Death rides a stripped down roadster as thrill-seeking teens take their hormones to the highway. Young Mickey Clark (Darryl Hickman) and his high-school buddies live for drag-racing. They build their own hot-rods and test their bravado in illegal competitions on back-country roads, egged on by excitable girlfriends. Mickey´s dad likes to think that he´s taught the boy good driving sense, but sets a bad example by driving recklessly even while lecturing on road safety. The hardest driving lesson lies up ahead on a dark road, when Mickey is involved in a speeding hit-and-run pile-up that kills his best friend and puts his own mother in the hospital.

Filled to overflowing with high-octane hip lingo and a load of bad driving, The Devil on Wheels is a better than average example of the kind of preachy juvenile delinquent films aimed at the wayward youth of the 40s and 50s. Writer and director Crane Wilbur´s works spanned over five decades, including an early exploitation film about forced sterilization, Tomorrow´s Children (1934). He also penned the screenplay for House of Wax (1953) as well as The Bat (1959) and Mysterious Island (1961). Darryl Hickman had a well-established career as a child actor in the 40s, with prominent roles in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Men of Boy´s Town (1941), The Human Comedy (1943) and Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Terry Moore, who plays one of the nubile hot-rod "mascots" using the screen name Jan Ford, was 18 when she appeared here. Two years later she led a giant ape around by the hand in Mighty Joe Young (1949), as well as taking the hand of Hollywood giant Howard Hughes in a secret marriage ceremony. In 1952 she garnered an Oscar nomination for her sizzling performance opposite Burt Lancaster in Come Back, Little Sheba.

Upplagd i sortimentet: 30 Oktober, 2007