B-movies were the lifeblood of drive-in theaters.
They didn’t cost much, so Hollywood could crank them out every week and they only had one mandate.
Draw in teenagers who used the drive-in as a second home.
Jerry Sutherland
‘Daddy-O’ was the perfect drive-in B movie because it had street racing, rock and roll music and a plot as thin as tissue paper—the perfect Saturday night dusk-to-dawn film. It also featured the first movie music from a legendary soundtrack guy named John Williams.
The movie started with a cool shot of a 1953 Austin-Healey 100-4 front wheel with the Williams music in the background. It’s a reasonably sophisticated opening shot for a B-movie, but don’t be fooled—it’s definitely a B-movie.
The actors weren’t household names either, but the first action you see is a nameless actor wheeling a 1948 Dodge B-series delivery truck on a California 50s era mountain road.
He’s having a good time until he gets cut off by a blonde in a 1957 Thunderbird.
She rubs salt in the wound when she exits a tunnel and skids to a stop in front of some construction workers. Her next move is to accuse the truck driver of running her off the road. It’s a brilliant strategy because no sane man wouldn’t defend her under the same conditions.
She reappears later to challenge the truck driver to a race along a sketchy road. She brings her T-bird, and he brings a 1956 Triumph TR3.
That seems like he brought a 32-caliber pistol to a fight with an Uzi-wielding Green Beret, and it works out that way when he gets run off the road.
There’s a brief appearance by a 1956 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible when the hero gets a ride from another B-girl.
The biggest thing to note is this—you could buy a house in 1956 for less than this car cost.
The hero gets another car in the form of a 1949 Ford Fordor sedan. This car is classic shoebox Ford and it’s packing a multi-carb engine under the hood.
The bad guys built this car to deliver drugs, and the hero is enlisted to drive it on one of these runs. The coolest part about this car is the prototype ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ jump off a conveniently placed truck ramp in the middle of a major road. The most unrealistic part is when the front end clearly collapses after the jump, but it drives away unscarred…for the rest of the movie.
The final star car in ‘Daddy-O’ is a 1957 Plymouth Plaza police car.
This was the perfect choice because the ’57 Plymouth fin cars sold in bunches back then and police agencies loved their handling. They use this one for a brief chase, but mostly it’s placed in a convenient spot to watch the shoebox Ford jump.
As mentioned earlier, this was the ultimate blend for a drive-in B movie, because the casting for the car stars was perfect.
Jerry Sutherland
By: Jerry Sutherland
Jerry Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer with a primary focus on the collector car hobby. His work has been published in many outlets and publications, including the National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Regina Leader-Post, Vancouver Sun and The Truth About Cars. He is also a regular contributor to Auto Roundup Publications.
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