Hot Rod Fever

So tonight's lineup on TCM is "hot rods", which doesn't mean the movies of Rod Taylor, or even Rod Larocque, sorry people. Of course, it refers to the muscle cars of the 50s.

To be honest, half the movies are ones I've never heard of. The two that I have heard of are coming up overnight: the original The Fast and the Furious at 1:30 AM, which of course has nothing to do with the franchise of the last 10 years or so. The Fate of the Furious was the 8th, wasn't it? After all, that's why they used the word "fate" because it rhymes with "eight". Or have I not been following the series closely enough? I don't actually follow it at all.

That will be followed at 3:00 AM by Rebel Without a Cause, a movie that I think I've mentioned a couple of times is really only worth watching for James Dean's "You're tearing me apart!" line early on. It's like Bette Davis' nervous breakdown in the opening reels of Now, Voyager: the rest of the movie is tedious melodrama.

The night starts off at 8:00 PM with a 1950 movie called Hot Rod, which I would have thought was a bit early for the "hot rod" craze as we know it, but I was born after it all died down. The second one, Hot Rod Gang, which sounds like it might be the most interesting mostly because of the presence of Gene Vincent. This is from the pre-Fabian days when rock was still more rebellious, and singers like Gene Vincent were probably more likely to bring in the teens than Fabian or, in later the few years following, Pat Boone or Frankie Avalon. I was thinking Vincent appeared in Untamed Youth with Mamie Van Doren, but that was actually Eddie Cochran. Vincent can be seen performing in It's Trad, Dad!

Oh, and the night concludes with a Bowery Boys movie. At least them I recognize, even if I don't watch the movies.