In this low-budget cult classic we have Mitchum as auteur: he wrote the original story, produced the film through his own independent company, wrote and sings the title song, and of course, stars. (For good measure, his son Jim Mitchum plays his younger brother.) This is Mitchum at the wheel as Lucas Doolin in rural America, a whisky runner and scion of generations of moonshiners, who takes on his two natural enemies, the Feds and the Mob, with equal determination. His instincts are those of an animal with four- wheel drive. The auto chases are beatnik cool, and as Richard Thompson writes in Kings of the Bs, "Thunder Road is a work whose charm is open only to those who have first hand knowledge of the world it depicts. Not moonshine smuggling, which is only the plot pretext, but the ambiance of night driving. Mitchum's vision is a truly a maudit vision, because by its very form and structure it is damned. A work like this frustrates critics straining to infuse popular art with culture. Thunder Road shrinks from art straight toward its own truth." Bruce Springstens wrote a song insipired by this movie of the same title.