Roger Corman was apprenticing in the art of filmmaking when he did The Fast And The Furious which starred John Ireland and Dorothy Malone. At times during the film both were fast and furious, mostly with each other.
If I was a guy on the run like John Ireland I sure would not have picked as conspicuous looking a car as a Jaguar. Try and boost a nice plain ordinary Dodge, the kind Al Bundy drives. But Ireland is on the run having busted out of jail after being arrested for a vehicular homicide. He's innocent of course, but as he puts it later to Malone 'it's not what you are, it's what you're taken for."
But when at a local hash house as Malone is a customer there with her Jaguar parked outside, Ireland has to make a run for it when another customer, a loudmouthed truck driver played by Bruno VeSota, recognizes him and pulls a gun. Ireland takes it away and takes Malone and her Jaguar with him.
The only way that Ireland gets away with it as long as he does is because dizzy waitress Iris Adrian never actually sees the car that Malone is driving outside and picks up on an offhanded comment she made about the jalopy she's driving. That's what she tells the cops. Adrian by the way is the best thing in the film, Corman should have gotten her back in somehow at the end.
The reason Malone has such a classy ride is that she's heading for what would now be a NASCAR event. Ireland decides to blend in and do the same. Of course when she gets there the chauvinist race officials tell her women can't drive.
Ireland and Malone do fine in the leads, working with a script that does border on the ridiculous. And the film would get hardly a notice if it weren't for the fact that it was a Roger Corman early vehicle.
As I said, Corman was just learning the business.
If I was a guy on the run like John Ireland I sure would not have picked as conspicuous looking a car as a Jaguar. Try and boost a nice plain ordinary Dodge, the kind Al Bundy drives. But Ireland is on the run having busted out of jail after being arrested for a vehicular homicide. He's innocent of course, but as he puts it later to Malone 'it's not what you are, it's what you're taken for."
But when at a local hash house as Malone is a customer there with her Jaguar parked outside, Ireland has to make a run for it when another customer, a loudmouthed truck driver played by Bruno VeSota, recognizes him and pulls a gun. Ireland takes it away and takes Malone and her Jaguar with him.
The only way that Ireland gets away with it as long as he does is because dizzy waitress Iris Adrian never actually sees the car that Malone is driving outside and picks up on an offhanded comment she made about the jalopy she's driving. That's what she tells the cops. Adrian by the way is the best thing in the film, Corman should have gotten her back in somehow at the end.
The reason Malone has such a classy ride is that she's heading for what would now be a NASCAR event. Ireland decides to blend in and do the same. Of course when she gets there the chauvinist race officials tell her women can't drive.
Ireland and Malone do fine in the leads, working with a script that does border on the ridiculous. And the film would get hardly a notice if it weren't for the fact that it was a Roger Corman early vehicle.
As I said, Corman was just learning the business.