Prison stuff. In prison movies.
Not only is this Buster Keaton offering funnier than many more recent prison comedies (including the various Laurel and Hardy prison movies that followed soon after), it has the advantage of only having to sustain itself for 20 minutes… so there is little time for any audience to get restless. (more…)
Posted on May 6th, 2010 at 11:18 pm. Updated on May 6th, 2010 at 11:18 pm.
This hints at being a straightforward revenge story: grieving father seeks to avenge the death of his son. It starts with a couple of biblical references about vengeance and man being called upon to shed the blood of those who shed blood. Curiously, it then introduces a little-known footnote to Exodus 21: 23-24 (“a life for a life, an eye for an eye..”) along the lines of ‘if your son is shot through the eye, shoot the shooter through the eye’; you are not merely called upon to avenge the death, apparently, but to avenge the death using exactly the same method. In jail, that can add considerably to the degree of difficulty. (more…)
Posted on May 2nd, 2010 at 5:53 pm. Updated on May 2nd, 2010 at 6:07 pm.
This is the sort of movie that gives prisons a bad name. And filmmakers a worse one. (more…)
Posted on April 24th, 2010 at 9:00 pm. Updated on April 26th, 2010 at 12:06 am.
While The Big House (1930) is generally credited with being the grand-daddy of the prison movie genre, the corny Numbered Men – released in the same year – is very forgettable. And a bit confused. (more…)
Posted on April 24th, 2010 at 3:39 pm. Updated on April 25th, 2010 at 11:02 pm.
Adapted from a play by Dorothy Mackaye who spent a spot of time in San Quentin herself, this is one of the earliest Women-in-Prison movies. Quite a few actresses have since borrowed heavily from Barbara Stanwyck’s portrayal of a tough gangster moll in prison, while the film Lady Gangster (1942) borrowed heavily from the whole first half of the movie. Well, stole it, actually. (more…)
Posted on April 18th, 2010 at 9:15 pm. Updated on April 18th, 2010 at 9:15 pm.
It has just about everything, this movie with prison reform at its rather smug heart – violent escape bids, papier-mâché dummies in beds, murders, a brutal Warden… And it’s the only prison movie I know where the prison itself does the narration, not unlike Mr Ed: (more…)
Posted on April 12th, 2010 at 9:19 pm. Updated on August 19th, 2012 at 5:18 pm.
Kathleen Storm (Sylvia Sidney) is a flower shop girl who is being aggressively pursued by gangster Kid Athens (Earle Foxe). Athens has to lie low for a while and asks Kathleen to lie low with him; she declines, seemingly (and improbably) having just discovered (after going out with him for a bit) what he does for a living. The smitten Athens ain’t too pleased, and swears that no-one will take his place. As luck will have it, within hours she meets engineer Standish McNeil (Gene Raymond) and within weeks she has married him, is lying horizontally with him, and is preparing to travel with him to his next work assignment in Russia. (more…)
Posted on April 10th, 2010 at 6:32 pm. Updated on April 10th, 2010 at 6:45 pm.
My wife tells me that I have trouble in admitting I’m wrong. Luke Sinclair (Dorian Harewood) won’t tell the Parole Board that he was wrong in having killed the man who was taunting him after being acquitted (on a technicality) of killing his wife and daughter, so he is forced to do most of his 15 year sentence. For his obduracy he is also required to reprise the Nicolas Cage role in Con Air (1997) in this low-grade thriller, also known as Steel Train (to distinguish it from what? Papier-mâché Train? Polyester Train?). They could well have called it Con Rail. (more…)
Posted on April 5th, 2010 at 6:06 pm. Updated on April 5th, 2010 at 6:06 pm.
In 1939 Mutiny in the Big House hit the cinemas, with an awfully idealised portrait of a prison chaplain. This movie, released the following year, gives us much the same fare – but because the chaplain is distrusted and reviled for most of it, it’s much more palatable. (more…)
Posted on April 4th, 2010 at 8:29 pm. Updated on April 4th, 2010 at 8:29 pm.
There’s a little bit of prison action here. Four times the chief protagonist goes to jail. On one occasion he even stands on the scaffold on which he is supposed to hang. But it’s far from a prison movie. Instead, it’s a rather courageous satire, highly critical of the folly and dishonesty of Hungary’s post-war communist regime. (more…)
Posted on April 4th, 2010 at 6:41 pm. Updated on April 25th, 2020 at 1:11 pm.