Hot Rods

 (imdb)

HOT ROD-1950-Two brothers convince their dad to sponsor a racetrack in their town to stop teenagers from illegally drag racing. Dave (James “Jimmy” Lydon) is the bicycle rider brother who wants to work for a newspaper and Joe (Myron Healy) is a cop. Their father is a judge (Art Baker, later a host of TV's “You Asked For It”). Dave has a whiny friend named Swifty (Gil Stratton). When Dave gets a car, showoff hot rodder Jack (Tommy Bond from “Our Gang” shorts) makes him eat dust and embarrass him in front of Jane (Gloria Winters), a girl he's sweet on. He and Swifty try to supe up his car but Jack steals the car and Dave is charged with a hit and run accident. Before anything really bad can happen, Jack admits he did it. Dave and Swifty almost get into more trouble chasing a crook but then help capture him. In the end, the town teens get their legal racetrack and Dave gets Jane. 

This low budget Monogram production was directed by Lewis D. Collins who made many westerns around this time. Former child actor Lydon had been in Edgar Ulmer's STRANGE ILLUSION in 1945. He later had parts in LIFE WITH FATHER (1947) and JOAN OF ARC (1948). 

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Weird Anthology

 

 (themoviedb)

WILD TALES-2014-This is a bizarre black comedy anthology Argentine-Spanish co-production with a ensemble vast. A pre-credits story (“Pasternak”) deals with a plane load of passengers all connected by knowing the same man named Pasternak. In the second, “The Rats”, a waitress meets a customer, a loan shark, who drove her father to suicide. She doesn't know what to do but the cook has an idea. In the third “The Strongest”, a man with a flat tire is terrorized by a driver he insulted earlier. Their fight results in a sardonic ending.

 In “Little Bomb”, a demolition expert runs into problems when his car is towed. His wife wants a divorce, he's arrested then fired from his job. When he uses his expertise to get revenge, well things change. The next and most serious one, “The Proposal”, involves a prominent man who wants to pay his gardener to take the blame for his son's hit and run murder. Everything snowballs but this has too much of an abrupt ending. It ends with “Till Death Do Us Part”. At her wedding a bride finds out that her husband had an affair with one of the guests. It turns into a wedding no one will ever forget.

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