An odd 50’s style ‘juvenile delinquent’ movie, ‘Hot Rods to Hell‘ was shot in the late ’60s, more than a decade after the genre hit its peak. Instead of thrill-seeking teenagers, the kids in this film are sociopaths! What’s unique amongst hot rod / JD films; the youths are the bad guys. Movies like ‘Hot Rod‘ (1950) and ‘The Devil On Wheels‘ (1947) paint a sympathetic picture of youngsters temped by speed and rock and roll music… but they’re not evil! In this flick, the hot rod kids drag race into oncoming traffic, indifferent to whether they kill anyone. They’re in it for the thrill!
This was supposed to me a made-for-TV movie, but upon completion, producers decided it was too intense for television and released it to drive-in movie theatres instead.
The story begins with Tom Phillips, a travelling salesman who’s involved in a car wreck at Christmas. Too shell-shocked to get back behind the wheel, he quits his job, sells the house, and moves his family to California to run a quiet motel. His wife Peg takes him and the kids across the country in their mint-green 1961 Plymouth Belvedere to their new life. Tom decides to drive for a while once they reach the vast California desert, only to be run off the road by a marauding youth gone wild!
Hoodlums drag racing on the highway are heading directly at the family’s car! Peg screams as Tom veers off the road at breakneck speed to avoid disaster. The bad guys driving the hot rods are local kids looking for sick kicks by terrorizing the highway! The leader of the hot rod ring is Duke, a conventional 50’s greaser in a red 1959 Corvette roadster (except he’s dressed in slacks and a button down shirt) with his psychotic girlfriend Gloria (Mimsy Farmer from ‘The Wild Racers‘) plus crazy sidekick Ernie in a 1929 Model T chopped into a true hot rod.
The conflict between the young thugs and the old timer continues, when it turns out the motel the dad bought is the hangout for these juvenile delinquents! They spend all night dancing to psychedelic surf rock (played by Mickey Rooney Jr. and his band) at The Arena, the motel bar. The generation gap is on full display as the wholesome family seem right out of a 1950’s TV show, while the wild teenagers have sex in the motel rooms. When teenaged daughter Tina sneaks out of her room to hang out with the cool kids, Tom catches his daughter with Duke, the hot rod driver who tried to run his family off the road!
Tom has had enough! He abandons the motel and speeds away at night to get the cops from town, 52 miles away. The hot rod boys try to run Tom and his family off the road again, but this middle-aged father knows the meaning of the words vehicular homicide and decides to kill the boys. The hot rods speed on ahead then make a fateful U-turn to take another run at the Plymouth. This time, Tom parks his two-ton, all-steel, 4-door sedan right in the middle of narrow bridge. He leaves the high beams on to blind the oncoming hooligans
By the time they realize the car isn’t going to veer out of their way, the Plymouth will have sliced through the fiberglass Corvette. And that Model T with no hood and no fenders has no chance of surviving a 100 mph collision. Dad is going to send those hot rods right back to hell!
Somewhere between a JD / hot rod flick and a horror movie, the overacting is hilarious, the rear projection car chases are atrocious. but it’s worth it just to see the scenes of the hot rods racing four-wide through the California desert.
What a storyteller you are! I realize someone else wrote the screenplay but your descriptions are hilarious. I especially like the photo of dad driving while mom holds her face and screams in terror. And we thought Iron Eagle was bad. (I mean, it was but hot rods from hell is beyond the pale.)
Oh Susan, this movie is SO BAD but I’m trying not to be a Negative Nancy. There are redeeming qualities, like the four ‘evil’ hot rods. Even the dad’s Plymouth Belvedere is cool looking compared to today’s cars.
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But the mom is a wacko. She screams so much you’d think it was a slasher movie. Why doesn’t the dad just put on the brakes?!
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And the teen daughter who wants to grow up and get married (which I assume was code for s-e-x) she goes after the bad guy? Sheesh, that guy nearly killed your family , girl! Daddy will NOT approve.
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Well all I can say is you da man. Thanks for taking one for the team. I did an internet search for movies with hell in the title. There are some other wild and crazy ones in the list.
I remember seeing Hells Angels movies in the late 60s when I was 9 years old. They were disturbing. Hot Rods to Hell is fun camp. Great find.
I’m way more than 9 and I’m still too scared to watch Hell’s Angels movies. Bikers scare me!
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This movie is hilarious! There’s a scene when the ‘bad seeds’ in the Corvette are driving by the family pulled over on the side of the road in their Plymouth. The wild girl, Mimsy Farmer, throws an empty beer can and pings the little brother right in the forehead. It’s terrible and all that jazz, but it’s so freakin’ funny when that kid just hits the ground like he just got shot.
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Mimsy has great aim and a hell of an arm!
It Looled hilarious from the trailer.
We have motocycle gange wars here and they are deadly. Rival gang member assanite eachother in intersections. They’ve also had gunfights at landstanding public events recently, so now the events are cancelled indefinitely. They ruin things for everyone.
Our soft on crime politicians need to get their act together. A brutal motocycle gang from California recently expanded into New Mexico because they knew there would be little consequences for their crimal activities and murder sprees out here.
Holy smokes! And I thought Toronto was rough. This is the land of milk and honey compared to that description of gang warfare.
True. Abuquerque is one of the most violent cities in the nation.
For example, just today, a woman rear-ended a man. He got out of his car, and she pulled a gun on him. He took the gun from her, and another motorist pulled a gun and shot the guy who was rearended. The question is. Was this a hit or a random rearending that ended in murder?
Chris, I HAVE to see this now due to your review! When I was in high school, some friends and I sneaked in to see Death Race 2000 at the Orpheum Theater in Wichita. This brings back memories…
The magnum opus of B-movie maestro Roger Corman DEATH RACE 2000 is on another level. It’s intentionally funny. I think the Hot Rods to Hell director was trying to be serious! But the movie is a laugh-riot.
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I can’t remember if I mentioned this in my little movie review, but the screenplay was based on a Saturday Evening Post story from way back in 1956, which kind of explains why someone made such a dated, 50’s style movie in the late 60s.
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But director John Brahm did it with style! The dance scenes in The Arena are groovy. The cameraman just LEERS at the girls in miniskirts. You just couldn’t get away with this stuff now.
Speaking of groovy, that Greg guy in the above comment is my personal favorite person. You guys can talk cars, especially Toyotas and Subarus.