Joe Yately, who everyone calls Tom, has just been released from a year in prison and is determined to start a new life. He goes to Hawletts, a contractor which transports loads of gravel from a quarry, to look for work. He is directed to Mr Cartley, the manager. Tom tells Cartley's secretary Lucy that he met a former Hawletts driver who had a serious accident. Tom assumes that there is a job available as a result. Lucy recommends him to Cartley. Cartley tells Tom that his drivers transport their ten-ton loads fast over bad roads. They are expected to deliver a minimum of twelve loads a day; if a driver falls behind, he is fired. Each run is round-trip; the top driver makes eighteen runs a day. Tom goes on a trial run with Ed, the mechanic, in truck no. 13. He narrowly avoids colliding head-on with two other Hawletts trucks speeding the other way. Cartley hires him, and he is assigned truck 13. Tom meets the other drivers, including Red, the Irish foreman and head driver. Tom befriends Gino, an Italian driver who is in love with Lucy. Red offers a £250 gold cigarette case to anyone who can make more runs than him in a day, and Tom is determined to try. However, he learns that Red has kept his place at the top by taking a very dangerous shortcut that none of the other drivers will risk any more. One evening, the drivers go to a dance at a nearby hall and start a fight. When the police are called, Tom flees the scene. Red calls him a coward and the other drivers turn on him, bullying him incessantly, impeding his runs and calling him "yellow belly." He does not fight back. Tom visits his brother Jimmy and mother in their tobacconist's shop. His mother refuses to accept money from him, blaming him for involving Jimmy in his crime and making him a cripple who needs crutches to get around. Lucy and Tom are attracted to each other, but he refuses to betray Gino. Lucy tells Tom that Cartley and Red have been scamming money by hiring five fewer drivers than the company pays for and pocketing the difference. Tom confronts Red and beats him in a fistfight. Gino offers to switch truck numbers with Tom the next day, so that the others can harass him instead of Tom for a change, to help Tom to win the cigarette case. That night, Lucy breaks up with Gino, revealing that she loves Tom. Despite his heartbreak, Gino switches numbers as arranged, not realising that Tom has given up and is waiting to catch a train for London to go back to a life of crime. Then Lucy rushes into the waiting room and tells him that Gino has been seriously injured in a crash. Distraught, they rush to the hospital, where the doctor tells them Gino is dying. Gino tells Tom, "I threw them off like we planned, for you to win. Crazy. You don't even come." Tom asks him if it was Red who caused his crash, but Gino dies without answering. Tom returns to the depot and confronts Cartley. He tells him that Gino has died and he knows why, and that he knows about the scam. Cartley offers him a share of the stolen money and Red's place in truck no. 1. Tom is having none of it, but takes truck no. 1 to pick up a load. When Red turns up, he forces Cartley to join him in what they think is truck no. 3 and sets out to silence Tom. Red guesses that Tom will take the dangerous shortcut through the quarry, and they lie in wait there. When Tom appears with his truck full of ballast, Red sideswipes him several times, finally forcing him off the road and onto the edge of the quarry, where the truck dangles precariously, with Tom knocked unconscious. But the brakes on Red's truck, which Red finally realises is Tom's no. 13, fail and he and Cartley drive off the edge and are killed. Tom wakes up and escapes just before his own truck tumbles into the quarry. Lucy runs to him.
Hell Drivers is notable as being an early film for several actors who later went on to more illustrious careers. It provided early appearances for Jill Ireland and David McCallum, who met and married during the film's production. It featured Danger Man and The Prisoner actor Patrick McGoohan, and was the third film role for Sean Connery. William Hartnell was the first actor to play the role of The Doctor in the BBC's Doctor Who; Gordon Jackson appeared as the butler Hudson in ITV's Upstairs, Downstairs. Sid James was a regular supporting actor in British films at the time and appeared in most of the Carry On series. Herbert Lom starred in the ABC Television series The Human Jungle before playing the hapless Commissioner Dreyfus in The Pink Panther film franchise. Cy Endfield directed Stanley Baker in Zulu. Others including Robin Bailey, Charles Lamb, John Horsley and Wensley Pithey featured regularly in British films and television thereafter. Long-established actor Wilfrid Lawson also made an appearance. In 1966, he co-starred with Patrick McGoohan in the final black-and-white episode of Danger Man, "Not So Jolly Roger".
Production
The character of Yately comes from Blaenllechau in the Rhondda, near actor Stanley Baker's birthplace of Ferndale. Footage of a Hawlett's lorry going over the edge of a quarry was reused in "The Heiress" episode of the Rank Organisation television seriesInterpol Calling. The vehicles used in the film were the Dodge 100 "Kew" parrot-nosed truck, with tipper body. They were lent for filming by W W Drinkwater of Willesden, North London.
Home media
The film was released on DVD, with various extras, in 2007 by Network Distributing in an anamorphically enhanced ratio of 1.77:1. A little of the original 1.96:1 VistaVision image is cropped at the sides, which is just noticeable in a few shots. On 20 March 2017, Network Distributing issued a Blu-ray, with the film restored by the BFI, and included a swathe of special features.
