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Stroker Ace is a 1983 American action comedy sport film directed by Hal Needham and starring Burt Reynolds as the eponymous Stroker Ace, a race car driver on the NASCAR circuit.
Angry with his racing sponsor, Jim Catty of Zenon Oil, Stroker dumps a load of wet concrete on him. Needing a new sponsor, he connects with fried chicken fast food chain mogul Clyde Torkle. Torkle, his chauffeur Arnold, and his newly appointed director of marketing and public relations Pembrook Feeny convince Stroker and Stroker's chief mechanic Lugs Harvey to sign with him.
Overlooking his contract by not reading its specifics, Stroker is obligated to be the commercial face for Torkle's Chicken Pit restaurants. (The slogan on Stroker's car reads: "The Fastest Chicken in the South.") The contract requires Stroker to make personal appearances while wearing a chicken costume—feet included. Realizing that he is locked into a bad deal, Stroker devises a plan with Lugs to escape it. Torkle realizes Stroker is scheming, and he allows Stroker's antics because he believes the sponsorship will make the Chicken Pit chain successful and famous.
A ladies' man, Stroker tries to seduce the beautiful Pembrook, who is a Sunday school teacher, does not drink, and is a virgin. She spurns his advances until he learns to respect her views. One night, after she gets drunk on champagne, he is able to remove her clothing, but nothing further happens.
Stroker wins races and is in the running for the season-ending championship. At the beginning of the final race, Torkle is offered a deal to sell his franchise for a huge profit—on the condition that he drops Stroker Ace as his driver. Torkle informs Stroker that if he wins the championship, Torkle won't take the offer, and Stroker has to sell chicken for the next two years. However, if Stroker loses, he is released from the contract.
During the race, Stroker feels conflicted. He drops back in the race in an effort to lose, but his ego prevents him. He quickly begins moving through the pack near the lead. A jack malfunction drops Stroker to 6th place as the race is nearing its end. Torkle concludes that Stroker has no chance to win. Eyeing the offer to sell as the deadline approaches, Torkle publicly announces that he is releasing Stroker immediately. He is unaware that Stroker is moving up through the field with a chance to win.
With the news that he is free from the contract, Stroker spectacularly wins the championship by flipping his car over as he crosses the finish line. Torkle then learns that the lucrative offer for his chicken franchise is a fake, cooked up by Stroker and his friends.
Robert Markus, a critic from the Chicago Tribune thought it "would do for stock car racing what... Semi-Tough did for football." "How this one found its way between hard covers is a mystery," wrote The New York Times.
Wood hired Hal Needham, who owned the NASCAR team Mach 1 Racing with Reynolds, to direct. Needham convinced Burt Reynolds to star. "I didn't actually ask Burt if he'd like to do it," said Needham, "but when I was in New York, I looked him up and told him how funny the script was. Two days later, he called and said, 'Needham, I want to do that film.' I hadn't been laying a trap for him. With his other commitments, I just didn't see how he could do it, but he pushed everything back to fit this one in."
Reynolds declined the role of astronaut Garrett Breedlove in Terms of Endearment to do this film. The role went to Jack Nicholson, who went on to win an Academy Award for Best Actor. Reynolds said he made this decision because "I felt I owed Hal more than I owed Jim" but that it was a turning point in his career from which he never recovered. Although car-themed films starring Reynolds had all previously been successes – including four made with Needham – Stroker Ace flopped. "That's where I lost them," he later said of his fans. The actor's fee was reportedly $5 million. Finance came from Warner Bros. and Universal, which both owed Reynolds a film – Universal got domestic theatrical, Warners other domestic and foreign.
The co-stars were Jim Nabors, Loni Anderson, Ned Beatty, Parker Stevenson, and Bubba Smith, with appearances by many NASCAR drivers, such as: Neil Bonnett, Dale Earnhardt, Harry Gant (whose car was part-owned by Hal Needham), Terry Labonte, Benny Parsons, Kyle Petty, Richard Petty, Tim Richmond, Ricky Rudd, Cale Yarborough, and announcers Ken Squier, David Hobbs, and Chris Economaki. The film was Anderson's starring feature debut (she had a small role in Vigilante Force in 1975), although she was already well known through her appearances in WKRP in Cincinnati and in TV movies.
"We wanted to make a very broad comedy and I was worried that the drivers might resent it when they saw it," Wood said. "But they loved the simplicity of it, so I'm off the hook as far as the racing is concerned." "If you like Burt Reynolds, you'll like this movie," the producer added. "It was made for his fans which, for a producer, is not a bad reason to make a movie. I've never been involved in so commercial a movie. I'm not really that financially-oriented. I always go for the subject. I've lost a couple of fortunes doing that. Making Stroker Ace was like being a kid and running away with the circus. But that's not my lifestyle."
The theme song "Stroker's Theme" was performed by Charlie Daniels.
Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it "the must-miss movie of the summer. It's a witless retread of the earlier, far funnier road-movie collaborations of Mr. Needham and Mr. Reynolds, especially of their two Smokey and the Bandit movies." Roger Ebert gave the film 1.5 stars out of four, and wrote: "To call the movie a lightweight, bubble-headed summer entertainment is not criticism but simply description." Gene Siskel gave the film zero stars out of four, writing, "Reynolds' reputation as a serious actor is virtually destroyed with this miserable picture. He's sending only one message here: Fans, I'm in it for the money. What other explanation is possible?" Variety wrote that the Reynolds-Needham team were "just coasting in circles, trying to pick up whatever prize money might be attracted by their track record." Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times described Reynolds as "ambling through the movie as though it were a colossal in-joke, which, of course, it must be, since it isn't perceptibly funny to anyone outside Reynolds and Needham's immediate circle." Gary Arnold was somewhat more positive, calling it "a knuckleheaded but amiable summer trifle."
Wood wrote, "For the past five years, Burt has been No. 1 at the box office, and during that period, there has seldom been a good review of anything he's done." However the film was a major commercial disappointment.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 19% approval rating based on 16 reviews, with an average rating of 3.5/10. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 30% based on reviews from five critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".
Spire Motorsports used a Stroker Ace scheme for their No. 7 car driven by Corey LaJoie for the 2021 Hollywood Casino 400 as well as Justin Haley driving a replica throwback scheme honoring Aubrey James (Parker Stevenson)'s paint scheme.
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