***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.
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.