The Hi-Jackers

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The Hi-Jackers
The Hi-Jackers (1963 film).jpg
British quad poster
Directed by Jim O'Connolly
Written byJim O'Connolly
Produced byJohn I. Phillips
Ronald Liles
Starring Anthony Booth
Cinematography Walter J. Harvey
Edited by Henry Richardson
Music by Johnny Douglas
Production
company
Distributed byButcher's Film Distributors (UK)
Release date
  • December 1963 (1963-12)
Running time
69 min.
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

The Hi-Jackers is a 1963 black and white British crime thriller film written and directed by Jim O'Connolly, starring Anthony Booth and Jacqueline Ellis. [1]

Contents

Plot

Long-distance independent lorry driver Terry meets homeless and unemployed Shirley at a truckers’ cafe and gives her a lift. His vehicle, carrying a valuable shipment of whisky, is then hijacked under cover of a fake road accident. Who tipped off the hijackers about the route Terry would take? Police Inspector Grayson investigates.

Cast

Critical reception

Monthly Film Bulletin said: "One or two aspirations towards originality – Carter's proficiency as a cook, a gangster's almost prudish refusal to take advantage of Shirley's helplessness – cannot disguise the formulary nature of this crime melodrama. The plot is thin and unconvincing; the heroine is one of those tiresomely well-spoken young women whose bursts of spirit (she is not averse to moral blackmail) strike one as both incongruous and unsympathetic. The lorry-drivers are quite well characterised, and Derek Francis brings a touch of class to the gourmet-mastermind which seems, less aptly, to have spilled over into the film as a whole. For a struggling haulage contractor Terry has a remarkably luxurious apartment; there's something gratuitously "snob", too, about Patrick Cargill's supercilious police inspector." [2]

The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "This low-budget crime thriller from the Butcher's studio is set in the rough-and-ready world of trucking. However, British lorry drivers don't have the cinematic glamour of their American counterparts, so identifying the familiar British faces – Anthony Booth (Tony Blair's father-in-law), Patrick Cargill, Glynn Edwards – is the main point of interest here." [3]

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References

  1. ↑ "The Hi-Jackers". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  2. ↑ "The Hi-Jackers". Monthly Film Bulletin . 31 (360): 74. 1 January 1964 – via ProQuest.
  3. ↑ Radio Times Guide to Films (18th ed.). London: Immediate Media Company. 2017. p. 416. ISBN   9780992936440.


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