Hell Drivers

Tom has just come out of prison and tells nobody about it. He takes a job driving lorries for a haulage firm. The work is simple: a set number of runs a day from the gravel pit to the town. Payment is per run, there is no speed limit, and nobody checks the condition of the vehicles. The company profits from that arrangement, and the drivers go as far as killing each other. Cy Endfield directs. Stanley Baker plays Tom, Patrick McGoohan plays Red who leads the crew, William Hartnell plays the operator Cartley. Herbert Lom, Sid James, Gordon Jackson and, in a small part, Sean Connery are also in it. Endfield was American and went to Britain after being blacklisted during the McCarthy years; in his early years there he worked without his name on the credits. This is among his best known British films. Its interest is not racing but subcontracting. The drivers work independently, have no insurance, are compelled to speed, and the system itself produces the crash. British cinema of the fifties rarely stated that so plainly. The lorry sequences were shot on real roads with real vehicles at speed, and the passages on narrow lanes are among the most effective in the genre. Who it is for: viewers who like British noir and thrillers built on labour. Who it is not for: the characters are types, the romance does not fit at all, and the final section slides into melodrama.