Netflix'd :: Clearing Out the Instant Que :: American International Blows a Gasket and Throws a Rod with Lew Landers' Hot Rod Gang (1958)

When the rent comes due on their clubhouse, Johnny (Ashley), the leader of our Hot Rod Gang, has a plan to get the scratch to get the landlord off their backs. Now, this plan entails him winning the next big drag race. Of course, to do that, he must first raise some cash to finish fine-tuning his jalopy first. (In fact, I don't even think the thing is built yet. Anyhoo...) 

Luckily, his new girl, Jody (Fair), has a back-up plan to raise the cash and fix the car so they can win the race to make the rent and save their clubhouse. Seems she knows Gene Vincent, and the girl is convinced she can sway the Be-Bop-a-Lula'n rockabilly wild-man to put on a show so they can raise the cash and fix the car to win the race and make the rent to save their clubhouse.

Alas, Vincent is booked solid, but the singer is acutely aware of Johnny's own singing prowess and convinces him that he should be the one to put on a show so they can raise the cash and fix the car to win the race and make the rent to save their clubhouse. 

But! Johnny refuses, citing that if his kooky old aunts (-- not to mention they're his sole meal ticket --) will disown him if they ever found out about his double-life as a Grease-Ball Hot-Roddin' Rock 'n' Roller.

Ah! But Vincent and Jody brainstorm a way around that and cook up a bop'n beatnik disguise for Johnny.

Thus, our bearded and pompadour'd heartthrob can jive and wail, like, incognito, man, so he can put on the show to raise the cash and fix the car to win the race and make the rent to save their clubhouse...

Wow. Just another heaping helping of crock-n-bull provided by veteran American International stock screenwriter, Lou Rusoff, with Lew Landers just walking everyone through it as fast as he possibly can. And did I mention that Johnny is also being framed for series of car thefts by his rival racers? 

No, well, then lets just forget I brought this moral clause up. I'm having a hard enough time dealing with those Spinster Aunts and their wild attempts to be hip to the hep. Yeesh.

Okay, I didn't think it was possible, but John Ashely is actually worse at the onscreen Rock 'n' Roll thing than Arch Hall Jr -- The Choppers (1961), Wild Guitar (1962). All of his performances are canned and dubbed in, and I wouldn't even venture a guess as to if that's really him singing or not. 

Now I've always liked Ashley as a supporting beachnik for Frankie and Annette -- Bikini Beach (1964), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), and I loved his later producing work in the Philippines -- The Woman Hunt (1972) Black Mama, White Mama (1973), but his early starring vehicles for AIP were pretty odious and this thing does little to blow that particular cinematic Bell Curve.

Luckily, we do have Gene Vincent anchoring the movie, and, along with the Blue Caps, he performs "Dance in the Street", "Dance to the Bop", "Lovely Loretta" and "Baby Blue." I know Eddie Cochran's back-up band shows up, too, but why Cochran himself doesn't make an appearance is anyone's guess. 

And one can only laugh at Ashley's beatnik as, once more, the brass at AIP understood the beat culture about as well as they did the hippie and biker scene, losing almost everything in their translation.

I swear, I normally have a high tolerance for this kind of venture, but even I have my limits. Add it all up and this whole can of stoopidity known as Hot Rod Gang is, more or less, just plain stupid. 

Other Points of Interest:

Poster campaign for Hot Rod Gang at the Archive.

Newspaper ads for Hot Rod Gang at the Morgue.   

Hot Rod Gang (1958) Indio Productions :: American International Pictures / EP: Charles Rogers / P: Lou Rusoff / AP: Lou Kimzey / D: Lew Landers / W: Lou Rusoff / C: Floyd Crosby / E: Robert S. Eisen / M: Ronald Stein / S: John Ashley, Jody Fair, Steve Drexel, Doodles Weaver, Dub Taylor, Dorothy Neumann, Helen Spring, Gene Vincent

Woo-Woo! Catching Up with Norm Grabowski.

When Norman Grabowski got a medical discharge from the service in 1952, he, like most of the youth of America back then, wanted to build himself a Hot-Rod. Taking a '31 Model-A V-8 engine and slapping it into a mash-up of a '22 Model-T body with the bed of a Model-A pick-up, the T-Bucket or "Lightnin' Bug" was born. Notoriety soon followed, when the car was prominently featured in the April 29, 1957 issue of LIFE Magazine.


Catching the eye of several producers, the T-Bucket was in demand and for $50 a day you could rent it for your production -- most notably when Ed "Kookie" Burns got behind the wheel for 77 Sunset Strip, which earned the T-Bucket a new name: The Kookie Kar. As the legend goes, when the car was damaged during a shoot, Grabowski used it as leverage to get himself a job as a stunt-driver, which eventually led to a few bit parts in some Albert Zugsmith cautionary tales [High School Confidential, Girl's Town] and several of Walt Disney's live-action screwball comedies [The Gnome-Mobile, Blackbeard's Ghost]. He, and his easily recognizable mug and crew-cut, even got himself punched out by Elvis a couple of times in a career that netted him over 50 film and TV appearances.

His glorified cameo in The Cannonball Run in 1981 officially marked the end of his film career, but Grabowski is still in the customizing business, unveiling the Kookie II in 1994, and his hand sculpted shifter-skulls are in high demand. Now in his '70s, Grabowski can still be found, 'rodding around the country and appearing at all kinds of car shows and rallies. And when a friend of mine, both of us huge fans of El Polacko, said he was heading to Wichita for Darryl Starbird's 53rd Annual Exotic Car Show, in which Grabowski would be in attendance, alas, my schedule wouldn't allow me to attend. But, acting as my proxy, my buddy agreed to get his autograph for me.



$5 bucks says I was the only one asking him to sign a Lobby Card from Sex Kittens Go to College that whole weekend, and also upon my request, when my buddy, Bill Peetzke, asked what working with Mamie Van Doren was really like, Grabowski's answer was, basically, unprintable.

I'll try, Norm. I'll try.

Go, Big Daddy, GO! :: A Beer-Gut Reaction to Tales of the Rat Fink (2006)

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"Ed Roth was a giant as an artist as well as a behemoth of a man. He and his fellow Kar Kustomizers worked in the only uniquely American art medium, the automobile. He never thought of his creations simply as shells of molded sheet metal or fiberglass. He always wanted you to see the engine, too, because the only American Art Form is not an object. It's a kinieticism. Its materials are speed, momentum, excitement, and freedom, which is to say, the American Zeitgeist, except that we don't say Zeitgeist. We say, the spirit of the American Age."

-- Tom Wolfexxxxxxxx

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While he was assigned to a UFO tracking station in the Sahara desert, one has to wonder if perhaps Ed Roth actually saw something not of this earth that permanently blew his mind. For when he got out of the service, where he honed his talents as a painter by stenciling bizarre designs on his fellow airmen's duffle-bags, Roth became a leading trail-blazer in the custom car culture that absolutely exploded in the 1950's. With his outlandish, out of the box designs and pioneering use of fiberglass, Roth was soon a legend among the motorheads with the completion of The Beatnik Bandit and [my favorite] The Orbitron. And when Revell called, looking to miniaturize his creations into molded plastic, "Big Daddy" Roth soon became a household name.

It wasn't just about building or pin-striping the hot-rods, either. A true Renaissance man, Roth's silk-screening and T-Shirt designs, a mash-up of souped-up engines and ghastly critters with a need for speed going hellbent for the horizon, also caught on. Personified by his signature character, the Rat Fink -- basically his middle-finger salute at the homogenizing effect of the House of Mouse, Roth was all about flying your freak flag high and leaving the squares of Squaresville in the dust.

Ron Mann's documentary, Tales of the Rat Fink, like its subject matter, is also slightly off-kilter. Punctuated by some Roth-fueled animated critter bumpers, each segment tracing Roth's rise to prominence is told from the perspective of different car, voiced by the likes of Paul LeMat, Ann-Margaret and Jay Leno, while the big man himself is voiced by John Goodman, who links it all together. It's an amazing and eye-popping journey of one man's influence weeding and winding its way into permanent pop-culture. And as icing on the cake, we get a stellar soundtrack from The Sadies, whose blend of lo-fi reverb and honky-tonk fits the subject matter perfectly:

Seriously. Check this one out, kids. A testament to a true and one of a kind American artist.


Tales of the Rat Fink (2006) Sphinx Productions :: Abramorama :: Shout! Factory / EP: Martin Harbury / P: Bill Imperial, Ron Mann / AP: Michael Boyuk / D: Ron Mann / W: Adam Cawley, Solomon Vesta / C: Arthur E. Cooper / E: Terrance Odette / M: The Sadies / S: John Goodman, Ted Rosnick, Alex Xydias, Paul Le Mat, Ann-Margret, Tom Smothers, Dick Smothers, Robert Williams, Brian Wilson