The Fast and the Furious (1955)
Retrofit Drive In
Just as we thought we had spun off around the bend with seven or nine Fast and Furious flicks (including Hobbs and Shaw, a TV series and a vroom vroom video game), we remember what Yoda says: “No. There is another.”
If we look closely under the Hollywood hood, we find another movie with the same title and nothing to do with Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Ludacris, Gal Gadot, Dwayne Johnson, or the late great Paul Walker.
Tonight we roll the speedometer back to 1955, the year James Dean calculated that Donald Turnupseed wouldn’t dare turn his Ford Tudor in front of a movie star’s charging Porsche 550 Spyder.
In this earliest film entitled “The Fast and the Furious,” John Ireland is in jail on a trumped up murder charge. He breaks out, takes Dorothy Malone hostage, and slips into a race to Mexico in her Jaguar XK. He fills the tank, tops off the oil, gives the attendant four dollars, and heads for the border.
In Chapter Two of The Phantom Empire, Gene Autry gets in a mess that he can’t sing his way out of but “The Thunder Riders” are thundering and riding to the rescue!
This week’s cartoon is a character who ruled the funny pages back when newspapers had such a thing. L’il Abner, the hunk of Dogpatch, has his bachelorhood threatened on “Sadie Hawkins Day” (1944).
Hit the road, Jack. The Retrofit Drive In is ready to roll, said Helen Wheels.
Feature: THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (1955)
Serial: THE PHANTOM EMPIRE Chapter 2 THE THUNDER RIDERS (1935)
Cartoon: L’IL ABNER: “SADIE HAWKINS DAY” (1944)
