HOT RODS TO HELL: if, by hell, you mean watching this film

HOT RODS TO HELL is an absolute camp classic!
From the atrocious dialogue to the even more atrocious acting the film is a total treat from start to finish.
My particular favorites are the abysmal performances by the film's two veteran stars, both well past their prime and experienced enough to have known better than to associate themselves with this embarrassing B movie project.

Dana Andrews had made a name for himself in the 1940s as a stolid leading man in classics such as 'Laura', 'A Walk in the Sun' and 'The Best Years of Our Lives.' But by 1967 his best years were decades behind him and he was reduced to accepting parts like Tom Phillips, the emasculated father of a family terrorised by a gang of hot rod driving teenage yobs in the Californian desert. An earlier car accident has left Tom a frightened man, lacking both the courage and the resources to defend his wife Peg (Jeanne Crain), young son and teenage daughter from these young hooligans. In fact his manhood's so shrivelled there's not even fly in his pants!
The part's not much of a stretch for Andrews. Never one of Hollywood's most dynamic or expressive of actors, here he looks washed out and washed up. Even the very visible over-abundance of make-up can't hide his deathly pallor and bad dye job. But his appearance is nothing compared to his diction. For the most part he sounds like a man trying to speak while also attempting to keep hold of a pair of insecurely glued dentures. Some lines are so slurred as to be practically incomprehensible. Andrews had a well publicised battle with alcoholism and I wouldn't be surprised to learn he was in the midst of that war while shooting this film.
Co-star Crain makes a game attempt to match him with a delivery style normally only heard on particularly cheesy late night infomercials for weight loss products. Each line oozes an exaggerated fake sincerity topped only by her even more exaggerated reactions to the various dilemmas she finds herself in. Her acting is just so plain awful it's difficult to believe she was a seasoned professional gainfully employed in Hollywood since 1943. Her performance here would embarrass an amateur pantomime production.

Honorable mentions go to Laurie Mock who plays the part of the Phillips teenage daughter like a clueless actress responding to the director's off-camera coaching calls ("look frightened - more frightened, now look infatuated - more infatuated, ok, now look frightened again" etc etc), and Paul Bertoya as Duke, the least menacing menacing teenage hoodlum in cinema history. Quite what either of them saw in the other is beyond me.
Perhaps what's most shocking is that HOT RODS TO HELL was released by MGM - the king of the Hollywood studios! the home of Gable, Garbo, Gardner, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland and more stars than there are in heaven! That the studio put its name to this piece of exploitation trash says more about the state of American society in the 60s than the story it tells ever could.

RAMPART: yet another bad cop doing bad things drama

RAMPART leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth.
It's not just the subject matter that's distasteful. It's the film itself.
It serves no useful purpose as a piece of storytelling or acting.
Neither cover any new ground and both have been better done. This tale of a corrupt old school LA cop spiraling out of control is an implausible mess.
Set in 1999, seven years after the acquittal of the Los Angeles cops charged in the infamous Rodney King beating sparked the LA riots, the film stars the always unappealing Woody Harrelson as racist, sexist, foul-mouthed, womanising police officer, David Brown.

His professional life goes into a tailspin after he's caught on an incredibly professional looking amateur video beating the crap out of a motorist who's collided with his patrol car. Brown refuses to quit and the LAPD - for some inexplicable reason - appear unable to fire him or even suspend him, so he's soon back out on patrol using his badge and uniform to bully and intimidate various members of the public unlucky enough to cross his path.
His personal life's faring little better with his two ex-wives (who just happen to be sisters) deciding they no longer want him living with them and using their homes as a hotel.
Dave makes half-hearted efforts to resolve his problems but, really, he's too set in his ways for there to be a positive outcome to his multiple dilemmas and frankly, by the midway point in the story I had lost interest in watching him try.
Watching a scumbag lacking even a single redeeming quality dig himself deeper and deeper into a hole entirely of his own making does not offer the viewer very much to identify or empathize with. Nor does RAMPART work as a character study since Harrelson and director Oren Moverman have chosen to explore ground already well mapped by Hollywood, and in most cases, better mapped. This film brings nothing new to the genre, and can't even provide us with a story that's at least halfway credible.

SINGAPORE: they never had Paris

The film title may say SINGAPORE but deep down inside it dreams of being 'Casablanca.'
This 1947 potboiler from Universal is remarkable for one thing only - it's eerie similarity to the Bogart classic of five years earlier.

I say eerie because SINGAPORE is not a copy or a rip-off. It's its own story with many differences yet it's impossible to shake the feeling that you're watching something that if it were a person would be the third cousin of the person they remind you of.
Does that make any sense?
They're close but not so close that you'd make the connection right away.
It takes about 20 minutes or so.
Fred MacMurray is Rick Blaine, except here he's called Matt Gordon, and where Rick ran a gin joint in Casablanca Matt is a pearl smuggler returning to Singapore at the end of World War Two to recover his stash of hidden gems and search for Linda (Ava Gardner), the woman who mysteriously vanished from his life on the night the Japanese invaded the island state five years earlier.
Just like Ingrid Bergman's Ilsa Lund in 'Casablanca', Linda has an eminently hummable tune attached to her ('Temptation') but sadly there's no Sam to sing it for her. And Ava is no Bergman. She was not yet a bona fide star in 1947 and her screen persona was still a work in progress. It's easy to understand why Bogart would shoot Major Strasser for Bergman, but the depth of Matt's obsession for Linda is a little more puzzling.
Sure Ava's an attractive woman but her efforts to sound seductive by talking only in a low whisper are so unnatural that the allure is severely tempered. Maybe it's Ava's amazing restorative powers that hooked Matt. After she's kidnapped by local gang boss Mr Mauribus (the wonderful Thomas Gomez filling the Sydney Greenstreet role if not - quite - the 'Casablanca' fatman's XXL costume) he has his effeminate sidekick Sascha (George Lloyd channeling Peter Lorre minus the nasal whine) slap her around a bit to try and force her to reveal where Matt's hidden the pearls.Sascha puts some weight behind the smacks yet Ava's creamy complexion remains total unmarked. He's barely able to ruffle her hair.
Watching over all these illegal goings-on is local police chief Hewitt, played with wry detachment by Richard Haydn. He's no-where near as corrupt as 'Casablanca's' Captain Renault (in fact, he's not corrupt at all) and considerably less charming, but his adversarial relationship with Matt share's definite similarities with the one that produced 'Casablanca's' memorable last line.

And no, I haven't forgotten about Victor Laszlo. SINGAPORE boasts no Resistance leaders or heroes but there is the proud and insufferably dull Roland Culver as Michael, the older man now married to Linda. Just as with Victor and Ilsa, theirs is not a relationship based on equality or passion. He is more of a father figure than a husband, and what Linda feels for him is gratitude not love.  Consequently his decision to make the ultimate sacrifice is no big surprise although the twist in the tail definitely is.
However, shared DNA does not necessarily guarantee similar results. No sparks fly, no lessons are learned, and no timeless stories of love and sacrifice are told. SINGAPORE is a poor man's imitation of the real thing, completely lacking in the magic that's made 'Casablanca' one of the most beloved films of all time. Fred MacMurray had some great performances in him but Matt Gordon is not one of them. He's as bland, one dimensional and uninspiring as the cheap Hollywood studio sets standing in for Singapore, and he's saddled with unnecessary comic relief in the form of Porter Hall and Spring Byington as a couple of American rube tourists.
If you're feeling particularly generous you'll watch SINGAPORE once and never ever think of it again.