I'm rating this film high due to the fact it was one of those that seemed to make a big impact to a 10-year-old kid when I first saw it, and incredibly, still seems to hold some of that original charm. Made in 1966 but supposedly not released until a year later (although I swear I remember seeing in sometime in '66 on TV), it is basically a cautionary tale with some good tense action and decent acting. Fast-paced and furious, as a kid I found it to be quite scary and disturbing, and I remember worrying about what might happen to the family during their plight. This is a very rare sleeper that is difficult to find, much less on DVD, but I am happy to report that Netflix now offers it as a rental! Nine stars for the nostalgia of it all!

I believe I will go along with the conventional wisdom shared by many of the other reviewers here. The actors here were saddled with plenty of bad assumptions and corny techniques employed by the screenwriter, the director, and the producer, Sam Katzman the king of cinema Cheese. They do the best they can, but ultimately they are doomed, unwilling participants trapped in a corny melodrama with the form of a 1950's juvenile delinquent movie.The release date on this film says 1966, but the whole ethos feels more like 1956, or maybe even 1946. Just change Dana Andrews from injured businessman to injured World War II veteran, and there you go. I'm not even sure when this screenplay was actually written. Maybe it was sitting on somebody's shelf for 10 or 20 years.The most annoying gaffe to my mind is the appearance and affect of the so-called "delinquents" who "terrorize" uber-square Dana Andrews and his family, a bunch of non-realistic cardboard cutouts straight out of a 1950's television sitcom like "Leave it To Beaver" or "Father Knows Best." These well-scrubbed Hollywood actors, with clean well-pressed chinos and button-down shirts, and shiny straight white teeth, are supposed to be threatening? Give me a break! These kids are about as threatening as a Nerf ball. Hard to believe that the very same year, Roger Corman released "The Wild Angels," showing off a REAL group of reprobates who terrorize the innocent straights on the road. Now those bikers, THOSE were a bunch of creepy, unshaven low lifes. These kids are just a little bored. And who wouldn't be, stuck in some crappy desert town in the middle of Nowheresville, California.To say the acting is overwrought is like saying BP made a little oopsie in the Gulf of Mexico. And then, the doofus elderly cop comes into the movie a few times for a little Joe Friday style moralizing. I'm with the idiot in the hat, who later killed himself after crashing his car: that cop was an asshat."Thank you, Daddy, for not telling that cop about...what happened." Huh? What DID happen? Nothing! You made out with one of the hot rod dudes, and did a little snogging against the side of the Corvette? Holy cats, did I miss something? That was enough to drive you folks out of town? This movie is really terrible for a major studio release. An overdone melodrama with a little hot rodding thrown in, and some bad discotheque blues-rock by Mickey Rooney Jr.! (No Gary Lewis he, his "combo" certainly never tore up the charts, but I did enjoy his lyric, something like "Baby don't mess up my hair!") In the end, I can only recommend this movie for the snogalicious charms of Miss Mimsy Farmer. Rowrrr. Such an adorable kitten, overbite and all. Love those giant hair-dos that were all the rage in that era (the era of my birth!) And as many others have commented, Jeanne Crain was also holding it together pretty dang well at age 42, rocking a tasteful blouse and tight skirt. But, overall, these reasons to watch the movie are few and far between, so, I would recommend this film only to the most masochistic of drive-in movie buffs. Fair warning.

Most of the problems with this dank little road movie can be attributed to its script. Other problems relate to costumes, acting, and music.The story rationale is stupid. No sane person would buy a business a thousand miles away, sight unseen. Yet, the entire story is built around this premise. The Phillips family, an ensemble of characters that remind me of Ward, June, Wally, and the Beaver, get in their corny Plymouth Belvedere, complete with corny luggage rack on top. They then proceed to race along a deserted desert highway at 55 mph en route to the motel they've purchased, presumably by phone.Along the way, photogenic teenagers who like to kick up dust harass them. At one oasis, a cop with a scowling, bulldog face gets out of his old fashioned, and totally enclosed, patrol car ... wearing a motorcycle helmet. This cop reappears from time to time, but always with the helmet on, apparently glued to his head.The script's stupid premise and corny plot are made worse by dialogue that is overwritten and lacks subtext. We don't need dialogue, like "They're going to box me in"; yes, we can see that on screen. Characters blurt out exactly what they think. There's no subtlety in communication. This on-the-nose dialogue is rendered even worse by laughably overwrought acting.The story's theme, likewise, is unsubtle. The writer beats us over the head with a message of morality that is insulting. No wonder viewers laugh. They're laughing at the corny visuals, the melodramatic acting, but also at a script written for an audience of chimpanzees.During the mid-1960s a glut of juvenile delinquent movies came out, including "The Wild Angels" (1966), "Hells Angels On Wheels" (1967), and "The Born Losers" (1967). It's possible that in the case of "Hot Rods To Hell", some producer, sensing a cash cow, had a script hastily written. At least, that's my impression.The film's music is horrible. It's basically nothing but a compilation of repetitive, non-harmonic beats that was so "in" in the 1960s. The photography is the least unpleasant element. Use of rear-screen projection is obvious. Otherwise, camera work and lighting are competent."Hot Rods To Hell" is good for some comic relief. It's also fairly representative of juvenile delinquent movies of that era. Otherwise, it's a film that most viewers over the age of nine will not want to waste their time on.

Dana Andrews stars as Tom Phillips who undergoes some changes after having survived a bad car accident. He moves his family - wife, son, and daughter - from Boston to a desert location to run a motel. Little does he and his family know that soon they will be thrust into a sinister world of souped-up hot rods, loose teenage girls, and terror hitherto unseen in their "normal" and "average" lives. Okay, so Hot Rods to Hell(otherwise known as 52 Miles to Terror) sells itself a little strong, but despite the hokey script, the over-acting, and the kitchy music - I really found that I liked this film a lot more than I thought I would. Dana Andrews growls his way through the film with a bad back trying to regain normalcy after his accident. Jeanne Crain - who bears most of the over-acting in my opinion - plays his wife. As the family moves closer to Mayville, they are accosted on the road by two kids in a red hot rod who think they own the road and the world. Things travel quickly into Andrews and family pitted against these two degenerates. While the seriousness taken with the subject matter is very heavy-handed and surely can be taken as hyperbole, the film does - believe it or not - try and make a point about how the young of the sixties were looking for something other than what their lives provided. It tries to address the younger generation being understood to some degree as well. What it doesn't do is deteriorate into mindless exploitation which would have been so easy to do. The acting was good enough to make me care about Andrews and his family and dislike the two boys intensely. The cops were shown in a very positive light as well. George Ives gives a good performance as a swinger middle-aged man who is the previous owner of the motel. Mimsy Farmer(a beautiful blonde) and Laurie Mock(a sensational brunette) spice up the film's landscape. Much of the dialog is a real hoot as Andrews barks out his frustration with the younger generation either specifically or in general. He looks like he has a body brace on through much of the film as he seems so tight. Director John Brahm is good at creating some tense scenes and much of the road scenes have a definite flair to them. Hot Rods to Hell is really nothing more than one of those 60's kids against the world films but is nonetheless enjoyable, suspenseful, and amusing for intended and unintended reasons.