Our latest Friday Film Fest selection was ‘Daddy-O’ a 1958 rock ’n’ roll crime picture that somehow combines drag racing, drug smuggling, nightclub singing and Dick Contino, the coolest accordion player in the world, as B-movie Elvis.
Contino plays protagonist Phil Sandifer, a truck driver, singer and supposed hot-shot racer. Out on the highway, he has a run-in with platinum blonde seductress Jana Ryan, played by Sandra Giles. Jana isn’t impressed with Phil’s tough-guy act and challenges him to a street race through Griffith Park in her V8-powered Ford Thunderbird, but his anemic Triumph TR3 is no match. Phil loses the race, then gets caught by the cops and loses his licence.
Phil later lands a singing job at a nightclub, only to discover that the club is connected to a drug-smuggling operation controlled by cigar-chomping crime boss Chillas, looking like a knockoff Sidney Greenstreet. Soon Phil is delivering packages of dope, investigating a murder, and occasionally stopping everything to sing at the club. It is completely ridiculous. And strangely entertaining.
Released in the UK as ‘Downbeat’, this certainly looks like a ‘hot rod / juvenile delinquent’ movie, but surprisingly it’s not much of a car flick. There are hot rods, drag races, roaring Ford V8s, and police chases, but the cool cars are just bait. Remove them and the basic crime story would still work. The cars were automotive centerfolds, used whenever the movie grinds a gear and misses a shift.
The real star of the movie is femme-fatale Jana. From the moment she appears, she is everything Phil thinks he is: confident, aggressive, independent, and with a fast car. But she owns a Thunderbird, and she whips him.
One interesting visual cue is that Jana is never, ever a passenger. When Phil loses his licence, Jana drives him around. At one point Phil is actually walking home while Jana creeps beside him in the Thunderbird, flirting through the window while that big V8 rumbles. The traditional roles are completely reversed. The man is walking. The woman has the horsepower.
Jana is also the sexual pursuer. She chooses Phil, needles him, chases him and seems endlessly entertained by his attempts to act tough after she has already embarrassed him on the road. For a movie made in 1958, that is surprisingly interesting.
Naturally, the filmmakers eventually shove Jana into the standard damsel-in-distress role. She is kidnapped and threatened, because apparently even the strongest woman in a 1950s movie eventually had to be tied to the railroad tracks.
Except Jana refuses to stay there. Even while being held at gunpoint, she is driving. She escapes by slamming on the brakes, throwing her captor forward and slamming him into the dashboard. Even as a hostage, she’s the one behind the wheel.
That might be the most interesting thing about ‘Daddy-O’. It dresses like a ’50s juvenile-delinquent movie, talks like a ’40s gangster film, deals with drugs and murder, but occasionally breaks into full musical numbers.
And maybe that crazy mixture is why ‘Daddy-O’ is still fun nearly 70 years later. It is not great car cinema, and it probably has no idea what kind of movie it wants to be. But hidden among the hot rods, drug dealers, nightclub crooning and bargain-basement gangsters is Jana, a woman who races the hero, beats him, pursues him, drives him around and ultimately saves herself.
The filmmakers may have put all those beautiful cars on screen to lure young men into the theatre, but the most interesting thing behind the wheel was Sandra Giles. Phil gets the bad guy, but Jana drives the movie forward.