Great Racing Movies (The Fast and the Furious-1954/The Big Wheel/Hot Rod Girl)

Rating:
Summary: 1 great movie & 2 good ones!
Review: The Big Wheel is the best of the 3. Good acting by all the stars & plenty of that edge of your seat exciting auto racing! Bought this disc because of this movie as I like Mickey Rooney and he was very good in this role.

Hot Rod Girl is part drag racing part teanage JD movie. It was interesting to watch. Decent acting by all.

Fast And The Furious is the Roger Corman 1954 original about a man who breaks out of jail then joins a race to Mexico in order to not get caught by the police.

All 3 movies are in black & white and seem to come from 16mm sources. Expect mono sound and some scratches and occasional splices which are very normal for older film prints.

Sound is very good on this DVD but the picture looks slightly soft (like VHS does) due to the compression needed to fit 3 movies on one disc. Still I enjoyed watching this disc and I'm sure you will to if your a racing fan as I am.

Rating:
Summary: 1 great movie & 2 good ones!
Review: The Big Wheel is the best of the 3. Good acting by all the stars & plenty of that edge of your seat exciting auto racing! Bought this disc because of this movie as I like Mickey Rooney and he was very good in this role.

Hot Rod Girl is part drag racing part teanage JD movie. It was interesting to watch. Decent acting by all.

Fast And The Furious is the Roger Corman 1954 original about a man who breaks out of jail then joins a race to Mexico in order to not get caught by the police.

All 3 movies are in black & white and seem to come from 16mm sources. Expect mono sound and some scratches and occasional splices which are very normal for older film prints.

Sound is very good on this DVD but the picture looks slightly soft (like VHS does) due to the compression needed to fit 3 movies on one disc. Still I enjoyed watching this disc and I'm sure you will to if your a racing fan as I am.

Rating:
Summary: Cars, Cars, Cars
Review: The other reviewers focus on this DVD's technical aspects. If you were raised on over-the-air B/W TV, as I was, these films look fine. Hey, you can pause on any frame and there are no "comercial breaks."

This compliation provides many interesting historical insights. Interesting are the productions, the players, and most of all the cars.

Scene after scene is filled with vintage cars in action. The technical aspects and actors take a "back seat" to the cars. Anyone with an interest in vintage British Sports, Indy, or Hot Rod cars will find this compliation well worth the small price of admission.

Rating:
Summary: Cars, Cars, Cars
Review: The other reviewers focus on this DVD's technical aspects. If you were raised on over-the-air B/W TV, as I was, these films look fine. Hey, you can pause on any frame and there are no "comercial breaks."

This compliation provides many interesting historical insights. Interesting are the productions, the players, and most of all the cars.

Scene after scene is filled with vintage cars in action. The technical aspects and actors take a "back seat" to the cars. Anyone with an interest in vintage British Sports, Indy, or Hot Rod cars will find this compliation well worth the small price of admission.

Rating:
Summary: Those were the days!
Review: This collection will mainly appeal to fans of the genre of late 50's, juvenile delinquent flicks with a bent for fast cars and kids who are just out for kicks.

Mind you, these are not high quality digital remasters or anything like that, but at least the fragile condition of these films is explained in the disc's opening. I can live with that (although I'd gladly pay for pristine copies of any films from this camp...) The worst print of the lot is "Hot Rod Girl", which has what appears to be drop-out lines heavily in the first 10 minutes which are not present in the Goodtimes VHS print. Regardless, I was happy to replace that horrid tape version with this superior DVD edition. The other two films, "The Big Wheel" and "The Fast and the Furious", look fine as can be expected. I can understand the difficulty in obtaining good prints of such old drive-in flicks, but it was very disappointing that neither trailers nor poster art could have been dug up, since I know for a fact they are out there. I have to assume these were put together from 16mm TV prints, so another diappointment is the full-screen format. (sigh)

Usually, these budget compilations are abominable quality and I am happy to say that these are at least watchable and there are no technical distractions. The movies are great and the price is right.