Above is a nice piece of promo art for Hot Cars, an obscure little flick some people classify as a film noir, but which we think of as a basic crime melodrama. A Culver City used car salesman’s lofty ethics get him fired from a used car lot, but hired at another whose owner is looking for employees with “honest faces and honest souls to go along with them.” But there’s more than meets the eye going on here. There’s a stolen car ring working Southern California and our honest John begins to suspect it’s his new employer’s lot the autos are being funneled through. His suspicions are quickly confirmed—his boss wanted an honest face as a front for the crooked lot. Honest boy quits in a huff, but with a sick son and medical bills piling up he has to go crawling back, and from there he just gets in deeper and deeper. The film is nothing special, but statuesque Joi Lansing plays the owner’s femme fatale wife, and she’s the real heat in Hot Cars. At just an hour in length the movie comes with a discount in time expenditure, so with Lansing as part of the package it’s a deal you shouldn’t refuse. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1956.
Hi, I’m Joi. I see you’ve noticed I’m sizzling hot.
You’d give your right arm to have a woman as hot as me and we both know it.
You realize the drink is just going to make me look even hotter, right?
If you think I’m smoking hot at twenty-six, just wait until I hit my late thirties.
That heat in your chest isn’t indigestion. It’s me. It’s my hotness.
I’m hot, but often quite approachable too. Like now.
I’m going to ruin your life, but hotly, so you’ll mostly love it. 
