Who payed the critics

Waste of time

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain play Tom and Peg Phillips, an ultra straight (some might say square) couple with a teen aged daughter, Tina (Laurie Mock), and young son Jamie (Jeffrey Byron). After Tom gets into a road accident, he develops a bad back, and his brother Bill (Harry Hickox) arranges for Tom a change of pace: running a motel in small town California. Unfortunately, when the family gets to the desert, they run afoul of the local hot rodders / troublemakers.Just as much of a generation gap drama as it is an action movie,"Hot Rods to Hell" is enjoyable exploitation fare. The protagonists are a little much at times, but Gene Kirkwood and Paul Bertoya are malevolently entertaining as the obnoxious road hogging punks. The movie marks an interesting effort for Director John Brahm, who'd done well crafting Victorian era melodramas in the 1940s and 1950s; it was his final feature film. The action sequences ARE well done, and the cars are of course very cool. The rock score is most groovy, as performed by Mickey Rooney's son and his combo.The performances are all watchable. It's easy to believe the frustration of Andrews' character. Mimsy Farmer is likewise convincing as Gloria, the trampy, sexy blonde associate of Kirkwood and Bertoya. George Ives has the interesting role of Lank Dailey, the motel owner who has no problem taking money from his teenage customers but distrusts them just as much as any other adult.In general, the movie seems to be making a statement about the poor driving habits of Americans: it isn't just the young punks who drive recklessly, but the previous generation as well.It would be hard to knock any movie in which a highway patrolman is made to utter the immortal line: "These kids have nowhere to go,but they want to get there at 150 miles per hour."Seven out of 10.

I believe I will go along with the conventional wisdom shared by many of the other reviewers here. The actors here were saddled with plenty of bad assumptions and corny techniques employed by the screenwriter, the director, and the producer, Sam Katzman the king of cinema Cheese. They do the best they can, but ultimately they are doomed, unwilling participants trapped in a corny melodrama with the form of a 1950's juvenile delinquent movie.The release date on this film says 1966, but the whole ethos feels more like 1956, or maybe even 1946. Just change Dana Andrews from injured businessman to injured World War II veteran, and there you go. I'm not even sure when this screenplay was actually written. Maybe it was sitting on somebody's shelf for 10 or 20 years.The most annoying gaffe to my mind is the appearance and affect of the so-called "delinquents" who "terrorize" uber-square Dana Andrews and his family, a bunch of non-realistic cardboard cutouts straight out of a 1950's television sitcom like "Leave it To Beaver" or "Father Knows Best." These well-scrubbed Hollywood actors, with clean well-pressed chinos and button-down shirts, and shiny straight white teeth, are supposed to be threatening? Give me a break! These kids are about as threatening as a Nerf ball. Hard to believe that the very same year, Roger Corman released "The Wild Angels," showing off a REAL group of reprobates who terrorize the innocent straights on the road. Now those bikers, THOSE were a bunch of creepy, unshaven low lifes. These kids are just a little bored. And who wouldn't be, stuck in some crappy desert town in the middle of Nowheresville, California.To say the acting is overwrought is like saying BP made a little oopsie in the Gulf of Mexico. And then, the doofus elderly cop comes into the movie a few times for a little Joe Friday style moralizing. I'm with the idiot in the hat, who later killed himself after crashing his car: that cop was an asshat."Thank you, Daddy, for not telling that cop about...what happened." Huh? What DID happen? Nothing! You made out with one of the hot rod dudes, and did a little snogging against the side of the Corvette? Holy cats, did I miss something? That was enough to drive you folks out of town? This movie is really terrible for a major studio release. An overdone melodrama with a little hot rodding thrown in, and some bad discotheque blues-rock by Mickey Rooney Jr.! (No Gary Lewis he, his "combo" certainly never tore up the charts, but I did enjoy his lyric, something like "Baby don't mess up my hair!") In the end, I can only recommend this movie for the snogalicious charms of Miss Mimsy Farmer. Rowrrr. Such an adorable kitten, overbite and all. Love those giant hair-dos that were all the rage in that era (the era of my birth!) And as many others have commented, Jeanne Crain was also holding it together pretty dang well at age 42, rocking a tasteful blouse and tight skirt. But, overall, these reasons to watch the movie are few and far between, so, I would recommend this film only to the most masochistic of drive-in movie buffs. Fair warning.

Wow, this movie is bad - but it's bad in a way that makes it fun to watch. Here we have a family where the husband / father is in a car accident and for his comfort and health he's told he and his family should move to a warm dry climate. His teenage daughter is LOATHE to leave Boston for the Southwest, with no more snow or gray skies? I don't buy it.What is really funny in this movie is how the family is driving along and they encounter the bad teenage kids in the Corvette. They are all screaming and making faces and after their car lurches to a stop they are all looking 'distraught' over what just happened. It has to be the biggest piece of ham acting, by multiple actors at one time, that I have ever seen! Absolutely hilarious.This movie is worth watching only because it's soooooo bad.

Most of the problems with this dank little road movie can be attributed to its script. Other problems relate to costumes, acting, and music.The story rationale is stupid. No sane person would buy a business a thousand miles away, sight unseen. Yet, the entire story is built around this premise. The Phillips family, an ensemble of characters that remind me of Ward, June, Wally, and the Beaver, get in their corny Plymouth Belvedere, complete with corny luggage rack on top. They then proceed to race along a deserted desert highway at 55 mph en route to the motel they've purchased, presumably by phone.Along the way, photogenic teenagers who like to kick up dust harass them. At one oasis, a cop with a scowling, bulldog face gets out of his old fashioned, and totally enclosed, patrol car ... wearing a motorcycle helmet. This cop reappears from time to time, but always with the helmet on, apparently glued to his head.The script's stupid premise and corny plot are made worse by dialogue that is overwritten and lacks subtext. We don't need dialogue, like "They're going to box me in"; yes, we can see that on screen. Characters blurt out exactly what they think. There's no subtlety in communication. This on-the-nose dialogue is rendered even worse by laughably overwrought acting.The story's theme, likewise, is unsubtle. The writer beats us over the head with a message of morality that is insulting. No wonder viewers laugh. They're laughing at the corny visuals, the melodramatic acting, but also at a script written for an audience of chimpanzees.During the mid-1960s a glut of juvenile delinquent movies came out, including "The Wild Angels" (1966), "Hells Angels On Wheels" (1967), and "The Born Losers" (1967). It's possible that in the case of "Hot Rods To Hell", some producer, sensing a cash cow, had a script hastily written. At least, that's my impression.The film's music is horrible. It's basically nothing but a compilation of repetitive, non-harmonic beats that was so "in" in the 1960s. The photography is the least unpleasant element. Use of rear-screen projection is obvious. Otherwise, camera work and lighting are competent."Hot Rods To Hell" is good for some comic relief. It's also fairly representative of juvenile delinquent movies of that era. Otherwise, it's a film that most viewers over the age of nine will not want to waste their time on.