MartinHafer "Plunder Road" is a low budget crime film with a few familiar faces...and many unfamiliar ones. The leading men you might not be too familiar to you, as the once pretty Gene Raymond and Wayne MOrris are a bit older and more rugged in this film--and I actually think this makes them more believable and I liked their work late in their career. Another one of the crooks is Elisha Cook--a very familiar character actor.The story is pretty familiar because caper movies were VERY popular during that era. A group of masked robbers bump off a shipment of gold on a train and their planning is meticulous. However, true to most caper films, things start to fall apart during the getaway. The gang is split into teams and one by one, things start to happen to the teams.Overall, a well directed and interesting cheap film noir flick-- worth seeing if you like the genre and quite engaging. Not among the best of its type (such as "Asphalt Jungle", "The Killing", "Rififi" or "Grand Slam")....but still quite nice.

kapelusznik18 ***SPOILLERS*** Pulling off the biggest-10 million dollars worth-train robbery in history was the easy part but being able to get it-the gold-out of the country was a lot more difficulty to the train robbers who pulled it off. Splitting up in two trucks and one oil tanker the five desperado's lead by man of the hour Eddie, Gene Raymond,, and his partner former race driver Frankie, Steven Rich, make a run for it to L.A where their to convert the cold into spear parts for their cars to avoid detection by the police. On the way to L.A one of the robbers Roly Adams, Stefford Repp, has his police radio turned when the police check his truck and panics ending up getting shot as he on the run turned to shoot at them.It's Skeets, Elisha Cook Jr., and his driving partner Commando,Wayne Morris, who when they stopped to get gas become involved in the murder of an elderly gas station attendant, who's social security check alone can't pay the bills, who noticed Commando dropping his gun who in return iced the old man from keeping him from talking to the police. It wasn't long that a police road block had the two arrested and later face not only a robbery but murder charge. It's now Eddie & Frankie who are on the run who make it to L.A where Eddie's girlfriend Fran, Jeanne Cooper, is waiting for them with a getaway car,***SPOILERS***Packing the car with gold fenders- that was smelted at Fran's garage- it's now just a matter of time for the trio-Eddie Frankie & Fran-to get on a boat going to, via the Panama Canal, Libson Portugal where, in them being able to speak Portuguese, they will be home sweet home free. That's until a fender bender on the L.A freeway by an absent minded feather brained woman driver put a wrench into their perfect crime. Frankie making a run for it is shot by the highway police and Eddie, the brains of the outfit, tries to make his getaway by jumping off an overpass and ends up getting crushed when an 18 wheeler runs over him. As for Fran she survives but will be spending time in prison not on the sunny beaches of Lisbon sipping wine and and getting sun tanned like she planned to do with her late lover Eddie.

zardoz-13 Director Hubert Cornfield's heist caper "Plunder Road" was made when Hollywood prohibited criminals from getting away with their criminal endeavors. Five men, Eddie Harris (Gene Raymond of "Red Dust"), Commando Munson (Wayne Morris of "Paths of Glory"), Skeets Jonas (Elisha Cook Jr., of "The Maltese Falcon"), Roly Adams (Stafford Repp of ABC-TV's "Batman") and Frankie Chardo (Steven Ritch of "Seminole Uprising"), stage a daring night time robbery of a train transporting gold bullion to San Francisco. The first ten minutes or so concern the actual hold-up itself with the hoodlums gassing the guards and slugging the train engineer unconscious. The next forty-five minutes depicts the road trip that the robbers take in three separate vehicles. Eddie and Frankie cruise along in a tanker truck. Commando and Skeets drive a rental truck with coffee used to conceal their load of the bullion, while Roly drives a truck carrying furniture. Cornfield has pared this crime caper down to its absolute essentials. Roly is caught first when he doesn't make it through a roadblock because he leaves his police band radio turned on. He makes a futile effort to get away, but the police shoot him in the back. Eddie and Frankie roll up not long afterward and spot the authorities taking Roly's body away in an ambulance. Meanwhile, Commando and Skeets pull up to fill up at a gas station. Commando gets into a conversation with the old-timer who is filling up the truck. The old-timer inquires about his oil. When Commando raises the hood, his automatic pistol falls out and he has to murder the attendant. Finally, Eddie and Frankie make it to Los Angeles without incident and smelt their gold bullion down at a warehouse. Pollution officials interrupt Eddie and company and write them a citation. By this time, Eddie's girlfriend Fran Werner (Jeanne Cooper of "The Intruder") begs him to call things off, but Eddie complains that they have gone through too much to back out now. Our protagonists melt the gold down into hubcaps and other body parts for a Cadillac and cruise onto the freeway when disaster strikes. As Frankie is tooling along the freeway, they pass an accident, and a woman driver behind them spends too much time rubbernecking at a crashed car and rear-ends our protagonists. Naturally, the uniformed cops appear to help untangle the bumpers when they notice that Eddie's car has a gold bumper.There isn't much room for characterization in this taut drama. Similarly, there isn't much sentiment either. Cornfield generates suspense and tension from the moment that the thieves pack up the bullion and head cross-country to Los Angeles. Naturally, scenarist Steven Ritch, working from a story by Jack Charney and he, has to dream up ways for the thieves to blunder. If only Roly had kept his police radio turned off. If only Commando has kept a close watch on his automatic pistol! Why did Eddie have to melt the gold into a rear bumper? Couldn't he have melted the bullion into other car parts? Remember, back in the 1950s, crime didn't pay, so our protagonists are simply living on borrowed time. Nevertheless, "Plunder Road" is qualifies as a suspenseful, white-knuckled exercise in crime.

Paularoc Five men rob a train of ten million dollars in gold bullion and then off load the bullion into three trucks, one of which is a tanker. The mechanics of the robbery and the subsequent hiding of the bullion on the trucks is shown in great detail and is interesting because of the weight of the gold. And because of the weight and amount of the gold, the police know it has to be transported by truck and have roadblocks and weighing stations set up to examine trucks. We do learn a little bit about each of the characters but the focus, quite rightly, is on the heist and subsequent capture of the thieves and this is done very well indeed with occasionally riveting camera work. The Jeanne Cooper character is an interesting one for the time. Although a girlfriend of Raymond's character, she is not conniving, stupid, or timid but actually contributes in carrying out the plan (albeit somewhat reluctantly). The culprits are done in by either stupidity or implausible coincidence. Nonetheless, it is a fast moving and intriguing caper film well worth a watch.