Prison Break (1938)

Moderately decent B drama about a hard working fisherman wrongly accused of murder who ends up in prison, gets a parole, which means jack squat when he tries to find a job. Barton MacLane isn't traditional leading man material, but kept getting leads in B's throughout the late 1930's into the mid 1940's. Sort of a second choice to roles that didn't go to Charles Bickford, he's a dependable character actor who rose above supporting roles. He's supported by Glenda Farrell, aka Torchy Blane, playing his devoted fiancé who stands by him even though her abusive father and brute brother vow to keep them apart. It's fast moving and truthful, but just one of many on the same subject. Good waterfront scenery and a believable prison break are the highlights. When MacLane tries to take a job out of the country and is reminded by his parole officer that he's not allowed to leave the state, all I could say is duh, wondering why the writers thought that it would be believable for him to even try. Minor complaint, but it was just too obvious to overlook.

This one is another in the series of Hollywood's campaign against a parole system in which parolees must get work but must also tell their prospective employers that they're on parole. In films – such as this one – their dilemma is usually solved by an act of God. Despite the use of coincidence to bring this about and despite the fact that the movie attempts to crowd so many plot turns into its 72 minutes of running time, there is scarcely a chance to draw breath (I'm not complaining), it's a humdinger of a "B" movie with some great performances all around, particularly from MacLane, Bond, Farrell and Hurst. Arthur Lubin's direction is never less than effective. See is you can spot Glenn Strange, Roy Barcroft and Walter Long in the super-extensive support cast. Available on a very good Alpha DVD.

As a pair of detectives, Barton Maclane and Ward Bond set up Humphrey Bogart for some of his best one-liners ever in 1941's "The Maltese Falcon". In this one, the pair find themselves on the outs for most of the picture in a prison story that's actually pretty good for a B flick, even if Universal Pictures is the company of record. The idea that MacLane's character is named Joaquin Shannon managed to keep me off balance for most of the story; an Irish-Portuguese fisherman is one combination I just couldn't wrap my head around.This is the kind of movie that was right up Warner Brothers' alley during this era. They had their own fair share of prison movies that dealt with victims caught up in unfortunate circumstances, films like "San Quentin", "Invisible Stripes", and "Crime School". MacLane portrays a tough prison guard who endures a demotion for his rough tactics in the first one mentioned, and to his credit was capable of portraying characters on both sides of the law quite effectively.The story presented here is somewhat improbable when you begin to analyze it, but I don't think that's what movie goers were doing back in the Thirties. What you have here is a fairly gritty prison drama in which MacLane's character simply wants to serve his time, but keeps getting sidetracked by career criminal Big Red Kincaid (Bond) who was inadvertently responsible for Shannon's conviction and sentence in the first place. It takes the entire picture to come full circle for Shannon to figure that out, and elsewhere might have made for a dramatic showdown. Here it was just a bit too anti-climactic to justify everything that went before, but at least the good bad guy came out on top.

This surprisingly powerful and compelling film starts weakly with a hackneyed tale of a curmudgeonly father opposing his daughter's choice of a mate.Glenda Farrell's Jean sees the hero behind the burly fisherman with a fascinating face, Barton MacLane, and waits for him through a maddeningly unfair series of arrests and punishments in prison. Shannon is the archetypal Everyman with integrity who just can't catch a break -- until the romantic final scene, when the good guy triumphs and finally gets the girl. The perfect ending is a bit anticlimactic but once in a while a happy conclusion manages to satisfy. A bravura production that I'll not soon forget.