Some may say that, as a fairly well-known film, Hot Rods To Hell doesn’t really qualify under the parameters for obscurity that I outlined for Drag City’s “Theatre of the Less Obvious.” There’s no question that it is a “cult classic,” but how many people have actually seen it? I think its notoriety within the “gearhead zeitgeist” owes more to its cool title than anything else, which is interesting in that “Hot Rods To Hell” was not the movie’s original title!
Of course, the other thing that makes HR2H such a cult classic is the stars! No, I don’t mean Dana Andrews or Jeanne Crain or even the fetching Mimsy Farmer; I’m talking about the real stars: the ’58 Corvette, the T-Bucket, and what I consider to be the coolest Tri-5 Chevy ever caught on film, and yes, I’m saying that even considering the awesome ‘55’s in Two Lane Blacktop and American Graffiti (which is the same car, but that’s another story which I touched on here). The solid black ’56 Bel-Air 2-dr hardtop in this film, which appears without a front bumper to give it a mock “gasser” look, just may be my favorite movie car of all time, so for that reason alone, HR2H gets a shout-out in T.o.t.L.O. even if it’s not as obscure as some of the other films I’m spotlighting! Sosumi!
If you look at it in the context of history-something your humble blogger notoriously always does-HR2H becomes even more interesting. 1967? Barely a year away from the “summer of love” and not a hippie in sight?! Contrast this with another, far more famous car flick, Vanishing Point, and note that although the two films are separated by a mere 4 years, they are clearly products of completely different cultures. Seen in this context, this film provides another example of how the conformist values of the post-war era died a very rapid death between 1964 and 1967; by 1968, America was a different country. In this respect, HR2H’s “camp value” comes from more than just its hammy dialog and ludicrous over-acting; it also seems like a film that was almost laughably behind the times and out of place from the moment it was released.
And hammy it is! Like the previously discussed The Choppers (1961), HR2H is a typical a “youth gone wild” morality tale about those damn juvenile delinquents tearing down good old fashioned America. Like a marriage between Beach Party and Last House on the Left, HR2H sets down on the Phillips family, who go on a road trip to move to California, and on the way come across a group of sadistic hot rodders who, with no real provocation, unleash holy hell on Mr. and Mrs. Americana of the traditional Nuclear family because they’re looking for-you guessed it-“kicks.”
The Phillips, headed by a patriarch suffering from back pain and PTSD as the result of a car wreck caused by a drunk driver on X-mas eve a year earlier, drive from the east coast to the Mojave Desert in their clunky sage green 1961 Plymouth Belvedere sedan (a car which has to be amongst the most bizarre looking mainstream designs in the history of Detroit). Though this is never stated, any gearhead watching this will understand this car can only be powered by a slant-6 with a push-button Torqueflite, as it is stated more than once that they are maintaining a speed of 55 miles per hour on their journey, which Mrs. Phillips emphasizes is “more than fast enough.” The purpose of their trip is to arrive at a roadside motel they have purchased as a new family business.
Hilarity ensues in the form of endless clichés and eye-rolling over-acting; the hysterics of Jeanne Craig as Peg Phillips are so laugh-inducing that no actual attempt at comedy could have been as funny, and the dialog is on par with the worst J.D. flicks of the previous decade. The filmmakers seemed to be going out of their way to present the family heads as squares, even emphasizing that Tom Phillips refers to the offending Corvette only as “that red car” throughout the entire runtime, as if he knows so little about cars that he can’t identify the make and model of America’s famous sports car! Fortunately his hip teenage daughter Tina (Laurie Mock) brings him up to date, when after the first altercation, she informs him: “Dad, all the kids drag!”
As for the evil gang: their attack squadron consists of 4 awesome cars: the ’58 ‘Vette gets top billing as the conveyance of gang leader Duke (Paul Bertoya), and we know that from the moment the opening titles roll up, since throughout much of the film the car is topped by Mimsy Farmer as Gloria, Duke’s main squeeze. One can only wonder how many bugs she had to pick out of her teeth during filming, as she dutifully holds on to that roll bar throughout many chases, both on the highway and on dirt roads where her head is seen bobbing within clouds of dust, yet she always manages to maintain her ‘do. This car is so famous that at least 2 replicas of it have been built, and possibly more, one which was the subject of a magazine review. There are also 2 pre-war Fords, a T-bucket that gets a good amount of screen time, and a Model-A sedan which appears on camera only briefly for a few seconds.
As I mentioned at the opening of this post, the star of the show-at least to your HB-is that black ’56 Bel-Air hardtop! Although it also has only limited screen time, its moment in the sun is ferocious, as it is used to box in the Phillips family’s Plymouth during one of the movie’s most intense sequences of harassment on the highway. A factory-original V8 to judge by the badging, and shown sans front bumper with a slight front-end lift and gray crackle-finish ARE Torque Thrust wheels, that car practically made me tent my boxers when I first saw this movie as a teenager, and I never forgot it; already in love with Tri-5’s from childhood, that wicked ‘rod further emphasized that the ’56 is, IMHO, the pinnacle of that magnificent 3-year run from GM’s “low priced” division. This whole movie is worth watching just to see that car!
Unfortunately for the Phillips, just when they think they’ve ditched their persecutors, they have an unpleasant surprise ahead, for they reach their destination only to find that their new roadside inn is the locus of the partying and debauchery of the very youth tormenting them! This discovery sets up the final showdown out on the open highway right before dawn, where our beleaguered dad sets up an ambush to give the gang principals and their dastardly “red car” what’s coming to them.
The weird juxtaposition of the cheesy moralizing dialog with the mores of the day becomes a little more understandable when you note that HR2H was filmed a year earlier than its release, and it was originally made for TV-on a made for TV budget-and was originally titled 52 Miles to Terror. The intention was for it to air in prime-time on ABC, which meant it was targeted at very mainstream audiences, but the censors of the time deemed it too intense for those audiences of the day and blacklisted it, causing its producers to lengthen the movie by 10 minutes and give it a theatrical release, delaying its debut by a year. In theatrical form it no doubt made the drive-in circuits of the day (another cultural artifact!) and garnered little attention before disappearing quietly, although the ironic ending of that story is that it was aired uncut and with its theatrical title on TV only a few years later! How things did change! One can’t help but wonder, though, if the writers and directors weren’t actually having fun with the whole thing, giving a sly back-handed roasting to the very conservatism the movie seems to be defending.
SO, where can you see it?
I first saw this flick the same place I saw most of the flicks I talk about: on late night syndicated TV during my teenage years, probably either a weekend night or, more likely, one of those up-til-dawn summer vacation weeknights. Throughout the couple of decades that I have been aware of it, HR2H has alternated between being fairly easy to find and then disappearing, but most recently it has shown up on the free online streaming station “Tubi.” There’s no telling how long it will be there, though, so if you want to see it, waste no time; these free streaming services tend to change their programming about as fast as the old days of syndicated late night TV!
https://tubitv.com/movies/568612/hot-rods-to-hell
I’ll admit to being one of those people who hasn’t seen this movie all the way through. It’s been a while since I tried to watch it. I remember being really bothered by the idea of being randomly terrorized for someone else’s fun. It’s a subject that has always effected me. Still though, some really cool cars!
Are you sure? I could swear that you and I watched this together at your house back in 2005. Maybe I’m wrong…but if you check it out at that link I posted, tell me if you remember it!