Hell's Highway (1932)

This pre-code movie about life on a chain-gang is brilliant and extremely hard-hitting. The director was the underrated Rowland Brown and he certainly doesn't pull any punches in showing the horrors of prison life at the time. Richard Dix is the prisoner who leads the revolt against the treatment meted out by the authorities. If the acting in general is mostly crude it's very much in keeping with the sensational material and if this prison picture isn't as well known as, say, "The Big House", it's every bit as good even if the gay caricature, (why did there always have to be one), is somewhat offensive.

....only because legal ramifications and accusations held up Warner's "I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang". If there was anyone who could write a realistic crime drama, that person was Rowland Young for the reason being his association with gangsters ("Bugsy" Siegel etc). He came up through the ranks, first as a gag writer for Reginald Denny, then working on a Hoot Gibson western. He had written an unproduced play, "A Handful of Clouds" which in 1930 was turned into "Doorway to Hell", the first of the three ground breaking gangster films. Within the year Young was directing and even though he only directed three films they were all highly distinctive. "Hell's Highway" his second was an expose of prison labour camps which happened to be released a few months in advance of the better publicized "I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang". The gangster movie vogue was almost finished. It was being pushed to one side by new novelties such as reporters, gossip columnists and the next "big thing" the social conscience movie.This movie definitely doesn't have the brutality and rawness of the far more ambitious "I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang". It is not until young punk Johnny Ellis (Tom Brown in another winning performance) is recruited to the chain gang that you actually find out why his big brother "Duke" (Richard Dix) is there. So for a good part of the film "Duke" doesn't have the audience sympathy because you don't know anything about him. As in each of Young's directed films there is the odd character or two - in this one C. Henry Gordon as the sadistic guard, Blacksnake Skinner, who plays the violin while the camp burns to the ground, Charles Middleton ("Ming the Merciless") as a bigamous prisoner who bamboozles the stupid guards with his "ability" to see into the future and Stanley Fields playing against type as an undercover guard!!!!The public are up in arms about the callous treatment of chain gang prisoners, especially a method of punishment known as a "sweat box" - a small shed of corrugated iron in which the prisoners are manacled and left, often dying before guards remember they are there!!! So far so good but there is just not enough raw emotion in the characters for me. Toward the end Middleton's character says "Prison's a picnic - compared to what I have back home" and that seems to sum it up well!! The night Johnny arrives at the camp happens to be the night "Duke" is planning to break out. Seeing Johnny he decides to stay behind to look out for his kid brother but when his brother is put into the "sweat box" "Duke" makes a deal with the guards -in return for better treatment for his brother (which includes a cushy job in the office) he agrees to keep the men in order. Aside from a few grumbles from the other prisoners "Duke" isn't on the receiving end of any harsh treatment (imagine what would have happened to Paul Muni if he had tried that in his movie). He is stripped down to be flogged but when the guard sees a Marine tattoo on his back he suddenly doesn't have the heart. There is a scene in which Field's accuses a guard named Popeye of recruiting vicious locals as prison guards but it is not expanded upon. On paper it may have looked like a telling role that Dix could put across but unfortunately it was not to be.Rochelle Hudson, the most exquisite of ingenues, had yet another thankless role for all her co-star billing as Johnny's sweetheart Mary Ellen. Thank heaven dignified Clarence Muse was around to lead in some spiritual folk singing that seemed to link the stories.Recommended.

Warner Brothers classic I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang coming from a bigger studio as it did overshadowed RKO's Hell's Highway. That's a pity because the fact that the two films came out around the same time robbed this one of the attention it deserves.Richard Dix and Tom Brown play the Ellis Brothers, a pair of convicts in a southern state prison of unknown name. Dix is a hardened convict, a lifer who's about to have it made official because he was convicted of his fourth offense and falls under the habitual criminal act.Dix has a hero worshiping younger brother in Brown who gets himself tossed in the slam because he decides to even the score for Dix by shooting someone who ratted his brother out. Dumb kid, he's lucky he missed otherwise it would be a very long stretch.As in I Am a Fugitive From a Chang Gang the emphasis is on the horrible conditions in these prisons, they are every bit as gruesome as they are in the Warner Brothers film. The highlight of the film is a mass escape when the entire compound goes up in a kerosene fire. Even though these guys are in there for God knows what, your sympathies are with them as the local populace goes on a hunting expedition for the convicts. It's like everyone participating in Leslie Banks's sport of hunting The Most Dangerous Game which also came out that year by RKO.I was pleasantly surprised by the depths of Richard Dix's performance. Usually he's a pretty straight arrow hero in his film in a classic Victorian era style of acting. His part here is the best work I've ever seen him do, though I can honestly say I haven't seen that many of his films.You'll see good performances also by Stanley Fields as the head guard and by Charles Middleton, the philosophical bigamist in the joint for the same.Catch this film if it is ever run again by TCM.

It's hard to tell whether this was an "A" or a "B" flick, since it's got a post-Cimarron Richard Dix (presumably a big star), but dives directly into the sensationalism of its topic (chain gangs). Most of the characterizations are sharp and the Walker-Evans style photography is often brilliant. Charles Middleton (Ming the Merciless) is great as a cagey wacko/spiritualist. Unusually enlightened treatment, for the time, of racial interaction and muted homosexuality (the sissy cook is not unsympathetic). Not a great film, but quite entertaining for its 62 minutes. Makes you curious about director Roland Brown, who only made a handful of films and wrote a few more.