Monday, December 16, 2013

PLUNDER ROAD 1957 (OLIVE)

A truly remarkable film noir.

The film opens with five men driving thru a rainstorm to pull of a well planned heist, and pull it off they do. They get 10 million in gold from a train and then devise a way to split it into three separate loads on three separate trucks.

The men take off in 30 minute intervals so the police won't suspect anything, but plans don't go well as human error crops up. The ending is a shocking and dismal one, and this is typical of film noir.

Gene Raymond is Eddie Harris, the leader of the group. He is the level headed one who meets a very grisly fate at the end of the movie. Eddie's truck gets thru and the scheme he and his girlfriend, played by Jeanne Cooper have in store is to melt the gold down and put it in a very conspicuous place.

The rest of the cast consists of Steven Ritch who also produced this thriller and also starred in the Sam Katzman production "The Werewolf" the same year this was made, Wayne Morris, Elisha Cook, Jr., Stafford Repp, Nora Hayden and Michael Fox.

Olive gives us a beautiful Blu-Ray of this top notch film noir which is damn near a perfect film. There are really no big names here, but the actors are totally believable an all the despair and loss of film noir is here. As I stated earlier, the ending is a shocker and everyone is lost because of a very simple and common thing that happens. I won't give it away, but I do recommend you see this film.

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