The Zenith Motor Club is a group of hot-rodders whose clubhouse is a garage. The club is run by Dave (Henry McCann). His girlfriend and fellow hot-rodder is Lois (Jody Fair). Tom Hendry (Russ Bender) is a reporter doing an article on the club. When Hendry mentions maybe doing a series of articles Dave tells him that soon there may not be a Zenith Motor Club anymore. The kids have no money are going to be evicted from their clubhouse. Hendry tries to help but no one wants to let a hot-rod club use their building.
Anastasia Abernathy (Dorothy Neumann) is a bit of a free spirit spinster and a client of Lois’ father, Wesley Cavendish (Kirby Smith). Anastasia is in town for a couple weeks and is staying at the Cavendish home. When Lois gets caught drag racing Wesley grounds her for a couple weeks. She is not allowed to drive her hot-rod. Not being able to go to the clubhouse to say goodbye Anastasia offers to drive her.
At the club house Anastasia mentions that she has an old mansion located in Dragstrip Hollow that is deserted but she is not sure the kids should use it because it is haunted. Hendry believes it’s just a creaky old house and offers to help the kids fix up the place so they can use it.
The kids decide to have a Halloween style party to celebrate their new digs. It’s a costume party so everyone dresses up as a spooky character. What they don’t know is that one of the characters is the ghost of Dragstrip Hollow.
In 1959 Alaska and Hawaii are admitted as the 49th and 50th U.S. states, respectively. The Saint Lawrence Seaway is opened linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. The U.S. recognizes Fidel Castro as the leader of Cuba and American International Pictures releases “The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow”.
The film was directed by William J Hole Jr. It is a comedy horror beach blanket movie without the beach and without the blanket. The film was a low budget affair from AIP. It is not a horror movie in any way shape or form. It’s not even a drag race movie since there is only one race and it’s at the beginning of the movie. What it is is a commercial.
A rock group called The Renegades does a bunch of songs. One of them was released by AIP records. A singer named Jimmy Madden sings a song. He owned a nightclub that he opened in 1960. It didn’t last long. An actual dragster named “TV” Tommy Ivo is in the movie as Tommy Ivo. He talks about winning 300 trophies and holding two world’s records. Two of his cars are shown in the film, a white top Model T and a Buick powered dragster.
As for the ghost it doesn’t even get mentioned until forty minutes into the film. It’s not really a ghost but a monster. The special effects were done by Paul Blaisdell. Not to give away spoilers but Blaisdell plays the monster. He’s wearing the costume that he made for American International Pictures “She-Creature” 1956. It was also the same costume used in “The Day the World Ended” 1955 which was an American Releasing Corporation movie. ARC changed to AIP in 1956. Blaisdell even mentions the name of both movies.
AIP did a ton of low budget movies, mostly for drive-ins and as second billed pictures. A good number of them were horror movies and Roger Corman was one of their go-to guys. In addition they were heavily into beach movies and other teenage style movies. They did a lot of spin-offs and parodies of the beach party scene as well. Some even dabbled into the horror genre. Or at least they tried to. One of their spin-off movies was “The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow”.
If you want to hear some bad fifties music or some gear head talk this is the picture for you. If you’re looking for anything related to ghosts you will be disappointed. I was disappointed.