avoided watching it when it was on HBO back then, and there was just something that bothered me about Ron Howard. I came across the movie this morning on a live channel on Pluto.

Produced by Roger Corman. Written and directed by Charles B. Griffith. Howard got to direct the sequel, Grand Theft Auto. 

Free with Amazon Prime if nowhere else.