It’s when Jeff Northrup, John Smith, let his kid brother Steve, Del Erickson, take the wheel of his hot-rod that he was suddenly goaded into racing a fellow hot-rodder that ended in him crashing into a parked car and killing himself. Jeff barley survives with his life ending up not only getting his drivers license suspended but feeling guilty in his brothers death.
Working around the clock at Henry’s Garage as a car mechanic Jeff thought that it would make him forget what he had to do with Steve’s death and at the same time get his very guilt ridden head back together. This greatly upset Jeff’s girlfriend Lisa Vernon, Lori Nelson, who felt that Jeff was taking his brothers death far too seriously then it really was; In him taking all the responsibility for it!
I wasn’t until much later when this grease ball Bronc Talbott, Mark Andrews, from out of town showed up at Yo-Yo’s malt shop where Jeff’s girlfriend and friends hang out that things in the movie really started to speed up. Talbott a really oily and greasy looking guy took it upon himself to make himself top banana in the hot-rod circuit in town. Changeling Flat-Top, Frank Gorshin, into a chicken run Talbott almost had him killed when Flat-Top nearly crashed into his car with Talbott, looking to get killed himself, never really trying to avoid him.
Jeff now getting his drivers license back and taking to the road in his hot rod with Lisa at his side is immediately confronted by Talbott who tries to run him off th road. Talbott had it in for Jeff in wanting to take Lisa away from him as well as Jeff not taking any of his BS like everyone else in town did.
**SPOILERS** The deadly game of chicken lead to a 12 year old boy getting run over and killed when Jeff lost control of his hot-rod as Talbott tried to intimidate him by forcing his car out of it’s proper lane. Now Jeff not only again had his drivers license suspended but is charged with vehicular homicide and a possible jail sentence. It’s when Jeff’s good friend and friend of the local hot-rod boys and girls ,in sponsoring a driver friendly drag strip for them, Det. Ben Merrill, Chuck Connors, checked out the evidence in the death of the young boy that he discovered, from paint scraping, that it was Talbott’s not Jeff’s car that ran the boy down and killed him!
Confronting Talbott at Yo-Yo’s malt shop with the evidence of his crime Det.Merrill gets his head smashed in by him with an empty beer bottle and knocked out cold! But it’s Jeff who came to Det.Merrill’s rescue and beat the living you know what out of a fleeing Talbott who, besides getting worked over, got all that was coming to him! Two to five years in the clink for the fatal hit & run accident that he tried to blame on the totally innocent Jeff Northrup!
