There is a sort of inevitability about casting Victor Mature and Diana Dors. That is if you the reader have any passion for 1950's films as I do. They were larger than life then, and their physicality alone caught people's attention back then even if it does not now. Imagine the star of ' Demetrius and the Gladiators ' and the star of ' Passport to Shame ' meeting in a dream and insisting on their acting together and you have it. A dream for many came true to them as well as us, both with the male and female audience. Ken Hughes was a good director for them, and the screen is in stark and beautiful black and white showing off their mutual acting and physical abilities. Typecast as bad girl we all loved back then, but good at heart even when she kills in ' Yield to the Night ' (arguably her best performance) Dors shows yet again how well she could handle her sexual allure and her skills as a fine actor. Victor Mature in his rough, beat up good looks, and his equal power as a very strong actor make as I said a perfect match. And Hughes given a complex Film Noir plot does not let the audience down with trucks burning up the asphalt quite literally and corrupt men manipulating the weak and the good. No spoilers but Mature is a married man, but despite falling in love with Dors, duty to a mistaken marriage haunts him to the film's end. I enjoyed every minute of this very thrilling and sexy film (more so if the censor would have allowed) and it is well worth seeing once, and maybe more than once. Not a great film and a little bit derivative of others it somehow holds its own, and corruption in the long haul trucking business shows well the underside of British life in the mid-1950's.
Review of The Long Haul
