DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD (1954)

This lower-budget Columbia Pictures drama succeeds thanks to its excellent cast and screenplay. A better-than-average B-movie centering around an automotive theme. The screenplay was written by Blake Edwards from a story by James Benson Nablo and adapted by Richard Quine. The eighty-three-minute film starts off in realistic fashion, hiding the plot initially with racing sequences filmed on location in California. Outside of these scenes, a studio Jaguar XK120 prop car is being hounded by rear-projected cars as an introduction to the film's star. There are cameras also at an actual automotive specialty shop, which is a real eye-ful for foreign car fans. Under echoes of the garage's concrete interior, each vehicle is lined up in its stall as its tune-up awaits. Master mechanic Mickey Rooney is one of the repair shop's best. He had left Andy Hardy in the dust with Quicksand four years earlier, also playing an auto mechanic. Rooney would use another Edwards screenplay, The Atomic Kid, the same year.

The film takes its time to establish Rooney's character, but it is never dull. The entire cast is more than competent. Rooney is first-rate as an unassuming mechanic and part-time racer of the aforementioned Jaguar. He lives and breathes automobiles, leaving little time for socializing. His dream is to race in the famous circuits in Europe. Throwing a wrench into his garage is Dianne Foster, who brings in her British Hillman, asking specifically for Rooney to work on it. The very next day, Foster again has “car trouble.” It will not start―probably expected―but this time, Rooney has to drive to her apartment building. Being the perfect gentleman, he gets her car started with only a thank you expected. She quickly gets him started, twisting him tightly around her finger. He is nervously smitten by the Amazon female. She is a woman with interior...uh...ulterior motives. 

Kevin McCarthy and Jack Kelly finish out the deceitful trio. McCarthy has been scouting local race tracks for a fast driver. They single out Rooney as their ideal chump. Like diesel fuel in sub-zero weather, the plot thickens. Witty script lines perfectly befit Kelly's condescending sarcasm, usually at Rooney's expense. McCarthy wants Rooney to drive a crooked, dangerous road in twenty minutes that would safely take forty. In mock fascination, he pumps up Rooney's ego on what it would take to do this. Accurately, he explains the different driving dynamics of a European car compared to a heavy American sedan. The lighter European models corner better, have stiffer suspension, and exude more confidence on a racing circuit. One would need to highly modify an old sedan to make it work. But Rooney is puzzled about the importance of twenty minutes. And his payment of fifteen grand just to drive. He immediately punches the emergency brake on their robbery getaway plan. 

By this stage, Foster is showing sincere remorse for towing the sweet little guy along. The trio is at McCarthy's beach house when Rooney shows up, hoping to find Foster. Something he was told not to do. Still sufficiently naive, McCarthy tells him he has not seen her. Foster enters from another room to bluntly spill her guts about her involvement, much to McCarthy's ire. Rooney knows a bit too much at this point. It is Kelly's job to eliminate him along the coastal roadway. As an excellent driver, Rooney knows how to handle sudden emergencies. He also knows how best to roll a car. Rooney survives and stumbles back about a mile to McCarthy's with Kelly's gun. The one in the poster that suggests Rooney is a hired killer or something. The ending minute leaves the story unresolved, but it does not take a certified master mechanic to figure it out.

Note: The studio prop car's “driving” sequences are pretty funny during their shortcut's dusty escape. The studio's stunt driver and sound department put on an impressive show, however. Rooney's faking of the prop car steering wheel suggests he understands and respects the car's limits. He supposedly hits 100 mph at one point with Kelly hanging on for dear life in the back seat as the rear-projected scenery shifts abruptly left to right, tires squealing in the dirt. Not as wacky as W.C. Fields' climactic driving in The Bank Dick, but nonetheless, amusing.