{"id":43701,"date":"2014-09-09T06:00:55","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T10:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=43701"},"modified":"2015-05-06T16:10:36","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T20:10:36","slug":"guest-draft-hot-rods-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=43701","title":{"rendered":"Hot Rods to Hell: When Teen Angst Hits the Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HOT<\/a>We all have at least one guilty pleasure film that is so terrible, but we inexplicably love it. I have several, and one of them is the 1967 drama\/thriller Hot Rods to Hell.<\/a> It is one of those films where you laugh at the ridiculous lines and moments but have a desire to re-watch it constantly.<\/p>\n

Originally made for TV but released in theaters, the camp film stars veteran Hollywood stars Jeanne Crain<\/a> as Peg Phillips, and Dana Andrews<\/a> as Tom Phillips. This is one of four films Andrews and Crain made together during their Hollywood careers that spanned the 1940s through the 1970s. Their first film together was the\u00a0 musical State Fair<\/a>\u00a0(1945), where Crain plays a farm girl named Margy who meets Andrews, a reporter named Pat, and falls in love with him at the state fair. State Fair ends with the two happily running towards each other and kissing in the street. I like to imagine that Hot Rods to Hell is Margy and Pat 22 years later with their children.<\/p>\n

The movie follows the couple and their two children Tina (Laurie Mock), and Jamie (Jeffrey Byron), as they move from their New England home to run a motel in California after Tom is in a serious wreck. The story\u00a0begins with Tom driving home from a business trip to celebrate Christmas with his family. A reckless driver causes the accident and leaves Tom with a back problem and some mental issues. Due to the wreck, he no longer wants to drive and can\u2019t listen to Christmas music. Tom\u2019s brother arranges for the family to move to California to run the motel, believing it will benefit Tom\u2019s physical and mental health.<\/p>\n

\"HOT<\/a>As the family is driving through the desert in their station wagon, they encounter young people drag racing a modified 1958 Chevrolet Corvette. \u201c Run them off the road, Duke. Run them off the road,\u201d shouts the teenage girl Gloria (Mimsy Farmer<\/a>), perched on the back of the car as they race. The teens–children of local, wealthy farmers who don\u2019t care what their kids do–have a constant thirst to get their \u201ckicks,\u201d but nothing will satisfy them. \u201cWhat kind of animals are those,\u201d Tom shouts as they are nearly run off the road. \u201cThey are insane.\u201d Peg covers her face with her hands and screams, \u201cTom I can\u2019t stand it!\u201d Tina, who desperately wants to be a hip teenager, defends them by saying that all the kids drag race.<\/p>\n

The majority of the 92-minute movie involves Gloria, Duke (Paul Bertoya) and Ernie (Gene Kirkwood) harassing the Phillips family on the road. They tailgate the family through small towns, try to run them off the road and follow them to a picnic ground, where Duke attempts to seduce Tina. Tina is frightened but fascinated with the bad kids. When the Phillips finally arrives at the motel, rather than finding solace, there is more trouble. The motel and an adjacent bar and grill are inhabited by the drag racers and other teens like them. The previous owner allowed the teenagers to drink and have trysts in the motel. It makes you wonder if Tom\u2019s brother did any research on the spot before encouraging the Phillips to move there.<\/p>\n

When the drag racers discover the Phillips are the new owners, they do all they can to make them leave; knowing Tom will sanitize the spot. Frightened and disgusted with what they find, the family decides to stay the night at the hotel before figuring out what their next move should be. Tina, still fascinated with Duke, goes to see him at the bar, almost like she is thinking, \u201cOh these people have been terrorizing my family all day. I think I\u2019ll go hang with them.\u201d Jealous Gloria tells Tom, who tries to strangle Duke. \u201cTina how far would you have gone,\u201d Peg yells at her daughter. \u201cAre you going to end up in a motel room with any man?!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HOT<\/a>The family leaves the hotel to get the police, and the drag racers continue to follow them. \u201cOh, they\u2019re back again,\u201d Jamie screams. \u201cThey want to crack us up!\u201d After even more harassment, Tom finally and successfully stands up to Duke and Ernie. Tom places his car in the middle of the road in a game of \u201cchicken\u201d and the family hides. Duke and Ernie swerves to miss the car and crashes. The crash causes an immediate attitude change and the boys tell Tom they won\u2019t give him anymore trouble. The film ends with Tom deciding to go back and run the motel properly.<\/p>\n

\"HOT<\/a>\u201cHot Rods to Hell\u201d is truly a terrible movie, but I can\u2019t get enough of it. The hilarious lines and the overreacting to the situations make it a true guilty pleasure and cult classic. But at the same time, it\u2019s sort of sad. To see 1940s and \u201850s stars Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain late in their career and performing in this type of film is disheartening. Crain was a top star at 20th Century Fox in the \u201840s and \u201850s and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Pinky<\/a> (1949), while Andrews previously starred in such\u00a0top-notch films as the noir thriller Laura<\/a> (1944) and the Oscar-winning post-WWII drama The Best Years of Our Lives<\/a> (1946). However, Andrews had children in college so he had to work, said the Carl Rollyson biography \u201cHollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the old glamorous and glittering Golden Era of film was fading, the top stars were retiring or resorting to cult films like this one to continue to make money. To compare, Joan Crawford was killing people with an ax in Strait-Jacket<\/a> (1964) and Lana Turner was drugged with LSD in The Big Cube<\/a>\u00a0(1969).<\/p>\n

While I marvel at the beautiful films in the early careers of these stars, I also can\u2019t get enough of their late careers. Classic Hollywood\u2019s career downturns have turned into our guilty pleasures.<\/p>\n

Comet Over Hollywood<\/em><\/span><\/a>, named for the 1938 Kay Francis film Comet Over Broadway, offers anything from Hollywood beauty tips to rants about Katherine Hepburn. Jessica Pickens is a journalism student at Winthrop University who is interested in silent films to anything made before 1964. She writes for Winthrop\u2019s student newspaper, The Johnsonian, and the Shelby Star in Shelby North Carolina. Visit her Facebook page<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suburban marrieds Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain and their two kids are terrorized along the desert highway by joy-riding teens in Hot Rods to Hell. Guest writer Jessica Perkins puts the pedal to the metal and reviews the cult 1967 action\/drama. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9701,"featured_media":43714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1452,1540,5588],"coauthors":[5370],"class_list":["post-43701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-articles","tag-1960s-movies","tag-cult-films","tag-movie-reviews"],"yoast_head":"\nHot Rods to Hell: When Teen Angst Hits the Road - MovieFanFare<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The cult 1967 action\/drama Hot Rods to Hell, with suburban couple Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain battling joy-riding teens on the highway, is reviewed.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=43701\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hot Rods to Hell: When Teen Angst Hits the Road - 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