Thunder In Carolina | The Jalopy Journal The Jalopy Journal

It’s difficult currently being a little bit of a film fanatic and a hot rod person at the identical time. You discover by yourself hoping blend the two, but the pot at the close of the rainbow is nearly Always empty. Incredibly hot Rod b-films, with only a several exceptions, are usually complete crap.

A person of these exceptions, even though not always a hot rod film, is Thunder In Carolina – a minimal spending plan motion picture produced in 1959 staring Rory Calhoun, Alan Hale, and Connie Hines. It is a tale that has been advised a thousand occasions – an aged washed up race car driver can take a young one less than his arm and the two race off into the sunset among checkered flags together with a female or two.

What tends to make Thunder In Carolina distinctive, however, is that a lot of the racing footage used was from true inventory motor vehicle races in 1959. In truth, NASCAR authorized a film motor vehicle on the observe at Darlington through the race! A lot more so, even Rory Calhoun drove some dwell race laps as perfectly. Definitely nuts… and something that could hardly ever be accomplished now.

The end result is the finest American racing motion picture of the 1950’s and my favored inventory motor vehicle motion picture of all time. It is soiled. It’s gritty. It’s obviously very low budget. BUT, it is a excellent tale with first rate performing and wonderful racing footage.

If you have not noticed Thunder In Carolina, it is on YouTube for the initial time ever… and you don’t wanna miss out on it:

https://www.youtube.com/observe?v=gW5ZMdmdF7g