You have been warned: If you are in search of a review for any of the Fast & Furious movies, this isn’t the place for you. We’re about to talk about the cult classic that gave birth to that extravagant franchise.
Frank Webster (John Ireland) is a man on the verge of being arrested for being accused of forcing a trucker into an accident. At a truck stop, a trucker recognizes him and tries to interrogate him, so Frank resorts to knocking him out. In the process, he holds Connie (Dorothy Malone) and her sportscar hostage. Unsurprisingly, Connie attempts to escape at every chance she gets. While the cops scour the area, Frank’s target is set: he plans to escape to Mexico. So while they wait for the trucker to provide a full description, he decides to take up the race Connie was planning on.
Things get sticky when Connie’s pre-race agreement comes into play that restricts her from driving for the sake of ‘safety’. To make matters worse, Frank weasels his way into the race under false identity and is the only contestant on the start line. Because of the situation, both of them end up bonding.
When eating in peace at a remote location, Frank narrates his tale. He was a self-employed hauler and possessed characteristics that did not sit well with the head of a company. Frank was not budging even with the company pulling dirty tricks. One of the company’s drivers even went as far as attempting murder by trying to run Frank off the road and meeting his demise in the process. Frank, with only a rival company witness to confirm the incident, is now locked behind bars. He is terrified that even a jail cell may not be adequate for an enraged public. The feeling changed to morose after that.
Together, after viewing an antique car race, Frank checks over the car and they both set out on foot avoiding cops looking to double down on the manhunt around the area. They eventually find a place to spend the night and Connie urges him to surrender to the police for once. They continue the conversation the next day and Frank is still determined to leave for Mexico but now wants Connie to join him. When she refuses to go with him, he decides it would be best to lock her up and tip the authorities off to her whereabouts after he picks up the Jag. She later manages to escape by drawing attention to herself by setting the place on fire! After finally making it to a phone, Connie calls the police to tell them of Frank’s innocence.
There’s a fierce competition underway, most notably between Frank and Faber (Bruce Carlisle), who is infatuated with Connie and is overly curious about Frank’s past. While the race was on, the police finally received a tip that reported seeing Frank Webster behind the wheel of a Jaguar, not a rusty old sedan, as the diner waitress had mistakenly said. After dashing through a blockade, Faber’s phantasm about Frank is confirmed by the police, and he starts to pursue Frank. The plot thickens until Faber gets into an accident. Frank pulls over to assist him. Additionally, Connie comes in a borrowed sports car. Faber manages to stay conscious and realizes Frank came to his assistance. Frank decides to hand himself in to the authorities and hugs Connie.
I was browsing through the Turner Classic Movies schedule when The Fast and the Furious (1955) caught my attention, its short description made me interested, but that was not the case the first time I stumbled upon the film considering I saw a DVD of the film on sale in Borders many years ago.
For B-movie classification, it is actually quite impressive. From the use of dirt track racing, hot rod racing, and even illegal formula racing, the special mention of grassroots sports car racing is noteworthy because it is rarely used. Even the romance angle is believable when looked from the perspective of Stockholm syndrome.
What stood out to me was how every detail of the film made sense. There were no gaping holes in the plot. The only flashback shown at the start is the truck crash, and I am surprised that was not shown before. The ending managed to keep me guessing whether Frank turned himself in and succumbed to Faber, but the ending signs start positively and open-ended.
Though there were a couple continuity errors typical in many big budget films, I was pleasantly surprised at how little there were. The only flaw I could grasp was when they mixed in footage from different racing scenes into one at various speeds. But some people who were truly engrossed in the movie might not notice that.
What surprised me most was that Roger Corman, the author of Death Race 2000 and its sequel Death Race 2050, is the man behind this film as well. Hate to say, but I had the urge to compare these films purely because I think they were made in different eras and have different themes. Either way, just knowing that Corman was behind these three films among the sizable amount of corpses he has been involved with made me agree with his title B-Movie King.
Something that is less of a surprise was just how attractive Dorothy Malone was in this film.
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