Unpretentious social realist British crime film, directed by Welles acolyte Cy Endfield in the fashion of Jules Dassin's Thieves' Highway. Like Dassin, Endfield was forced out of the US because of perceived anti-capitalist beliefs, and pitched up in the UK. Endfield's early productions in this country were formula cheapies released a pseudonym.
For Hell Drivers, he returned to his own name and politics. It is a proletariat story about how the workers fight each other and the bosses exploit their division. This must have been influenced by Henri-Georges Clouzot's beautiful, fatalistic, magnificent trucker-noir The Wages of Fear. Hell Drivers isn't quite in that class, but it can stand comparison with any of Hollywood's haulage melodramas.
This has an unbelievable cast, top to bottom, Banks to Peters. Patrick McGoohan and the great Stanley Baker excel as the toughest maniacs in the drivers pool, half way between a bonus and oblivion. But Sean Connery is in there too, and a hard to recognise Jill Ireland. Herbert Lom, Peggy Cummins, William Hartnell. It goes on and on.
The exciting truck chases are extremely well filmed. There's a low budget, but lots of compelling action, and its message still stands. Prominent among of a group of extremely under regarded British post war gangster films.