Thunder Road

Thunder Road is a 1958 American black-and-white drama–crime film directed by Arthur Ripley and starring Robert Mitchum, who also wrote the story. The supporting cast features Gene Barry, Jacques Aubuchon, Keely Smith, James Mitchum, Sandra Knight, and Peter Breck. The film's plot concerns running bootleg moonshine in the mountains of Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee in the late 1950s. Thunder Road became a cult film and continued to play at drive-in movie theaters in some southeastern states through the 1970s and 1980s. Plot Lucas Doolin (Robert Mitchum) works in the family moonshine business, running liquor his father distills to clandestine distribution points throughout the South in his hot rod. However, Lucas has more problems than evading government "revenuers". Both a hothead and a fatalist, he is concerned that his teen-aged younger brother Robin (James Mitchum), who is also his mechanic, will be tempted into following in his footsteps. An aggressive urban gangster, Carl Kogan (Jacques Aubuchon), is trying to gain control of the independent local moonshine producers and their distribution points. Dead shiners strewn along Thunder Road prove he is willing to kill anyone who stands in his way. Determined Treasury agent Troy Barrett (Gene Barry) is drawn in to stop the bloodshed, and its cause. Bartlett's attempt to engage Lucas are thrown right back in his face. The stakes rise when an attempt by Kogan to kill Lucas results in the deaths of another moonshine driver (Mitchell Ryan) mistaken for him and one of Bartlett's men.