cult film freak: MIMSY FARMER 'HOT RODS TO HELL' TO 'RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP'

from Hot Rods from Hell review of Riot on Sunset Strip both 1967

In HOT RODS FROM HELL, the headliners are Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain as two marrieds with a small boy and a teenage girl who get harassed by young punks in a speedster, and the daughter's played by brunette actress Laurie Mock while the bad girl holding onto the roll-bar is blonde cult starlet Mimsy Farmer...

The same year, 1967, in RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP, Farmer is the good girl, and like Laurie Mock has a veteran actor as a dad (Andrews), Farmer has Aldo Ray. But let's not forget Gene Kirkwood, the future ROCKY producer who was Mimsy Farmer's third-wheel buddy in HOT RODS and is Laurie Mock's pal in RIOT. Basically, the teenage girls are in reverse. Add to that Mickey Rooney's son, Tim, rounding out the rebellious teens while in HOT RODS, Mickey Rooney Jr.'s band plays in the third act...

Laurie Mock, Gene Kirkwood, Mimsy Farmer and Tim Rooney

But RIOT is no HOT RODS as it hardly goes anywhere. Although it's not too bad for a drive-in flick exploiting the young counter-culture, the generation gap, and drugs: which literally peaks at a crash-pad get-together when Mimsy's soda gets spiked with acid, and unrealistically, within seconds (instead of the usual forty minutes) she's doing an exotic psychedelic dance as if she'd tripped and stripped many times before...

Earlier they hung at a local club with a few grungy garage bands: which cuts back and forth to open-minded sheriff Aldo Ray having a conversation with local conservative business owners, which is like JAWS in reverse: they want the customers to actually leave The Strip so their kind of business can hopefully return. It's too bad Laurie Mock and Gene Kirkwood can't be more rebellious and devil-may-care the way Farmer and Kirkwood are in HOT RODS. Mimsy's drawn-out dance both steals the movie and robs it from the other characters, who basically just sit there, tripping, starry-eyed and staring...

Mimsy Farmer in Riot on Sunset Strip SCORE: ***

And what everything amounts to isn't really spoiled in the title as there's no actual riot. More like a chance for dad Aldo Ray to bond with his estranged daughter in a contrived happy ending...

As two-years later EASY RIDER introduced the glory of the tragic ending that'd sustain through the following decade. But here, for the most part, what goes on, despite the seriousness, edginess and discontentment of the hippies, is a sheep's party derived from a wolf's invitation.