Movie Description
Thunder Road is a black-and-white 1958 drama-crime film directed by Arthur Ripley and starring Robert Mitchum, who also produced the film and wrote the story. With Don Raye, Mitchum co-wrote the theme song, "The Ballad of Thunder Road". The supporting cast features Gene Barry, Jacques Aubuchon, Keely Smith, James Mitchum, Sandra Knight, and Peter Breck. The film's plot concerns running bootleg moonshine in the mountains of Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee in the late 1950s. Thunder Road became a cult film and continued to play at drive-in movie theaters in some southeastern states through the 1970s and 1980s.
Bruce Springsteen said at a 1978 concert that the name of his song "Thunder Road" had been inspired by seeing a poster of the movie, though he did not see the movie itself.
