Blonde Comet

Virginia Vale has been tearing up the roads in European race-car driving, despite the slighting comments of the men. She goes through the same thing when she returns to the US to join the circuit, particularly by swell-headed Robert Kent, who's just about as good as he thinks. He's invented a carburetor which he and Barney Oldfield are trying to get into commercial production.

Oldfield gets about ten minutes of screen time, and the rest of the story gets about twenty. Half of this film is shots from actual car-racing events, shot wild, pulled from the newsreels with some sounds of engines, screeching tires, and crowd noises added by sound man Ben Winkler. Vince Barnett adds some weak comic relief as a member of Kent's pit crew who holds up slates marked with the number of laps to go. William Beaudine directs, but adds little to production except, undoubtedly, some efficiency in the shoot.

PRC was among the cheapest and worst studios of its era. Even for the so-called 'Poverty Row' studios of the day, PRC's movies were lousy. Of course, there are a few exceptions, but most of their movies starred third-rate actors, had cheap scripts and were among the lowest of budgets. "Blonde Comet" is generally what you'd expect from the studio.

The film is about half story and half using stock footage of various car races in order to save money. The story, for what it is, involves an amazingly good female race car driver and a sexist driver who she's fallen for...though you have no reason to understand why. She's at least his equal in ability but he insists that if they ever marry, she'll have to give up racing...and probably remain barefoot, pregnant and chained in the kitchen! It's all very antiquated...and the overall message seems to be that YES a woman should subvert all of her skills and ambitions to catch the man!

So is there anything I liked about the film? Yes. Vince Barnett was much better than usual in a supporting role. He was cute and enjoyable...and not the dopey type guy he usually played. I also liked seeing Barney Oldfield playing a supporting character, as Oldfield was a massively talented race car driver way back in the earliest days of racing. But apart from that, the script seemed sexist even for 1941 and would most likely make many women's heads explode if they watch it today. Add to that the overuse of stock footage and you have a film that is easy to skip.