Les bolides de l'enfer

I just happened to notice this film was on TV tonight and had never seen it before. Usually I'll watch because of the actors who are in it. Although the movie is mainly about car racing I really did enjoy seeing a youngish Tony Curtis (in the lead as Johnny) and Piper Laurie (as Liz). Both are strong willed so romance isn't easygoing at the start.

Johnny is the auto engineer who is determined to drive his new model race car to win the 2200-mile race from Canada to Mexico and Liz, when she realizes her love for him, supports him entirely.

Lots of action throughout from players and race cars. The speeding cars keep you on the edge of your seat - great film shots from the air and the road as they blaze along from stop to stop during the race.

Tony Curtis plays the title role in Johnny Dark who is an automobile designer brimming with new ideas. The trouble is that Curtis is working for a motor car company that is very stodgy in its ways. The head is Sidney Blackmer who bears no small resemblance to Henry Ford. Back in the day Ford insisted on turning out his Model-T when the taste of the American motoring public had changed. So it is with Blackmer who says his company has no place for the sports car that Curtis has designed. In fact says Blackmer's secretary and girl Friday Ilka Chase that it took a major effort for Blackmer to put a station wagon on the market.

But Tony has allies, among them Chase, Paul Kelly the chief designer of the company and Piper Laurie who is Blackmer's granddaughter. She likes what she sees in Curtis on many levels.

It's all climaxed in an American style grand prix with a marathon race from the Canadian border to the Mexican border in Lower California. Many obstacles are encountered but do you doubt that Curtis will triumph?

Some nice racing sequences are expertly photographed for the film. Besides those mentioned in the cast take note of Don Taylor who plays Curtis's test driver and friend. Curtis is so self centered he blames Taylor for a crash when it was a mechanical failure. Taylor gets back at him. That self centeredness and dedication to his mission also cause problems between Tony and Piper Laurie.

Johnny Dark will never rank among the great racing films like Grand Prix from the next decade. But it's a decent enough action programmer exhibiting one of Universal Studio's biggest young stars of the decade.

Automotive engineer Tony Curtis has been designing a sports car in his spare time. His employer, Sidney Blackmer, isn't interested, until a group of investors fighting for control cause him to back the project, and kill it once the proxy vote is over. Curtis, Blackmer's grand-daughter Piper Laurie, and test driver Don Taylor decide to steal the car and enter it in a race.

It's a pretty good programmer for Curtis to star in, and the highlight is about twenty minutes of aerial photography showing the cars on the roads. While the print I looked at wasn't a shimmering first-generation Technicolor print, I could see the careful work that went into Carl Guthrie's camerawork. With Paul Kelly, Ilke Chase, Russell Johnson, and Scatman Crothers at the piano.

A young auto racing enthusiast and automotive engineer, Johnny Dark (Curtis) designs a new type of race car that his auto manufacturer-employer, Fielding Motors, won't build, so he enters it in a Reno, Nevada to Tijuana, Mexico road race. His girlfriend, Liz (Laurie), daughter of the CEO of Fielding Motors, as strong-willed as he is, finally realizes how important his passion for racing is, and fully supports him to win his heart.

A really fun picture, in glorious Technicolor. This film was made by many of the same personnel who worked on THIS ISLAND EARTH (1955), including the producer, and featured some prime examples of a custom-fiberglas bodied sports car made in Lynwood (a suburb of Los Angeles, Calif.) in limited numbers by a small auto-maker company. The car was the Woodill Wildfire, made from 1953 to 1957 in small, hand-crafted numbers by Woody Woodill Motors. Film also features many other rare early-1950s American sports cars, made in small numbers by independent manufacturers. They are rare collectors' cars today. This movie was remade exactly ten years later by Bill Alland and director Jack Arnold as The LIVELY SET (Universal, 1964). Great fun for all. Hey, Universal, why isn't this movie out on video?

This film begins with an automobile engineer by the name of "Johnny Dark" (Tony Curtis) working on a new design for a sportscar which he believes will greatly benefit the car manufacturer he works for named of Fielding Motors. Yet even though his immediate supervisor "William H. Scott" (Paul Kelly) shares his enthusiasm, the CEO of the company "James Fielding" (Sidney Blackmer) is intent on producing family vehicles and adamantly rejects the new test model. This infuriates Johnny who, with the help of key members within the company, steals the sportscar prototype and enters it into a cross-country race from Canada to Mexico. The problem, however, is that Johnny's best friend "Duke Benson" (Don Taylor) has also entered this race--but for a major competitor. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was an entertaining action film which benefited from solid acting and some excellent camera work from the driver's point-of-view. Admittedly, it's somewhat dated and lacks the advantages of modern-day film technology. But even so, I enjoyed it for the most part, and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.