Joe ‘Tom’ Yeatly (Stanley Baker), a drifter who has learned of an open position as a driver delivering loads of gravel due, after passing an interview from the company manager (William Hartnell) and a test run to verify that he is reckless enough for the demanding pace, is hired as the driver for truck 13. Tom, a loner who isolated from the rest of roughneck drivers, quickly
becomes friends with the other outcast Gino Rossi (Herbert Lom) and Italian POW who remained in the UK after the war and Lucy (Peggy Cummins) becoming entangled in a romantic triangle as Lucy’s fascination with Tom grows. In addition to the dangerous pace required by the manager, to meet their trip quotas the all the drivers speed and endanger themselves and other cars on the road, Tom must also contend with the bullying and cruel driver foreman ‘Red’ Redman (Patrick McGoohan.) Protecting the secret of why he is a drifter and without a recent employment record, Tom has to navigate the treacherous waters of a love triangle and the distrust and hostility of his fellow drivers.

All the elements of a decent-to-good noir are present in Hell Drivers and yet the actual assembly leaves much to be desired. Most of the character motivations are simply too rudimentary to inspire much engagement. The truckers are crude lot, drinking and squabbling without anything to define them as characters and not caricatures. I commented to my sweetie-wife as we watched that all of the men could be used as example of ‘toxic’ masculinity. Without any actual depth to the characters, it is less a story more just a plot. It is late in the film’s running time that we see what is motivating Tom’s need for money and had that been hinted at earlier as a mystery it could have provided a hook upon which to hang the audience’s interest.

Another element of the filmmaking that it difficult to suspend disbelief is the reliance on ‘undercranking’ the camera to simulate the speeding of the dump trucks. The motion was speeded up artificially it was impossible to accept that these trucks were cornering without rolling side-over-side.

That said, an additional bit of interest in Hell Drivers is the numerous future stars that appear in small roles. Beyond the actors already mentioned in my review this film also boasts, pre-Bond Sean Connery, Pre-Man from Uncle David MacCallum, and Jill Ireland. With a slightly tighter script this could have been a 1st class noir instead it is closer to a melodrama and at that it is merely serviceable.

The entire film can be found on YouTube.