Dragstrip Riot (1958)

Interesting facts

Dragstrip Riot is a 1958 US teen-oriented sportscar club and motorcycle gang film produced by O'Dale Ireland and directed by David Bradley. It stars Yvonne Lime, Gary Clarke, Fay Wray and Connie Stevens. Set in coastal California, the film centres on a false accusation that a sportscar club member is responsible for the death of a member of a motorcycle gang and the gang's attempts to take revenge. Dragstrip Riot was released in the US by American International Pictures as a double feature with The Cool and the Crazy (1958), and distributed in Canada by Astral Films and in the UK by Anglo Amalgamated.

Production

The film's working title was Teenage Rumble; in the UK the film had the more sober title, The Reckless Age, but it also ran as Dragstrip Riot. The British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) approved the film under both titles for exhibition in the UK after reviewing it on 21 May 1958 and requiring that unspecified cuts be made. The BBFC issued the movie an A-certificate, which meant that it was "more suitable for adults."

Dragstrip Riot was in production at Sunset Stages in Los Angeles between 19 August and "early September" 1957, with location filming done in Malibu itself and at Paradise Cove, a beach in Malibu. The film's premiere in March 1958, along with that of The Cool and the Crazy, "may have been" in Kansas City, Missouri, where The Cool and the Crazy had been filmed in its entirety.

Clarke said in an interview with academic film historian Tom Weaver that the film had had three directors: credited director David Bradley, producer O'Dale Ireland and someone who lasted such a short time that he couldn't remember his name.

Dragstrip Riot was Wray's final film and Clarke's first.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.