Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 10, 2020 10:12:34 GMT -8
Drive a Crooked Road
This 1954 black-and-white stars thirty-four year old Mickey Rooney as Eddie Shannon, a competent auto mechanic in a high-end auto shop in and around Hollywood. He drives a race car as a hobby and would love to be able to get into it professionally.
He works with a gang of over-sexed grease monkeys who hoot and holler at every good looking broad who walks by their window. And Shannon takes a good deal of ribbing from some of the guys, both for being short and for not exactly being a killer with the opposite sex.
In walks the luscious Barbara Mathews (Diane Foster). Rooney fixes her car and she learns of his desire to race cars.
And if you want to learn more, there will have to be some spoilers. I found this to be a very watchable movie. And it wasn’t ruined by the ending because it didn’t have an ending. But that’s a quibble.
We soon learn that Barbara Matthews has ulterior motives for being nice to little Eddie Shannon who is flattered to death that a beautiful dame like her has taken an interest in him. Something is up.
And what is up is that she and two nasty white guys (Kevin McCarthy and Jack Kelly) are planning to rob a bank. And you know already their plan can’t help but fail if they are dependent upon hiring for a get-away driver a guy with no criminal background and about whom they know very little. But they need someone to drive real fast on the back roads of California in an attempt to outrun where they assume the police will set up roadblocks. But it’s all a McGuffin just to come up with the need to have Mathews try to rope in Eddie Shannon with were Venus flytrap sex appeal.
And the back-and-forth between the fumbling Eddie and the Venus flytrap Barbara Mathews is fun to watch. Rooney is brilliant playing the shy guy who is uncomfortable around women but who just can’t resist this one who has shown interest in him and made it so easy.
But she’s a femme fatale with a bit of a conscience. She clearly doesn’t like using little Eddie in this way and that has dire consequences for some at the end. But there really isn’t an end and we’d have to watch Drive a Crooked Road II to see what happened. The movie just sort of fades out as if they’d run out of film.
But it’s a terrific movie, engaging all the way. It’s a great role for Kevin McCarthy who plays the happy-go-lucky preppie renting a house on the beach. But he can turn in an instant into a very cold-blooded lizard, as can his partner. Despite some horrible camera work involving the racing scenes and the lack of an ending, I can definitely recommend this one.
This 1954 black-and-white stars thirty-four year old Mickey Rooney as Eddie Shannon, a competent auto mechanic in a high-end auto shop in and around Hollywood. He drives a race car as a hobby and would love to be able to get into it professionally.
He works with a gang of over-sexed grease monkeys who hoot and holler at every good looking broad who walks by their window. And Shannon takes a good deal of ribbing from some of the guys, both for being short and for not exactly being a killer with the opposite sex.
In walks the luscious Barbara Mathews (Diane Foster). Rooney fixes her car and she learns of his desire to race cars.
And if you want to learn more, there will have to be some spoilers. I found this to be a very watchable movie. And it wasn’t ruined by the ending because it didn’t have an ending. But that’s a quibble.
We soon learn that Barbara Matthews has ulterior motives for being nice to little Eddie Shannon who is flattered to death that a beautiful dame like her has taken an interest in him. Something is up.
And what is up is that she and two nasty white guys (Kevin McCarthy and Jack Kelly) are planning to rob a bank. And you know already their plan can’t help but fail if they are dependent upon hiring for a get-away driver a guy with no criminal background and about whom they know very little. But they need someone to drive real fast on the back roads of California in an attempt to outrun where they assume the police will set up roadblocks. But it’s all a McGuffin just to come up with the need to have Mathews try to rope in Eddie Shannon with were Venus flytrap sex appeal.
And the back-and-forth between the fumbling Eddie and the Venus flytrap Barbara Mathews is fun to watch. Rooney is brilliant playing the shy guy who is uncomfortable around women but who just can’t resist this one who has shown interest in him and made it so easy.
But she’s a femme fatale with a bit of a conscience. She clearly doesn’t like using little Eddie in this way and that has dire consequences for some at the end. But there really isn’t an end and we’d have to watch Drive a Crooked Road II to see what happened. The movie just sort of fades out as if they’d run out of film.
But it’s a terrific movie, engaging all the way. It’s a great role for Kevin McCarthy who plays the happy-go-lucky preppie renting a house on the beach. But he can turn in an instant into a very cold-blooded lizard, as can his partner. Despite some horrible camera work involving the racing scenes and the lack of an ending, I can definitely recommend this one.
