They say the trickiest shot in the game of billiards is the straight shot, not because of the difficulty, but the mental state it puts players in. With this shot, most pool sharks mentally think it will be easy money, with an (amateur) average of fourteen to one sinking the shot. Yet I present an alternative argument: the hardest shot to make with a billiard stick would be entering a room where your mob boss is explaining his double-cross, so you are to pick up the stick, smack the big gambino around, and when he lands on the dirty floor jam it in the back of their throat (talk about a stiff neck)! A Las Vegas bookie might place the odds of this working at a million to one, so if I were a gambling man (and judging on the films I’ve reviewed I’d say it’s a giant yes) I’d bet producers Gene and Roger Corman took these odds (suckers) when their company financed the quickie-trickie crime thriller T-Bird Gang!
In all hindsight, 1954 was not a particularly wild year of excitement. I Love Lucy became television’s first colden hit, Senator McCarthy was held in contempt (some people have no decency), and Roger Corman stepped (or swam) into his first foray into cinemagic with Monster From The Ocean Floor. It also happened to be the year Ford Motors developed their response to the sports car craze with The Thunderbird, a beautiful construction crafted by the best automotive stylists of their time, and I’d love for audiences to view this majestic revved-up beauty in this cinematic clunker junker but hardly ever do you see the darn thing! Why audiences hardly see a T-Bird in a movie with its moniker in the title could be a slew of excusable accessories – Corman didn’t have the funds (or desire) to spring the cash on the car, limited supplies of available models, or more likely the need to focus on T-Birds mattered little to a plot since the movie’s original title was called Cry Out in Vengeance (that you don’t get to peer at the seductive chrome of a Thunderbird’s chassis). Yet the Cormans were smart to change the title to reflect the rise of teenagers’ obsession with the cruisin’ culture, especially with a double-bill alongside High School Hot Shot screening at the Drive-Ins, where those with heftier throttle-bodies would view the double-feature through the windshield of a T-Bird (unless the windows were too foggy, Honk-Honk).
A local mob boss (played menacingly by Corman and B-movie veteran Edwin Nelson) and his gang, who ride along in the minimal appearance of a T-Bird, rob a warehouse one evening, and before they burn rubber attack the night watchmen, whose son, Frank, happens to be driving by. As his father dies in his arms, Frank vows to seek revenge at a speed of 198 horsepower (Y block a son from honoring his father’s memory). Going undercover, Frank builds trust from the mob boss, playing it cool when Frank is set up by the boss to get arrested to see if he is for real or not (did you ever try asking first?). While incarcerated, Frank gets help from the local police detective who knew his old man. The two plot together to develop a plan in which Frank will inform the detective of the evening’s hijinks (including convenience store hold-ups and cat burglary) so they can be busted and hauled off to jail, but under one condition: Frank gets to kill the man who killed his old man. Will Frank get a piece of his own medicine, or will the detective be able to stop Frank before he becomes that which he despises the most? To find out, check your blind spots, adjust your mirrors, and buckle up to squeal your tires for this pimped-out B-movie flicker-five-speed-sticker (vroom-vroom)!
Shifting your way at a grinding sixty-six minutes, and directed by first (and only) time director Richard Harbinger, the promotional posters feature a unique friend who worked a lot for the Cormans: future three-time-Oscar winner Jack Nicholson, who ironically (and stupidly) never appears in the (fast) motion picture. You can find its dented hubcaps on most streaming platforms, as after this crashed along the box office highway, it was buried in the junkyard of the Public Domain. It was a car for the ages, so if you have an extra twenty-four grand hanging around you can wrap your gloved hands around the steering wheel of a an antique 1955 Ford Thunderbird, or be like the Cormans by sinking that money into a reel hip dragster chiller-thriller and have a ball (joint) as people kick down your door to trick-shot cash into your slushbox (putt-putt-puff)!
