Hot Rod Girl


It’s a rainy afternoon here in Northeast Ohio, and that can only mean one thing.....

Movie Notes from the Rust Belt
Youngstown, Ohio

On The Movie Vault, I caught up with Hot Rod Girl, a 1956 opus about the dangers of hot-rodding in San Fernando.

We got Chuck Connors before he was The Rifleman as a plain clothes policeman with a heart of gold and the soul of a hot-rodder.  We got Frank Gorshin, a native of Pittsburgh, PA, who eventually hit the big time as The Riddler in the Batman Series from the 60s as Flat-Top.  Russell Thorson plays the police Captain and The Rifleman’s superior officer--Mr. Thorson would later be one of the hanging party who hung Clint Eastwood in Hang ‘Em High--pity.  And, we got a blond in a 1955 T-Bird played by Lori Nelson (who’s still making movies as late as 2005s The Naked Monster.

Lori Nelson was originally supposed to drive a sports car, but the movie maker ran out of money, and she willingly drove her own new T-Bird--What a sport, no?

Lots of great drag strip scenes with great hot rods and jalopys, one game of “chicken” on a public road, a couple of fatal car crashes--The good guys win, though, and the evil Bronc pays for his bad deeds (you can tell that he’s the bad guy right away because he wears a black leather jacket and his car has a suicide knob on the steering wheel--always an undeniable trait of bad-guydom).
And that’s all I can ask of any story.

The chicks were kicks and the cats were cool.  Have a look.



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