The Fast and the Furious (1954)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1954
Running Time	70:03 (Case: 72)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	John Ireland Edward Sampson
Studio Distributor	Palo Alto Warner Vision	Starring	John Ireland Dorothy Malone Bruce Carlisle Iris Adrian Marshall Bradford Bruno VeSota Byrd Holland Larry Thor Henry Rowland Jean Howell Dick Pinner Robin Morse Lou Place
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	Alexander Gerens

    No, this is not the 2001 film about street racing starring Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. Sorry to disappoint you.

    This is actually the 1954 black and white movie starring John Ireland and Dorothy Malone, and co-directed by John Ireland and Edward Sampson, based on a story by Roger Corman.

    The opening titles feature two cars racing along Highway One. The story proper begins with a young beautiful woman, Connie (Dorothy Malone), pulling up to a roadside café in a shiny Jaguar. A truck driver (Bruno VeSota) tries to chat her up but it's obvious she is rather haughty. In the café she meets a quiet stranger who turns out to be none other than prison escapee Frank Webster (John Ireland), who kidnaps her and escapes using her car.

    What follows is a rather simplistic storyline of Frank and Dorothy trying to evade the police and Dorothy trying to escape from Frank. Of course, Frank is not as guilty as everyone thinks he is, and Dorothy not as haughty ...

    With all the police roadblocks around the country, the only way Frank can get past them is to enrol in a car race. And thus the latter half of the film features some nice car racing scenes. What will the ending be? Will Dorothy fall in love with Frank? Will Frank manage to escape to Mexico or will Dorothy convince him to give himself up? And will another driver, Faber (Bruce Carlisle), realise who Frank really is?

Video

    We are presented with a full frame transfer based on a 35mm film print. I would have expected the intended aspect ratio to be 1.37:1 ("Academy") but according to IMDb it's 1.75:1 so I guess the transfer is open matte.

    The film print is not in a good condition, with quite a lot of scratches, vertical lines and some grain. In addition, some frames appear to be lost - there are a few seconds of blank screen between 38:23-38:25.

    I did not notice any compression artefacts. Contrast is below average and some scenes look a bit over-exposed. In general, the film looks overly bright with a slight "washed up" look.

    There are no subtitle tracks on this single sided single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is only one audio track: English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s).

    Given that the transfer is than from the optical track on the print, it's about what you would expect. Monophonic, slightly crackly and somewhat compressed with attenuated low and high frequencies.

    Dialogue is reasonably clear though not well synchronized (I suspect due to ADR rather than transfer issues).

    The original music score is by Alexander Gerens and the background music alternates between orchestral and vaguely jazzy (played by the Chet Baker Quartet).

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There are no extras on this disc. The menu is full frame and static.

    The Region 1 version appears to be identically featured (i.e. no extras) apart from NTSC vs. PAL formatting.

    The Fast and The Furious is a straightforward story about an escaped prisoner kidnapping a beautiful woman and using her Jaguar to escape to Mexico.

    The video transfer is okay, but the film source is in poor condition.

    The audio transfer quality is average.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall