Under-rated at the time of its release, Cy Endfield's gritty 1957 British thriller is now rightly regarded as a classic.
Showing here as part of BBC Two's season of great British Films, the film has a tough, taut plot, and a tremendous climax. Tom Yately, played by Stanley Baker, is fresh out of prison, and looking for work. He hears that a haulage firm is hiring ballast drivers, and decides to apply.
But this is no ordinary haulage firm. There's a money-making scam afoot, and the drivers are forced to make dangerous runs at breakneck speed to fulfil the quotas.
Baker is tremendous as the naive new member of the Hell Drivers who's keen to keep his past hidden. But it's Patrick McGoohan - in his first major role - who steals the show. He's utterly stand-out as C "Red" Redman, the abrasive and unpredictable foreman who drives truck number one.
And that's not all. The cast reads like a "Who's Who" of famous faces, many of whom blossomed in the cinema and TV during the next few years. So apart from Herbert Lom and William Hartnell, look out for Sean Connery, Sid James, Alfie Bass and Gordon Jackson and David McCallum.
Tremendous.
Hell Drivers is a Film programme that first aired in 1958 and has been classified a PG certificate.
