This movie is well past copyright protection and can easily be found on YouTube, sometimes called ‘Hot Rod; The Feature Film’. You’d almost think this was the very first hot rod flick, but this B-movie actually re-uses racing footage from the 1947 movie ‘The Devil on Wheels’. With titles like that, you know its going to be another morality tale. But ‘Hot Rod’ plays out a little differently, almost defending hot rodders that many considered a plague upon society at the time.
This movie is kind of like the 1950’s version of The Fast & The Furious when Brian O’Connor walks into The Racers Edge speed shop and declares “I need NOS!”. In this movie, young David Lanigan is desperate to hop-up his 1934 Ford from the jalopy it is to the hot rod he wants it to be. David wants his peers to respect him, and only a fast car can get that. Even the neighborhood girls don’t want a lift home from school in his old rust-bucket.
There’s an interesting dynamic between David, a young man in search of speed, and his father, the juvenile court judge who despises hot rods. David promised not to speed if his pops let him get a car, but once the pretty girl in the passenger’s seat started shouting “Faster! Faster!” he succumbed to her siren song.
There’s a crazy scene of five Ford Model A hot rods drag racing on a country road, passing each other on the grass shoulder, and otherwise jeopardizing each others safety. It looks exactly like the first race scene in Fast & Furious!
Once again, this hot rod / juvenile delinquent movie gets very preachy, and warns audiences of the dangers of street racing. It feels like a Public Service Announcement got stuck into the middle of the movie to comply with the Hayes Code. David seems like a good kid who worked hard, saved his money, and through his own busted knuckles built a car any red-blooded American would be proud of. Then he screws it all up by getting busted by the cops.
The craziest scene happens at the end of the movie, when David is driving his hot rod back to the used car lot to sell it back, as his father demanded. Sure enough, David witnesses an armed robbery, and chases after a Cadillac convertible in his Ford roadster. He speeds through town, nearly rolls the car in the high-speed corners, and is finally declared a hero when he helps the cops catch the bad guy. Crazy! The hot rod and its death-defying teenage driver saved the day!
It’s not a perfect hot rod / juvenile delinquent movie. There’s no rock and roll music, or Mamie Van Doren dancing. But at least the hot rod driving kid catches the bad guy at the end of the movie. Maybe they’re not so bad after all!
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