Mask of Dust (1954)

Although suspended during the war, the early 1950s had seen motor racing take-off in a big way and British drivers Stirling Moss and Mike Hawthorn were becoming well known around the country, racing in the Formula 1 series still popular today. Hammer Studios were still a B-picture studio at the time, shooting a variety of support features to fill the legal quota of domestic films shown in British cinemas at the time. As with most of their productions in the early 1950s, Mask of Dust was based on a radio play, itself based on the 1952 novel The Last Race.

Peter Wells (Richard Conte) is a veteran racing driver, but his career is on the rocks after two years of bad luck and his wife, Patricia, wants him to quit before he gets killed. However, Peter is determined not to quit and be remembered only for a few years of bad driving so is determined to win the next race, but after his friend is involved in a fatal accident, Peter retires from the race to be with him at the hospital. His manager is furious and threatens to fire him, his wife threatens to leave him but he knows that he has to win the next race, the gruelling Piedmont Grand Prix...

The plot is no more than a standard love story worked around action sequences - like you would see in most sports or war films, but it works pretty well here. The romantic scenes are kept to a minimum and in a rare turn of events, the team manager is actually a realistically sympathetic character concerned for his driver's safety as well as his team. For a film based mostly around the two feature races there is some decent characterisation, but a lot of characters, like Wells' arrogant co-driver, don't get enough screentime to establish themselves. With its short run-time, the film doesn't drag despite the slow pacing and the tension is built up strongly for the final race and a good climax.

Director Terence Fisher joined Hammer studios in 1952 and had become one of their top directors, shooting a variety of B-pictures from noirish crime films to sci-fi pictures Spaceways (1953) and Four Sided Triangle (1953). His preferred style, long tracking shots and no 'fancy shooting', is in evidence in the studio scenes here (among the first shot on Hammer's Bray Studio sets). Impressively, the mixture of stock and specially filmed motor racing sequences are very well mixed with character footage, and the use of radio commentators to stitch it all together is nicely done. Unlike the massively budgeted Grand Prix (1966), the actors here only drive thanks to rear-projection which doesn't look as good, but is only used for brief shots so doesn't stand-out too much. Ultimately, the use of stock footage has its limitations, and we get a lot of repeated shots, and the lack of footage of a big crash, key to the plot, is strange when lots of other crash scenes are shown.


Richard Conte was brought in from America by the film's co-producer/distributor and looks very good as the film's hero while the rest of the cast are decent. More interesting is the presence of legendary British racing driver Stirling Moss in a brief cameo scene and an uncredited appearance of BBC sports commentator Raymond Baxter announcing the first race.

All text in this review written by Timothy Young - 12th July 2006.
Text from this review not to be used without authorization.

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