VCI Entertainment: Hot Rods and Hot Chicks (1977 - 1978) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of VCI Entertainment

VCI Entertainment, that frequently iffy public domain boutique label that tends to grab up and dole out all the regional exploitation flicks other labels don’t want to be bothered with, have put together quite the wallow in hick-tastic Vansploitation scuzz with their new double-feature two-film set Hot Rods and Hot Chicks.  Comprised of two more-or-less drive-in roughies (movies that leaned into sexual assault exploitation), the films made between 1977 and 1978 Bad Georgia Road and Mag Wheels both represent bumpy rides where the central heroine in both cases falls for her rapist.  Not quite the double-feature even most Grindhouse fans are looking for, but one of them has Gary Lockwood from 2001: A Space Odyssey in a fantastic leading performance as well as sharp cinematography from eventual The Silence of the Lambs cameraman Tak Fujimoto.  While neither film is necessarily stellar with Mag Wheels being a miscalculated roughie disguised as a summer comedy, the transfers across both films are decent and the first film Bad Georgia Road is worth watching purely for Gary Lockwood’s range.
 
In the first film on the set Bad Georgia Road written and directed by Innerspace production manager John C. Broderick, a young preppy New Yorker Molly Golden (Carol Lynley from The Poseidon Adventure) quits her high-end profession working for a wealthy fashion magazine to claim a family inheritance from her father in the Deep South.  Unbeknownst to her, hungry creditors are awaiting her arrival to seize her assets owed right and left by her father’s moonshining business ran by Leroy Hastings (an unrecognizable redneck Gary Lockwood) and elder Arthur Pennyrich (Moby Dick actor Royal Dano).  Destitute and unable to return to New York, she embraces her newfound fate and joins forces with Leroy in taking over the moonshining business.  However, because it is illegal and because of fierce competition in the area, Leroy is a target at all times, something Molly finds out the hard way when she forces her way into his car for one of his many delivery operations.

 
A film largely driven by the unspoken sexual tension between Molly Golden and Leroy Hastings which eventually does culminate in a violent sexual attack after mutual picking and knifing at one another’s characters and defenses, the debut feature of actor-producer-director John C. Broderick is a moonshiner action comedy that turns mean near the end and again has our violated heroine joining forces with her rapist as lovers and business partners.  Both movies wear on their sleeves a particular brand of homophobia that’s doled out against Molly’s prissy partner and sometimes bedside lover Darryl (Tom Kibbe).  One of the film’s other major highlights besides Gary Lockwood in top committed for to his role warts-and-all is the presence of Mary Woronov, a familiar staple in Roger Corman horror-comedies including Death Race 2000 and Rock ‘n’ Roll High School though she takes a backseat to Lockwood and Carol Lynley who takes the bull by the horns in a role of a battered but resourceful heroine.  There’s also a wealth of striking vistas by Tak Fujimoto, notably an opening montage of the camera low to the road affixed to the front of a car, paving the way for what would or wouldn’t become the VistaVision vista of hills rising and falling in PTA’s One Battle After Another.

 
Next on the list and perhaps the meaner and less forgivable of the filthy dirty dynamic duo is Summer School or the more appropriately named Mag Wheels, a Mean Girls driven regional summer sex comedy that features our leading heroine Anita (Shelly Horner) a new girl in town whose arrival at school spurns the jealousies of Donna (Verkina Flower) when her boyfriend Steve (John Laughlin) takes an interest in Anita.  At first, Donna and her posse of mean girls try a little bit of harassment by, you know, just trying to run Anita in her car off the road with Donna’s van.  This comes after Anita’s sleazy boss tries to grope her, adding insult to injury with the poor girl.  Later, after Steve and Anita frolic in a romantic interlude, Donna turns up the heat by falsely accusing Steve of being a cocaine dealer and framing Anita as the accuser.  This results in Steve’s van-driving hang around buddies to try and ambush Anita and her friend Jill (Phoebe Schmidt) in a prolonged attempt to gang rape them both until the girl posses come to their rescue.  As tensions continue to escalate between both the girls and the boys over the assault leading towards a dangerous and deadly drag race between Jill and Steve, Anita must make a choice to try and deescalate the fight or sacrifice herself to save both parties.

 
A movie which one minute has your stereotypical bad regional summer rock comedy library music urging you to laugh on at the summer play antics and frolicking around in bikinis or showing off bare chests before diving right into roughie exploitation with extended scenes of male characters trying to rip the clothes off of Anita and Jill for a gang rape, Mag Wheels is a mean movie that’s more ferocious than funny.  Tonally all over the map with scenes where we’re not sure how to take them and a casual attitude of violence towards women or scenes of women getting into catfights, Mag Wheels is mostly pretty ugly.  But that doesn’t mean it was completely worthless either as the film sported, unknown at the time, some of the Z-Boys skateboarding crew strutting their stuff.  There’s also a number of fans featured in the film by co-producer George Barris who also cameos in the film.  More or less a promotional tool for Barris’ vehicular line than a standard drive-in distraction for horny teenagers wanting to glance at the screen in between making out, Mag Wheels’ to its credit is directed by Bethel Buckalew who was also a production supervisor on the The Witch Who Came from the Sea.

 
In good faith I can’t recommend this set to casual filmgoers outside of groups who thrive on the Grindhouse roughie.  VCI Entertainment’s transfers are good and there’s a trailer gallery, a poster gallery and a running audio commentary for both features by Rob Kelly.  Bad Georgia Road I could see myself spinning again one day for Gary Lockwood’s performance and Tak Fujimoto’s images but neither film did much more than make me feel kinda dirty for have two films in a row where the central heroine warms up to her assailant.  While not uncommon or unrealistic, it rang as kind of an icky moral punctuating a double feature both times.  The VCI and MVD Visual set comes with reversible sleeve art though for my money I prefer the darker sleeve art.  The set includes a DVD copy for those of us who still can’t play Blu-ray discs yet though if the films themselves were separated by two Blu-ray discs, I’d frisbee Mag Wheels across the room until it shatters on the wall.  Bad Georgia Road was okay but neither of these are necessarily my brand of thorny all American exploitation.

--Andrew Kotwicki