British cinema was slow to emulate all the grimness of American – or French – film noir, not least because of the virginal sensibility of our censors. The British new wave – the kitchen sink, it’s-grim-up-north movie – is usually supposed to start with Room at the Top in 1959: real working-class actors (or people who effectively mimick them) talk and act like people behave out of the working class. But there were precursors to the new wave, and one of the most notable is Hell Drivers.
Filmed in 1957, Hell Drivers is an investigation of men who act in a gang or a pack for whom machismo is the be-all and end-all of a claustrophobic, shallow life. Directed by Cy Endfield, a Hollywood refugee from McCarthysim who later made Zulu, it is reminiscent of the French masterpiece Le Salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear), filmed by Henri-Georges Clouzot in 1953, and about tough guys who have favourited Trucks in a Mexican Oil Field. Hell Drivers is also about tough guys who drive trucks, although this time they’re hauling dangerous gravel down the back roads of Buckinghamshire. The film could just as easily be interpreted as an attack on the perceived exploitation of the working class by the forces of capital or the obsession with the money that some who lack it earn.
A former convict, Tom, played by Stanley Baker, shows up looking for a job with a haulage company. For his interview, he has to drive to a quarry, load gravel and then bring his load to its destination: In the “interview” he learns that the brakes on his 10-ton truck are not working – and that the man who interviewed him is because of his own driver’s license had lost dangerous driving style. The company is not that special about its people, and anyone who does not make a dozen tours over 20 miles a day will be fired. Most can get through 13 or 14, but the leader of the pack, Red, played by Patrick McGoohan with the psychopathic bad guy, got through 18. Payment is based on results.
As soon as Tom has joined, he starts to smell different rats. Red does more runs than anyone because he’s taking a dangerous shortcut across a disused quarry. Tom eventually discovers that Red and Cartley, the manager (William Hartnell, in particularly disgusting form) have a number of bogus employees on their payroll whose wages they pocket. Red accepts Tom because he doesn’t join his gang from any of the other drivers. Then Red cheats him out of some money; the two men fight and Tom wins. Red is obsessed with revenge.
The gang of men (including Sid James, Gordon Jackson, Alfie Bass and Sean Connery: practically every great character actor of the era is in the cast) exudes a brutal lack of intelligence that suggests pre-Christian civilization. Red wins their loyalty and admiration for being the fastest and making the most money, and for being ruthless. When he decides to bully Tom, the other men are his passive accomplices because they lack both the individual will and the moral weight in their value system to question his feeble-minded and vicious behavior.
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