Thunder Road

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For other uses, see Thunder Road (disambiguation).
Thunder Road
Directed by Arthur Ripley
Produced by Robert Mitchum
Written by Robert Mitchum
James Atlee Phillips
Walter Wise
Starring Robert Mitchum
Gene Barry
Music by Jack Marshall
Robert Mitchum
Don Raye
Distributed by United Artists
Release date(s) May 10, 1958
Running time 93 min
Language English
Budget low
IMDb profile

Thunder Road is the title of a 1958 movie about running moonshine in the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee in the early 1950s. It was directed by Arthur Ripley and starred Robert Mitchum, who also produced the film and co-wrote the screenplay, and is rumored to have directed much of the film himself, uncredited. The film became a cult classic and continued to play at drive-in movie theaters in some Southeastern markets through the 1970s and 1980s. Mitchum played an anti-hero and rebel against the government, which may have contributed to the film's popularity. In the film, he drove a hot-rodded 1950 Ford coupe with a custom tank in the back for moonshine and later a 1957 Ford coupe with the same alterations. Peter Breck was cast as a rival driver. A young Mitchell Ryan appeared as a decoy driver. Suave Gene Barry appeared as a federal agent devoted to catching Mitchum's character, and Mitchum's son James Mitchum played his younger brother, which worked extremely well due to the close physical resemblance. Some of the scenes were filmed in Lake Lure, North Carolina. The role of Mitchum's character's younger brother was originally written for Elvis Presley per Mitchum's request. The script was submitted to Elvis in Los Angeles by Mitchum personally. Elvis was eager to play the role but Elvis's manager, Col. Tom Parker, stepped in and had demanded that Elvis would be paid an enormous sum of money. His request was more than the entire budget for the movie, so that was the end of that negotiation.

[edit] History

The film was based loosely on an incident in which a driver transporting moonshine was said to have crashed to his death on Kingston Pike in Knoxville, Tennessee somewhere between Bearden Hill and Morrell Road. Per Metro Pulse writer Jack Renfro, the incident occurred in 1952 and may have been witnessed by James Agee who passed the story on to Mitchum.

The movie's theme song, "The Ballad of Thunder Road", was later recorded by Mitchum and became a popular single record, although Mitchum's rendition does not appear in the film itself.

Thunder Road certainly remains Mitchum's most popular cult film by a country mile, but toward the end of his life he often admitted to interviewers that his one real career regret was that he hadn't taken the effort as producer to make it into a better film than it was.

[edit] Legacy

The film's legacy has grown over time, in part due to Bruce Springsteen's classic 1975 song "Thunder Road", which the film, or rather the poster for the film inspired, as Springsteen didn't see the film, but only saw the poster in the lobby of the cinema.

Various other things have been given the same name since then, including a roller coaster at the Carowinds theme park in Charlotte, North Carolina, which was originally themed after the film. Dollywood, another theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee also had an attraction called "Thunder Road" which was directly based on the movie. A motion simulator ride, the attraction used a film that featured a bootlegger chase down a mountain road with ATF agents.

[edit] External links

See also: US ROUTE 70, Thunder Road Highway - Wikipedia

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