Drive A Crooked Road

Drive a Crooked Road (1954)

Runtime: 83 minutes

Directed by: Richard Quine

Starring: Mickey Rooney, Dianne Foster, Kevin McCarthy, Jack Kelly, Harry Landers

From: Columbia

Last night I revisited the 1948 noir He Walked by Night, which I reviewed back in early 2016 and now I still think is very good. Monday night was me seeing another film noir, this one for the first time.

Years ago on a messageboard, someone referenced this 1950's noir from Columbia, one I hadn't heard of before. The description (“Mickey Rooney is a driver in a bank robbery”) made me laugh, and some were greatly amused at my comment of “Hopefully Mickey wore a silver jacket w/ a gold scorpion on the back.” As this month the Criterion Channel uploaded various 50's noirs from Columbia and this was one of them, I could finally view Rooney in such a role.

Like with The Driver, Rooney's Eddie Shannon is a rather awkward loner who might be “on the spectrum.” He is a low-level racecar driver and mechanic at an auto shop. Two lowlifes-who were pretty lousy human beings-spot him and realize he is a sap. One of them has their girlfriend Barbara feign a romantic relationship with Eddie so he could be roped into being the getaway driver for the robbery. It is easy to feel sorry for Shannon as he was played like a fiddle by a not unattractive lady and two jerks.

While a movie filled with brightness and sunshine due to all the scenes shot at daytime in Southern California, it still fits many of the noir trappings; one deviation I was fine with: Barbara wasn't a standard femme fatale who was morally bankrupt and a wicked lady. The performances of Dianne Foster and Rooney were the standouts here. He did not dress like The Driver but in the final act Mickey does have on a leather jacket, which was a tremendous visual. This was a solid genre effort which has an exciting getaway scene and some memorable side characters. Speaking of that...

The actions of Shannon's fellow mechanics did catch me off guard. It was a shop that worked on British models such as MG's and Rolls-Royce. With that knowledge, you'll understand my astonishment at how all the other mechanics acted whenever a random woman passed by their partially underground shop. They hooted and hollered as if they were the teen leads of an 80's sex comedy that was a Porky's ripoff! Much to my relief, the film did not seem to cast aspersions at Eddie for being different from his coworkers and not howling at the moon whenever any attractive dame comes within eyesight.