Hell Drivers

This film is a remarkably unsentimental look at life for the less fortunate in post-war Britain. There are no tour-de-force performances, but this is not a film that demands them. A group of down on their luck men, finding work, love and friendship where they can, do what they have to do to earn enough money to keep them from crime (more or less), particularly when faced by venal employers who cheat and lie to them daily. There is no union for these men, no legal recourse, no Health and Safety Executive, they have nothing except themselves and the tenuous camaraderie they forge in the down and out bed and breakfasts they have to live in. Driving trucks to ferry gravel from a quarry to a building site, they cut every corner and take their own, and every other road user's, life in their hands as they struggle to get that one more run, that might get them one more pint in the pub. A veritable "who's going to be who" of British actors - Sean Connery, David McCallum, Herbert Lom (okay, Czech, but work with me...), William Hartnell (far from the lovable Dr Who), Stanley Baker, Patrick McGoohan and Sid James (in a rare straight role) all grimly play men on edge pushed to their limits - and sometimes beyond.

Oh yes - until 1965, there were no speed limits on British roads outside urban areas, which in some respects explains the lack of police.

This underrated film, directed by Cy Endfield (Zulu) is a dour, realistic drama about an ex-con (Stanley Baker) who goes to work as a lorry driver for a crooked haulage company, only to discover that the ruthless boss and his foreman are cheating the drivers of huge amounts of money, and forcing them to work in dangerous conditions, resulting in the death of several drivers.

It benefits from a taut, BAFTA nominated screenplay by Endfield and John Kruse (better known as a documentary film maker), which pulls no punches in its realistic depiction of the genuinely life-threatening conditions that these lorry drivers had to endure.

Its chief asset, however, is the remarkably strong cast. Stanley Baker, as the ex-con determined to expose his corrupt bosses, brings a quiet strength and sincerity to his role as a basically decent guy who makes the wrong choices. It is interesting to compare Baker's performance here with his acclaimed portrayal of the ruthless, hardened gangster in Joseph Losey's 'The Criminal', made three years later.

Patrick McGoohan shines in an early role as the psychopathic lead driver, exuding genuine menace. And as for the priceless supporting cast: Herbert Lom, Sid James, Gordon Jackson, and Sean Connery in one of his earliest roles..need I say more. To sum up, Hell Drivers is a minor classic of post-war British cinema, and deserves more recognition than it has formerly feceived.

An oddball movie, a hybrid of (would be) Hollywood tough-guy melodrama and UK kitchen sink sensibility. And yes, starring Dr Who, The Prisoner, 007, Man from UNCLE and many more. Certainly the greatest cast of cult actors ever to appear together, well, ever. This movie is terrible and magnificent in equal measure. To me it is staggeringly watchable. The premise is seriously skewered yet endearing all the same: 1950s English truckdrivers behaving like 1850s American outlaws in a Never Never Land where trucks are allowed to habitually run at 80mph down country lanes without so much a peep from the plod.

McGoohan is a star turn here and Peggy Cummins makes for a surprisingly un-frigid lead (look, the UK film industry in the 1950s didn't do sexy -what do you mean Diana Dors? - proves my point!!). But the film belongs to Baker - brooding, smouldering, moral, vengeful, utterly magnificent. We don't make them like him, or like this any more.

The spirit of 30s Warner Brothers movies lives in this tough, intense thriller about men doing an impossible job-- driving gravel trucks at breakneck speed. (Like the mail service in Only Angels Have Wings, this company loses way too

many men and trucks to make economic sense, but it's great as a movie

pressure cooker for character.) Baker, a largely forgotten star who was the first real working class hero in British films and the precursor to Michael Caine et al. (which, to extend the Warner Bros. analogy, sort of makes him to British cinema what John Garfield was as the first real ethnic American star), is brooding and Eastwood-silent as a new trucker with a past, while a highly interesting cast of character actors includes not only three future movie/TV spy stars, as other

reviewers have noted, but a bunch of ace Carry On-type comedians (Sid James,

Wilfred Lawson, and Alfie Bass), Gun Crazy star Peggy Cummins, the future

Mrs. Charles Bronson (Jill Ireland) and even a Dr. Who (William Hartnell).

Writer-director Endfield, an American blacklistee whose most famous film (and Baker's) would be Zulu ten years later, clearly drew some inspiration from the international art house hit The Wages of Fear, but this movie wisely doesn't seek existential meanings and keeps its B movie soul pure-- and hardboiled.

The harsh life of a group of lorry drivers. Tension and excitement are the order of the day with this gritty British film.Most of the main players in this film went on to greater success: Stanley Baker is superb as ever. A very atmospheric film with a tense and dramatic end. If you like old British B&W thrillers, this is a must-see.