‘They Drive By Night’ is a British movie made in 1938 and not to be confused with a film of the same name made in the US in 1940 which some people do. They Drive By Night is a tense drama about a man who having been released from prison at the same time as another prisoner is being executed for murdering his girlfriend, finds himself suspected of the murder of a woman who he had been friendly with before his incarceration.

The released prisoner, Shorty Matthews, gets back to his own area and looks up his female friend at her flat. He finds the woman dead and obviously to Shorty the death looks very much like murder. Shorty, thinking that with a prison record will make him the prime suspect and put him in the shadow of the noose, panics and flees the flat and the city. He hitches a lift with some lorry drivers and enters a world of hard working, hard men, massive Scammell trucks and the ‘lorry girls’ who kept the drivers company at the various transport cafes and rest stops.

Emlyn Williams who portrays Shorty does a brilliant job of showing the emotions of the wrongly accused man and it is a shame that this film and Mr Williams performance is not that widely known. This is an edge of your seat crime drama with some serious twists towards the end that I will not give away.

Those readers who are interested in historic commercial vehicles will have a bit of a treat with this film. The film also paints what looks like a reasonably realistic portrayal of the hardships suffered by those working in the haulage industry in the late 1930’s. These massive trucks had no electric start and had to be started with a starting handle and driver comforts are well below the standard that would be expected by a modern professional lorry driver.

As I said earlier this is a gripping film that keeps its secrets hidden until the end and has a pretty good final plot twist. I was delighted to discover that this film was available to view and I hope that you enjoy this movie too.