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. It starts off in a realistic fashion, hiding the plot initially with racing sequences filmed on location in southern California. Outside of these scenes, a studio Jaguar XK120 prop car is being hounded by rear-projected cars, however. Scenes are also filmed at an actual automotive repair shop and it is an eye-full for foreign car fans and Detroit's contribution as well. Under echoes of the garage's concrete interior, each vehicle is lined up in its stall as their tune-up awaits.

Mickey Rooney is first-rate as a naive master mechanic and part-time racer of the aforementioned Jaguar. He lives and breathes automobiles leaving little time for socializing. Throwing a wrench into his garage is Dianne Foster, who brings her car in specifically asking for Rooney to work on it. The very next day, Foster again has “car trouble” with her British Hillman―probably expected―but Rooney has to drive to her apartment this time. Being the perfect gentleman, he gets her car started with no more than a thank you expected. She quickly gets him started, twisting him so tightly around her finger it is cutting off the circulation. He is unpretentiously smitten by the amazon female. She is a woman with interior...uh...ulterior motives. Kevin McCarthy and Jack Kelly finish out this deceitful trio.

McCarthy―looking surprisingly like Max Headroom at times―has been scouting local race tracks for a fast driver, though his interest has nothing to do with competitive racing. He and Kelly single out Rooney as their ideal unassuming candidate. Like diesel fuel in sub-zero weather, the plot thickens. Along the way, most of Kelly's lines are witty remarks usually at Rooney's expense. Script lines perfectly befitting Kelly's condescending delivery. 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. Puzzled, Rooney cannot figure out their intense interest in why twenty minutes is so important. He immediately yanks the handbrake on their getaway plan. McCarthy smooths things over and suggests he see Foster before deciding, whose prearranged story ignites Rooney's spark plugs again.

Showing sincere remorse for towing Rooney along, Foster bluntly spills her guts 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 also knows how to roll a car. Rooney survives and stumbles back to McCarthy's with Kelly's gun. The one in the poster that suggests Rooney carries it with him all the time, being a hired killer or something. The ending minute leaves the story unresolved but it does not take a certified master mechanic to figure out one.

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 swifts 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.