Daily Archives: July 20, 2016

Hell Drivers
Directed by Cy Endfield
Written by John Kruse and Cy Endfield
1957/UK
The Rank Organization/Aqua Film Productions
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Lucy, Hawlett Trucking Secretary: You think I’m flinging myself at you, don’t you?

Tom Yately: You’re doing a fair imitation.[/box]

This film has its merits but is not for those with even a touch of car sickness or, ultimately, for me.

Tom Yately (Stanley Baker) has been recently released from prison.  He learns about opportunities for skilled drivers at Hawlett Trucking Company from a friend.  He assumes a fake identity, fakes a license, passes an arduous driving test and is hired.  His fellow drivers are a bunch of thugs and drifters.  They must deliver 12 loads of ballast a day over bad roads or be fired.  The lead driver and foreman is Red (Patrick McGoohan), a real miscreant who can deliver 18 loads a day and holds the coveted 22-carat gold cigarette case awarded to the fastest driver.  Tom decides he must own that cigarette case.

Tom is assisted by his only friend, Gino (Herbert Lom) a warm Italian trucker.  Tom’s efforts to keep his nose clean and best Red have earned him the ruthless enmity of all the other drivers, who do everything in their power to sabotage him.  To add to his problems, company secretary Lucy (Peggy Cummins), whom Gino loves, keeps coming on to Tom.  With Sean Connery as a trucker and David McCallum as Tom’s lame younger brother.

It’s a lot of fun to watch this group of British actors who would go on to major careers in TV and film starting out.  I thought Lom was the highlight.  Unfortunately, at least half the film is devoted to ear splitting car chases which became tedious by the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV9Vs9tOEaI

Trailer

I Was a Teenage Werewolf
Directed by Gene Fowler Jr.
Written by Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel
1957/USA
Sunset Productions
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Tony Rivers: People bug me. [/box]

The horror film is updated for the rock ‘n roll era.

Tony Rivers (Michael Landon) is a budding juvenile delinquent.  The only people that see the good in him are his widower father and his girlfriend. He has a hair trigger temper and hates to be touched, even lightly.  He gets into a violent fist fight and a kindly detective suggests that he go for treatment from psychiatrist Dr. Alfred Brandon.  Tony resists seeing a head shrinker.  Then we move to a Halloween party that Tony and his buddy have organized, complete with practical jokes and an R&R song performed by a bongo playing teenager.

Another altercation at the party gets Tony to agree to see Brandon, who uses hypnotism as part of his treatment.  What he doesn’t know is that the evil doctor is doing research on returning man to his most primitive and Tony has been selected for his special proclivities. The title tells the rest of the story.

This was a fun way to ease back in to my movie watching schedule.  It’s not great or anything but is entertaining enough and captures a certain spirit of the late 50’s quite well. It was Landon’s big screen debut.  He would go on to be a fixture of prime time TV in such series as “Bonanza” and “Little House on the Prairie”.

Trailer