HOT CARS (1956)

 

By Gary Deane

 

Her: “Do you always sell every car you demonstrate?”

Him: “No, but I don’t always get taken for a ride either.”

 

No surprise if Hot Cars, released in 1956, had turned out to be just another ‘sinsational’ teens-gone-wild drive-in pic, the likes of Dragstrip Girl, Teenage Thunder, Hot Rod Gang, Speed Crazy, Hot Rod Girl, Young and Dangerous, or Joy Ride.

But rest easy. There's not a street rod in sight, only deluxe production coupes and foreign sports jobs that are ‘hot’ only because they're stolen — something Nick Dunn (John Bromfield) figures out only after a few days on the job as a sales jockey for a string of Los Angeles used car lots.

Dunn soon realizes that owner Arthur Markel (Ralph Clanton) is fronting what his boss calls "a refrigeration plant”, a place where hot cars are brought to cool down. But Dunn, fired from his last car sales job for being straight with the customers, has nowhere to go. His infant son Davy needs an operation for which Markel will pay if Dunn will play. Even before hiring him, the dealer was hip to Dunn’s plight and uses a blonde knockout named Karen Winter (Joi Lansing) to bait the hook. By the time Dunn figures out he’s been duped, it’s too late, as Markel moves to fit him up as a one-size-fits-all chump.

A trim little programmer, Hot Cars was a release of Bel-Air Productions, a joint venture of 20th Century Fox producer/ director Howard W. Koch, and independent producer Aubrey Schenck. For a time in the ‘50s, the company turned out a bunch of low-budget, quick-buck features, including titles familiar to fans of B noirs: Big House U.S.A. (1955), Crime Against Joe (1956), Three Bad Sisters (1956), The Girl in Black Stockings (1957), and Hell Bound (1957).

Hot Cars runs fast and smooth on a well-tuned script by screenwriter Don Martin, whose film and television credits extended four decades. Martin scripted several of the original Falcon releases and from 1947 to 1958 contributed to a list of B-thrillers, among them: Lighthouse (1947), The Hatbox Mystery (1947), Search for Danger (1949), Destination Murder (1950), Shakedown (1950), Double Jeopardy (1955), Confession (1955), The Man is Armed (1956) and The Violent Road (1958). His pulp novel Shed No Tears was filmed in 1948. Once a 'lost noir', the movie was released a few years back by Alpha Entertainment, a low-end media outfit.

Much of Hot Cars was shot on location, offering tantalizing sightings of mid-century Los Angeles e.g., the iconic Jack’s at the Beach restaurant and lounge where Joi Lansing begins stroking John Bromfield to see if he’s up for the ride. Lansing was on the scene in Hollywood from the day the bus pulled up. A teenage model who later moved on to films and TV, she soon got known as a party girl who had affairs with a host of the usual suspects such as George Raft, Mickey Rooney, and Frank Sinatra. Along the way, she also found time to run up a total of four marriages.

However, Lansing had her head screwed on straight when it came to her career — though she was never much of an actress nor encouraged to be one, given her famously alluring pout and purpose-built figure. Her movie appearances were limited mostly to bit parts (including Touch of Evil) though she did better on television, landing supporting roles plus regular stints on The Bob Cummings Show, Klondike, and The Beverly Hillbillies.

All said, Hot Cars is worth the price of admission for Lansing alone. She’s smart, spirited, and something to see as she goes to work on the straight-arrow Dunn:

Him: “I told you already, I’m married.”

Her: “I have a terrible memory.”

However, the film also provides a better-than-usual part for John Bromfield, himself a ready-made leading man who never found solid footing in Hollywood. Though tall, dark, and athletic, he had to warm the end of a bench that already included Hollywood hunks like Rory Calhoun, Ray Danton, Brad Dexter, Steve Cochrane, Richard Egan, William Campbell, Jeffrey Hunter, Vince Edwards, and John Russell.

Bromfield had started out encouragingly enough in tryout roles for Paramount in Sorry, Wrong, Number (1948) and Rope of Sand (1949). But as a featured actor, he eventually found himself having to settle for an assortment of cheap westerns, horror titles, and crime programmers like The Big Bluff (1955), Crime Against Joe (1956), and the exuberantly trashy Three Bad Sisters (1956). Bromfield was a capable enough performer, just not that interesting a one, evincing no great charisma, sexual intensity, or dark places. He was what he was: a handsome, rugged Hollywood straight-shooter well-suited for the role of Nick Dunn. He’s just fine in it.

Hot Cars is as much a conventional crime thriller as a film noir. It doesn’t bother itself with moody atmospherics or, visually, much else. Karen Winter is plainly a femme fatale, though one who fails ultimately to damage or destroy. For his part, Nick Dunn is neither a doomed protagonist, a total patsy, or a victim of his own device. While he is a man in a trap, he’s still able to find his way out. 

That said, Hot Cars does feel like noir. All the basic constructs are there, needing only to be framed as they might have been a decade or so earlier. In that way, the movie is no different from the many others now categorized as ‘late-period’ noir.

However, none of this impacts Hot Cars’ high-velocity performance as it rockets along like a monkey on a zip line, propelled by a vibrant hipster jazz track by bandleader Les Baxter. In all, the film is a totally cool ride, one that’s definitely worth taking out for a drive.