They Drive By Night - 1938 UKEmyln Williams is a minor crook who is getting out of Prison after doing an 18 month bit. The warden gives him his, One Pound and 6 pay, and then Williams is shown the Prison gates. Outside, there is a large crowd. There is going to be a hanging in the Prison in just a few minutes. A man, Simon Lack, approaches Williams and asks if he knew the condemned. Williams shakes his head and asks Lack the same question. "He is my brother". Answers Lack. Just then the 9 0'clock bell starts to toll. The hanging is over. Williams now heads into London and back to his old stomping grounds. He stops at the café of a friend, Ronald Shiner. Williams asks if his girl, Alice, is still around. Shiner says, "yes, still at the same place". Shiner then ask Williams if he is going to stay clean or get mixed up with the same bunch? Williams just smiles and heads out.Williams buys a small bunch of flowers and heads for his girl Alice's flat. He sneaks in to surprise her. A surprise is in order, but it is Williams who gets the buzz. He finds the woman dead in her bed. Williams quickly wipes down any fingerprints he might have left, grabs the flowers and exits. He beats the feet down the stairs but has the bad luck to run into the landlady. One look at William's face is enough to tell her something is wrong. Williams flees the building and bolts down the street. The landlady has a quick look upstairs and starts screaming. Williams parks his rear in an all day cinema to hide and calm down. Should he go to the Police? He just got out of jail! They will never believe him he decides. He will wait here till dark. Then he will split town. Once it is dark, he exits the theatre and grabs a bus to the end of the line. He will then hike to a trucker's stop and hopefully catch a ride up north. He buys a paper which of course already has his name and description all over the front page. It is pouring rain when Williams hits the trucker stop. He asks around for a ride. Driver, Alan Jeayes, offers to take him up to Manchester if that will help. One of the other drivers Jack Vyvian, starts to look at the description in the paper, then at Williams. He comes over to Williams and Jeayes, Vyvian shows Jeayes the newspaper and points at Williams. And so starts this superb UK thriller. The film features plenty of twists and turns and some outstanding photography. Well worth watching if you can find it. (B/W)

I saw this movie for the first time a few days ago and I was glued to my seat for the entire period by its pace and photography which though low-key is extremely moody and effective. The pace is electric but due to low budgeting as all British movies of the period dampens the viewing a little. What the film lacks in production value it makes up amply in its narrativeEmlyn Williams captures all the emotions of a Wrong Man syndrome a la Hitchcock.The psychopathic Professor chills with his menacing looks. The only flaw is that the film starts with something to talk about the lorry drivers (which is incidentally the title) but strays away.Quite surely WB had this pictorial gem cleared from their lists to provide better promotional value to their film of the same name made in the US with George Raft.

"They Drive By Night" (not to be confused with the Bogart) had a rare showing in a New York theater in 2009, as part of a series on British film noir. The only reason the theater screening matters is because of crowd reaction. And the reaction to this film, especially the final sequences, was absolutely joyous.The movie is at least 2/3rds over before one of the main characters appears, the former schoolmaster Walter Hoover, played by the unbelievably urbane, stick-figure-thin Ernest Thesiger. The camera starts on his hands, so you only see what he's doing-- pasting newspaper clippings about lurid murders into a scrapbook-- but when his face is finally revealed, the whole audience seemed to sit a bit straighter, and we stayed that way through the end, reacting with open delight to this character's every movement, his every phrase.I mean to take nothing away from the star of the film, Emlyn Williams (who wrote almost as many films as he starred in), but Ernest Thesiger was capable of turning a lousy movie into a watchable one, and a good movie into an unforgettable one. This is definitely the latter.

They Drive By Night is an amazing British classic. It has to be one of the most sombre British films of the thirties.It is also extremely interesting as as a timepieceThe truck drivers and their local pit stops are all captured well in this slice of early British cinema. Shorty , played by Emlyn Williams in a superb performance is released from prison and sets off to see his girlfriend, he discovers her dead body in an amazingly powerful sequence. Terrified he will get the blame he goes on the run hitching a ride from a sympathetic truck driver.On the way he encounters an assortment of various characters , all diverse and entertaining. This film is wonderfully acted by all the cast. If you don't blink you will see William Hartnell who played TV's very first Dr. Who as a bus conductor.Much later as the tone of the film completely changes from gripping thriller to downright terror he meets Ernest Thesiger who in a remarkable performance completely dominates the last 25 minutes of the film as a very eccentric chap indeed.It is a tragedy that the director Arthur B. Woods died so young, he displayed a unique talent. If you can search this film out you will be highly rewarded with a film that you will never forget.