With his star-lined leather jumpsuits and flamboyant motorcycle stunts, Evel Knievel was a major pop culture sensation throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, with countless TV appearances and omnipresent lunchboxes spreading his brand among schoolchildren. A fictionalized biography of his life, Evel Knievel, even hit theaters in 1971 with George Hamilton cast as the famous daredevil and John Milius serving as one of the writers. Though Hollywood has a long history of biopics from every decade, it's far rarer for subjects to play themselves outside of the documentary format--but 1977 saw two of them thanks to Muhammad Ali in The Greatest and Knievel himself in Viva Knievel!. Whether this latter film even qualifies as a biopic at all is up for debate since Knievel plays himself in a completely fictitious story about his comeback after a devastating motorcycle accident.

This cinematic version of Knievel is unique in the way he inhabits the figure that Americans had come to know and love on TV for the past few years, but the film diverges from the real man's life right down to the creation of a romantic interest in the form of Kate, a photographer played by Lauren Hutton. Needless to say, her real-life presence might have been an issue with Knievel's wife at the time, Linda. Other characters added to the mix include Gene Kelly as Evel's hard-drinking mechanic pal Will; Evel's disciple Jessie (former child evangelist Marjoe Gortner), and the unscrupulous drug-dealing backer for Jessie's escapades, played by none other than Leslie Nielsen, who has a diabolical plan to use Knievel's next public stunt as part of his operation. The cast is filled out with a roster of other familiar character actors including Red Buttons, Cameron Mitchel, Frank Gifford and Dabney Coleman, all assembled due to the film's unofficial status as a production from "Master of Disaster" movie guru Irwin Allen--known as such for his star-studded disaster films. In fact, Allen had to step in and direct portions of the film when its credited director, Gordon Douglas, became too ill to go on set. This would be the last big screen feature for Douglas, who hadn't directed a film since Slaughter's Big Rip-Off (1973).

Though Knievel performs some of his own motorcycle stunts in the film, the more elaborate ones were actually the handiwork of a stunt man, Gary Davis, who received no screen credit at the time to maintain the illusion. Knievel had suffered from one of his many physical accidents just after shooting this film at the beginning of 1977, when he attempted to capitalize on the popularity of Jaws (1975) by hurtling his motorcycle over a gigantic tank full of live sharks. While rehearsing the live event, his motorcycle went out of control and crashed into a cameraman, leaving Knievel with two broken arms. After his recovery, he was available for publicity when the film was released by Warner Bros. in June of 1977.

However, Knievel's career hit a major speed bump just after Viva Knievel!'s premiere when he was convicted of assaulting his former promoter, Shelly Saltman, whose book Evel Knievel on Tour contained unflattering details about the superstar's home life and drug usage. After a six-month prison sentence, Knievel was back on the publicity train to redemption. Knievel would go on to appear in another film about himself, the documentary The Last of the Gladiators (1988), which takes its title from one of his famous catchphrases. By the turn of the 1980s, Knievel would cease his life-threatening feats but continued to make public appearances, often to bolster the career of his daredevil son, Robbie. Knievel would later go on to experience years of major health issues before he passed away in 2007, but his legacy continues to live on through several subsequent films about his life and crowd-drawing exhibitions of career memorabilia from coast to coast.

By Nathaniel Thompson