Victor Mature packed up his trench coat and made for Liverpool and the eager arms of Diana Dors for “The Long Haul,” an acrid film noir made with 1950s Columbia Pictures money tied up in Europe.

Writer-director Ken Hughes, who’d go on to script and direct “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” and “Cromwell,” ensures that there’s at least a whiff of edge to this late ’50s British outing in a genre famed for its sordid settings, compromised characters and moral ambiguity.

It’s a trucking thriller in a “They Drive By Night” mold, with an honest GI fresh out of the Army (Mature) tested by corruption both financial and personal as he tries to keep his British wife happy with a British job after he musters out.

But Britain was home to the UK’s answer to Marilyn and Jayne — Diana Dors. That’s a “test” many a man would fail in that day and age.

Mature is Harry Miller, too handsome and too old (he was 44 when this came out) to be a convincing Army motor pool corporal finishing his hitch at a Bavarian U.S. Army base.

He’s got a wife and a pre-school age son, and she (Gene Anderson) isn’t keen on his plans to go “home” to the States where he has a job and a life lined up for them. So he goes to Liverpool where she has an uncle (Wensley Pithey) in trucking.

Harry’s very first run, following the old hand Casey (Liam Redmond) teaches him he’s got “a lot to learn about this game.” Harry roughs some guys up who are looting Casey’s Leyland 12-wheeler. Casey knows to “look the other way,” even if Harry doesn’t.

The crook running this ransacking racket is Joe Easy (Patrick Allen), a crooked long-haul business contractor who pays off the guys looking “the other way.” And there’s this pin-up blonde on his arm…

The script adroitly sets up Harry’s connection to vivacious Lynn, and then is clumsily contorted to take some of the cheating heel out of the hero. We understand the temptation. What’s with the too-tame attempt to rationalize Harry out of it?

Mature makes our hero properly torn by his failings and corruption, and Dors does some of her best work as a woman grasping for the escape her pulp fiction novel cover-model looks and the life it’s given her.

“Usually, when a fella takes a girl out and buys her a meal, he thinks that she’s the dessert.”

The third act features a suspenseful cross-Scotland truck trek to meet a smuggler’s boat with a haul of stolen fur coats. Credit Mature, Allen and Dors for keeping it all serious when this lorry ride through rocks, river and surf turns into something the goofs on “The Grand Tour” might have tried.

No, fur coats aren’t the best choice when you’re trying to find something to give those rear wheels traction, mate.

Coming along just as “Kitchen Sink Realism” was hitting British theater, and just before it swept through the cinema, the gritty (ish) “The Long Haul” probably felt quaint and a tad old fashioned within hours of its release.

For all the violence and sexual dalliance, it seems a tad muzzled. That dash to the smuggler’s cove lacks urgency at times.

But Mature and Dors make an interesting go of a “couple” plunging into an impulsive “escape” that no self-respecting film noir cast and crew would ever consider allowing to go off without a hitch.

Rating: “approved,” violence, smoking, and smoking hot Diana Dors.

Cast: Victor Mature, Diana Dors, Patrick Allen, Gene Anderson, Peter Reynolds and Liam Redmond.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Ken Hughes, based on a novel by Mervyn Mills. A Columbia Pictures release on Tubi, Amazon, etc.

Running time: 1:28