|
Thunder Road (1958)Directed by Arthur Ripley, from a story provided by its uncredited producer and star Robert Mitchum, with a screenplay by James Atlee Phillips and Walter Wise, this B movie is the definitive moonshine bootlegging drama. Mitchum plays Lucas Doolin, who's returned from serving his country to rural North Carolina where his father Vernon (Trevor Bardette) has continued their family business of making and distributing alcohol illegally during his absence. Lucas is now the notorious wanted man, the driver of a tanker (a car that's been modified such that its gas tank can carry booze in lieu of gasoline) that the authorities haven't been able to catch. Gene Barry plays treasury agent Troy Barrett. Mitchum’s lookalike son James plays his younger brother Robin, a mechanic that Lucas allows to fix his cars but promises their mother (Francis Koon, uncredited) that he'll otherwise never participate in the family's illegal trade. Even though Lucas’s success has led to a higher concentration of policemen and federal agents in the area, the real threat to his continued exploits comes from Carl Kogan (Jacques Aubuchon), a gangster determined to buy-up or put out of business all the other bootleggers in the region which includes several neighboring states. Keely Smith, who plays Memphis nightclub singer Francie Wymore, and Sandra Knight (as Roxanna Ledbetter) who has a teenager's crush on Lucas, play women in the men's lives. |
Find your movie or DVD now @:
Most Recent Additions: Casanova Brown (1944) - full review! I Want You (1951) - full review! A Bill of Divorcement (1932) - full review! Patterns (1956) - full review! Last Train from Gun Hill (1959) - full review! Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) - full review! Hour of the Gun (1967) - full review! To Sir, with Love (1967) - full review! You'll Never Get Rich (1941) - full review! The Actress (1953) - full review! Mannequin (1937) - full review! All My Sons (1948) - full review! Mourning Becomes Electra (1947) - full review! State Fair (1945) - full review! Billy Budd (1962) - full review! Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. (1951) - full review! The Bachelor Party (1957) - full review! The Glenn Miller Story (1954) - full review! The Southerner (1945) - full review! The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966) Never on Sunday (1960) - full review! The Arrangement (1969) - full review! A Summer Place (1959) - full review! Miracle in the Rain (1956) - full review! Love Letters (1945) - full review! The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944) - full review! The Absent Minded Professor (1961) 20000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) Come and Get It (1936) - full review! The Prize (1963) - full review! This Is the Army (1943) - full review! Home from the Hill (1960) - full review! Hangmen Also Die (1943) - full review! The Shop on Main Street (1965) - full review! The Good Guys and the Bad Guys (1969) - full review! A Gathering of Eagles (1963) - full review! This Happy Breed (1944) - full review! Red-Headed Woman (1932) - full review! Waterloo Bridge (1931) - full review! Baby Face (1933) - full review! Titanic (1943) - full review! Cover Girl (1944) - full review! Saratoga Trunk (1945) - full review! Murder on the Orient Express (1974) The Young Philadelphians (1959) - full review! Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) Pocket Money (1972) - full review! Week-End at the Waldorf (1945) Judge Priest (1934) - full review! Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935) - full review! The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) Angel Face (1952) - full review! The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959) - full review! Dallas (1950) - full review! Springfield Rifle (1952) - full review! Gaslight (1940) - full review! The Gazebo (1959) - full review! Passage to Marseille (1944) - full review! The House on 56th Street (1933) - full review! Annie Get Your Gun (1950) - full review! Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) Lonelyhearts (1958) - full review! Good News (1947) - full review! Wild Rovers (1971) - full review! Lovers and Other Strangers (1970) - full review! |
||||||||||||
[Home] [Hitchcock] [Oscar's Best] [Essays] [Essential Films] [TCM Picks] [Obscure Films] [Links] [Other Reviews] [Academy Awards] [Silent Films] [Movie Index] |
||||||||||||||