Violent Road (1958) User Reviews

"Drivers Wanted. Dangerous Work. High Pay."

[raegan_butcher · 6/10 · 25 December 2008]

While I can't say I prefer this film to either Wages of Fear or Sorcerer, I agree that it is pretty enjoyable. Some of the wisecracks and banter are pure 1950's hard-boiled pulp, and Brian Keith has never been better as a certain type of swaggering man's man particular to that Era.

"Walker would shrink his own mother's head for a dollar."

"I'm not allergic to a buck, either."

"You pull a stunt like that again I'll rub yer head in the sand til its hamburger!"

While all of this is certainly amusing in a time capsule kind of way, the film itself plays like the storyboards to a much more tension-filled film. Compared to the trials and tribulations undergone by the doomed men in both Wages of Fear and Sorcerer, the journey in Violent Road is rather muted. But still, an enjoyable way to spend an hour and twenty eight minutes.

A remake of "The Wages of Fear" with the social commentary removed.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 22 May 2019]

One of the great French films of the 1950s was "The Wages of Fear". This tense movie was at heart an attack on capitalism....and this caused a predicament for American studios. They wanted to remake the film....after all the main plot is dynamite! But they didn't want to make the film an attack on capitalism. So, they came up with a ruse....the entire plot all rests on chemicals that are needed for the rocket industry and the rocket industry is needed to protect America. So, it's a film with patriotism and anti-communism in the American version...whereas the French could easily be seen as a pro-communist picture! Unfortunately, by changing the plot, the risk to the drivers' lives made less sense...as there SHOULD have been soldiers/cops along the route to ensure the safety of the drivers. They also should have checked the route thoroughly to make sure it was passable. They also should have thoroughly checked the drivers to be sure they weren't deranged--as one of them clearly is yet they let him drive the rocket fuel!

So, aside from being more illogical than "Wages of Fear", is the movie any good? Yes and no. The story is modestly engaging and the actors try their best...but much of the tension seems more muted and the flashbacks throughout the film seem like filler. Overall, an okay film remake of a much better movie.

One Hazardous Trip

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 19 June 2012]

The Violent Road casts Brian Keith taking on a really hazardous trip, transporting three components of rocket fuel, any one of them could reek havoc of some kind if it is jarred. Making it worse Keith has to travel over an abandoned road with little traffic that is rocky. It's like traveling with nitroglycerin with triple the risk.

The place storing the stuff has to move because a military rocket experiment went horribly wrong and crashed into the town causing death and destruction. Keith also has to pick five other men willing to make the risk. One is picked for him, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. who is a scientist and knows how to handle the fuel.

The other four are Sean Garrison, Perry Lopez, Arthur Batanides and Dick Foran. Foran's portrayal is a poignant one. A former Marine who was mandatory retired he can't get used to it. He just drinks all day and bores the young Marines at the bar that Keith finds him. Foran's scenes with wife Ann Doran are truly touching.

The Violent Road is a nice no frills B picture from Warner Brothers, the kind that used to fill the second bill on a program. Now that stuff would be found on television and shortly Keith and Zimbalist would be seen there often.

Has its Moments

[dougdoepke · 20 June 2012]

This little B-movie may be a long way from its classic French predecessor The Wages of Fear (1953), but it still manages a few shudders. Six guys drive tanker trucks down a winding mountain road, with a load of rocket fuel. One false move and they're less than toast. Of course, there're the inevitable hazards-- a runaway bus, sloppy brakes, and who forgot to tighten the fuel valve, plus, a wild- driving kid (Garrison).

Good thing Brian Keith's in charge. He's perfect for the blue-collar role, though poor Zimbalist Jr. looks a little lost, even as a professor doing double duty as a driver. Notice how they work the good-looking girls into a macho story-line. The movie knows its drive-in audience will get tired of the ugly guys. Also, the canny producers went out and got one of Hollywood's best actresses, Ann Doran, for the heavy-duty role of the Sarge's wife. And, if memory serves, the Kennedy Meadows road northwest of Lone Pine was used for the mountain hair-raiser scenes.

Unfortunately, this is the type of solid little B-movie that would soon drive off into the sunset.

Payment on Delivery

[sol1218 · 7/10 · 20 June 2012]

***SPOILERS*** Remake of the 1953 spine tingling French action film "Wages of Fear" the film "Violent Road" has a pumped up with his python like muscles bursting in every direction, where later in the film he's forced to take his shirt off before it rips apart, Brian Keith as maverick trucker Mitch Barton. Barton is hired by Cyclone Rocket Company boss Mr. Nelson, Ed Prentiss, to drive a three truck convoy of dangerous and explosive rocket flue components across the desert to a new place where the company is re-located.

Offered $5,000.00 for their work Barton doesn't have any trouble finding volunteers to drive the truck cross country through dangerous side road, thus avoiding population centers, to their destination. One of the truck drivers is the spaced out and guilt ridden George Lawrence played by Efrem Zimbalist Jr. It's Lawrence who's in fact responsible for the fiery death of his entire family, as well as hundreds others, when a rocket that he had launched at the Cyclone Rocket Launch Center smashed into a nearby town killing everyone in it!

The tense and dangerous ride has many short falls for Barton and his half dozen drivers where one of them the washed out and alcoholic US Marine Frank "Sarge" Miller, Dick Foran, loses his life trying to plug a valve that's leaking out dangerous chemicals in his truck. It's the last ten or so minutes when the action in the movie becomes almost unbearable to watch! With time and fuel running out Barton makes the choice to go all out and damn the toreadors or truck load of dangerous chemicals to make it to home base, the new Cyclone Rocket Plant, before the sun goes down.

***SPOILERS*** Predictable ending, if you saw either the movies "Wages of Fear" or it's later , after "Violent Road", re-make the 1977 thriller "Sorcerer" in the final outcome of the ride into and out of hell by Mitch Barton & Co. But It's the final few minutes in the movie that were far more uplifting then in the two other far more superior films about the same subject.

Good ol' Cigar Shomping, Hazmat Hauling 'B'

[srkoho · 7/10 · 19 February 2022]

The cigar chomping executive hires a group of tinhorn drivers led by a re-tread trucker to haul rocket fuel by truck across a treacherous route. A strict timeline and big pay outs await for a successful convoy across desert and difficult backroads. A entertaining'B'film which I could imagine sitting in a theater and watching back in the day. Brian Keith never once face-palmed even with all the challenges he faced as trail boss.

lesser remake

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 16 October 2022]

Trucker Mitch Barton (Brian Keith) has three days to transport explosive rocket fuel over a dangerous mountain road. He had lied, but the owner has no choice. He has no trucks and no drivers. The company provides the trucks and Mitch recruits a few hard-lucked drivers.

This is an American remake of The Wages of Fear (1953). This one is only a shadow of its superior predecessor. The tension never gets that high. It doesn't have the fear. Not enough of the road looks dangerous. There are moments which suggest at what this could have been. This one has less to say about the wages. Neither the fear nor the wages are all there. It's all a little less.

Puny Remake of a Classic

[henri sauvage · 3/10 · 22 June 2012]

Six desperate men are hired to transport a dangerous cargo over a rough desert road, lured by the promise of a big bonus -- if they survive the trip. The main protagonists are a tough, cynical womanizer (Brian Keith) and a late-middle-aged failure (Dick Foran) who's at the end of his rope.

Does any of this sound familiar? The movie -- just like a certain classic foreign film which will remain unacknowledged by the parties responsible for this turkey -- even begins with a literal bang, as an out-of-control rocket takes out a schoolyard full of kids and moms. (Which is probably the one-and-only truly shocking moment in this entire movie, mostly due to its gratuitous body count.)

Unfortunately, comparing "Violent Road" to "Wages of Fear" is a bit like comparing a bottle of stale malt liquor (with a couple of cigarette butts floating in it) to a shot of Casa Noble crystal tequila. OK, I exaggerate: Watching "Violent Road" wasn't nearly as unpleasant as downing said bottle of stale malt liquor, butts and all, would no doubt be. But the fact remains this could serve as a primer on how to take the elements of a classic thriller and botch every single one of them.

Instead of a series of fiendish obstacles which will test the limits of the drivers' ingenuity, courage and endurance, they're challenged first by a remarkably goofy sequence involving one of the phoniest boulders in cinematic history.

When they reach a spot where a landslide has almost completely blocked the road, as the first truck negotiates this narrow pass, the vibration dislodges some gravel, a few rocks and a paper-mache boulder -- just one, mind you. As this massive rock is bounding like a jackrabbit with its tail on fire down that near-vertical slope one of the drivers comes out of nowhere and *deflects it* with a brilliantly-executed flying kick!

Now that was a pretty amazing stunt, but from the size of the boulder, if it had been the real thing it would have weighed at least half a ton. Can you say "shattered kneecap, tibia and fibula"? Boy howdy, but those 50s-era fuc -- er, truckers were REALLY tough.

Note also that unlike "The Wages of Fear", instead of nitro, these guys are transporting the separate components of rocket fuel (hydrazine, concentrated hydrogen peroxide, and nitric acid) which means if even one of the trucks doesn't get through, the whole exercise will have been pointless. So you can safely bet all the trucks will reach their destination, because if there's one thing that's certain about this film it's that it will remain uncontaminated by any trace of that wimpy, Frenchified bleak existentialism.

So much for suspense, then.

Although just as in "Wages of Fear" they kill off Dick Foran's character near the end of the film, here it's done in a way which mostly makes him look like an idiot, while leaving Brian Keith's character entirely blameless. (No moral ambiguities here, Bub!) Seriously: Foran discovers a cap on a nitric acid tank that's been jarred loose and is leaking, yet despite having been warned about how nasty and corrosive the stuff is, he tightens it with his bare hand? Don't truckers who transport hazardous cargo have toolboxes, maybe with a pipe wrench or even some heavy-duty rubber gloves?

The boys encounter their next big challenge when the brakes fail on an oncoming school bus -- yet it still manages to negotiate several hairpin turns as it barrels down a steep mountain road. Just in the nick of time, the skilled and courageous drivers pull their trucks off the road. Whew!

Then the brakes fail on one of the trucks, but Keith wrastles it down from on top of a mountain. Wotta man! And no one will leave their seats during the protracted towing sequence.

Don't get me wrong: I admire Brian Keith as an actor. That still doesn't make the way this ends any easier to take. I wanted to go all Elvis on the TV screen, for the blatant thumb-in-the-eye they give to the original.

But if you have some time to kill and this is your only option versus, say, a documentary on antique Serbo-Croatian mustache cups, hey, go for it.

What obstacle ?

[gerrys_h · 5/10 · 7 February 2022]

Well I couldnt help but notice that the first real obstacle on the road (a falling 500lb. Boulder) was easily drop kicked out of the truck path. In reality this stone would have snapped his leg like a tooth pick.

Danger and tension as truckers haul volatile rocket fuel across desert terrain.

[Hup234! · 9/10 · 16 March 1999]

Brian Keith, with his patented wry and cynical wit, is perfectly cast to lead the heavy truck convoy of desperate men hauling explosive cargo in a race against time. This is a plot similar to "The Wages Of Fear (1954) and "Sorcerer" (1975), so it couldn't help but be a nailbiter if done well...and it is. But the script resists the temptation to lay down wall-to-wall action in favor of good character development through flashbacks, a well-used device but an effective one. Leith Stevens provides a good music score, even accompanying a trucker as he drives along singing "Breezin' Along With The Breeze" (before the inevitable problems begin, naturally). Violent Road was filmed near Lone Pine, California, with plenty of shots of crumbling cliffs, laboring diesel engines, spinning tires...all the neat stuff that cinema-action fans like, but with enough celluloid devoted to getting us to know the men behind the steering wheels and why they wanted the job to begin with. Recommended for all.

Violent Road Runs Out of Steam **

[edwagreen · 5/10 · 21 June 2012]

The picture should have had the title of Danger Ahead.

It's basically the story of truckers trying to get dangerous chemical moved to the new location.

In the midst of all this, one of our truckers, who is substituting for his alcoholic brother, breaks out singing Rolling Along With A Breeze. That song was appropriate for the 1954 film "The Long Long Trailer with Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz and Marjorie Main. It was ridiculous here to say the least.

The film tries to reveal the personal lives of the truckers on this mission. It could have been certainly more exciting given the nature of the topic. Instead, we get explosions, death on the road, and a lot of broken bones.

Goof

[tepagejr-67911 · 10 February 2022]

When the truck looses its brakes and is out of control. In the closeups and overheads the hill rises on driver's side. In the longshot the hill is on the passenger side.