Cummins and Goings

With her relative fizzed by a morlock
(Who's the hell-spawn of wizard or warlock)
Peggy's seeking revenge
Round the peaks of Stonehenge
Like that fellow on business from Porlock.

David Cairns

Peggy Cummins is Joanna Harrington, whose uncle is electrocuted while fleeing the demon in Curse/Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur; 1957). From David Cairns: "As poetry-lovers, you must know that Night of the Demon quotes Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Coleridge himself was plagued not by a "frightful fiend" but by a "person on business from Porlock" who interrupted his creative process and caused him to lose the thread of his poem Kubla Khan, which had come to him in a dream but will now be forever unfinished. It may be stretching a point to say that Peggy Cummins' character (above) interrupts the satanic Professor Karlswell's "great work" in a similar way..."

Name That Rune

A parchment to skeptic is passed
Its power has left him aghast
The demon it calls
most certainly mauls
whoever's left holding it last


Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins and Niall MacGinnis star in Night (aka Curse) of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 1957), director Tourneur's treatise on belief in the supernatural. Andrews is a skeptic and debunker of the occult who, along with the audience, slowly comes to realize the truth about warlock MacGinnis and his devil cult. Slowly that is, if you ignore the opening shots of a cheesy demon insisted upon by the film's producer, which only serve to undermine Tourneur's subtle technique of creating mood and mystery through suggestion and omission. Image source:Bad Movies.org.

Gravel-to-Gravel Coverage

Released after time served in prison
reformed, Tom has made a decision
He'll alter his luck
by driving a truck
and hope he avoids a collision



Hauling gravel, in tons, he must race
while thug-foreman, named "Red", sets the pace
If Tom runs more loads
than Red, through back-roads,
he'll win a prized cigarette case



Run by crooks, this freight business succeeds
through driving at hazardous speeds
any slower than that,
you're sacked--no time flat...
or fall victim to murderous deeds






Stanley Baker and Patrick McGoohan headline the solid British "trucker noir", HELL DRIVERS (1957), directed by Cy Endfield, who had earlier made the noir classics THE UNDERWORLD STORY(1950) and TRY AND GET ME (1950, a.k.a. THE SOUND OF FURY), and later had great success with Baker in ZULU (1964). HELL DRIVERS also stars Peggy Cummins (GUN CRAZY, CURSE OF THE DEMON), Herbert Lom, and small, early roles for Sean Connery and David McCallum. HELL DRIVERS is just one of the many rediscovered films in the Brit Noir film series.