Friday, October 11, 2013

A Sympton of Their Restlessness

Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow (1959)
directed by William J. Hole Jr.
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Per the YouTube post of this film, "A bunch of troublemaking 50s greasers are kicked out of their garage and move their hot-rod clubhouse to an old, deserted mansion which they soon find out is haunted by a 'She Creature' that wears gym shoes."

The Don Draper jokes write themselves, but "HotrodGirl86" sells this one short (although she did upload the movie). Close your eyes and let me describe a scene to you: the camera opens on the Arroyo Seco Parkway, empty hills and sky slow in the background behind two beauties in home-grown speedsters racing each other onto surface streets and finally into the Los Angeles River watershed. A patrolman on a motorcycle spots them from an overpass, but can't catch up until one of them crashes; the second speeds ahead home to headquarters, where her pals walk a reporter through the ins and outs of hot-rod culture, riffing enough car jargon to lay Charles Portis flat on his back.

An unapologetic female protagonist with a need for speed who moonlights in a three-part harmony at the local rockabilly bar? Forget about it! Sure, she might go home to a sitcom dad who huffs and puffs from his chair in the den about responsibility, but even the newspaper man (a stand-in for the producers?) shadowing Lois for a "story" acknowledges the threat of nuclear destruction that hangs over the head of every Southern California teenager--and teenagers everywhere! The girls have boys but build and maintain their own cars.

I'm overselling it, of course. It's a good-spirited drive-in but probably a common species. The She/He Creature does, in fact, wear gym shoes. But all the bad guys want to do is show up and dance with their own dates (who, in turn, want to race against the girls we're rooting for). The clubhouse has a cook, and the cook tells the reporter that "there'd be no juvenile delinquents if adult delinquents didn't make them." Everyone wears the right costume to the monster ball--all you need for Halloween is a ghost, a witch, a skeleton, and some masks--and the girls spend their big sleepover twisting to records in nightgowns and high heels.

A nice lie about a crummy generation, all told.