We viewers have been cheated! A 1950s flick with the title of Hot Rod Girl brings to mind all sorts of possibilities. Fast cars! Loose women! Police chases! Crime! Mayhem! Et cetera! What it does not bring to mind is a traffic safety film, which is about all this shitty movie amounts to.
From 1956, Hot Rod Girl comes to us via American International Pictures, that paragon of b-cinema. It was directed by Leslie H. Martinson (who would later direct the Adam West Batman movie), from a screenplay by John McGreevey. Both Martinson and Greevey spent the vast majority of their careers working in television, and that helps to explain this film’s strong resemblance to an after school special.
Hot Rod Girl does not star Lori Nelson as hot rodder Lisa Vernon. Sure, she is in the movie playing a hot rodder named Lisa Vernon, but despite the promise of the title, and the first scene of the movie, Lisa is not the main character. We’ve been had. It’s a bait and switch. The real star of the movie is John Smith (yes, that is how he was billed) as Jeff Northrup. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Hot Rod Girl”
Christopher Nolan has wrapped up his epic interpretation of the Batman saga, and the viewing public has benefited greatly. After two of the most epic and well-made superhero films of all time, and fine films in their own right, the tale comes to an end this summer. Nolan, and his screenwriter brother Jonathan, should be credited with legitimizing and dragging into believability an aged franchise that at times wears its history and legacy as a seventy-year-old burden.