BEFORE: It's October 1, firmly fall now, and I'm not quite ready to start Halloween films. I know some people have already decorated their houses and bought fun-size candy, but first I have to survive the New York Comic-Con, which starts next week. I've already started having PTSD stress dreams about working the booth. Movie-wise, I have to go through Ernest Hemingway, Bette Davis, Adam Sandler and Charlie Chaplin to get there. That seems weird, I know.
Linking from "Doctor Zhivago", Rod Steiger was also in "In the Heat of the Night" with Sidney Poitier (last seen in "To Sir, With Love").
AFTER: It's almost as if there are two different types of prison films - one where people remain in prison ("Dead Man Walking", "The Green Mile") and the other when there are escape attempts. The escape ones tend to be more exciting, just because of the action involved, the thrill of the chase - it's a prison film mixed with a quest film, even if the goal of the quest can be a little murky sometimes. Men are on the run, they don't know where to turn or who to trust. Some of my favorites are "The Great Escape", "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and of course "The Shawshank Redemption", but it's not hard to draw a connection between tonight's film and something more modern, like "Con Air" or "Law Abiding Citizen".
Of course, the metaphor here is not subtle at all - chaining two people together and forcing them to work together is a simple concept, and has also become a sitcom staple the same way that serving on a jury nearly always becomes an homage to "Twelve Angry Men". But making two men different races work together to escape and survive obviously strikes a chord due to the setting in the American South. We're told that the warden had "a sense of humor" as an explanation of why he would authorize a white man and a black man to be shackled together, and the policemen who are chasing them have pretty much resigned themselves to the fact that two men will probably kill each other before they're found.
In a way they're correct - familiarity breeds contempt - but they're also wrong, because one man can't survive without the other. When they do come to blows, this is most vividly realized, as one man can't throw the other one down a hill without also falling down it himself. A fist-fight is similarly problematic, especially if the shackle is on the dominant punching hand - I wonder if prison chain gang leaders figure out who's left-handed before they put the chains on the convicts?
The story felt sort of hampered by its own parameters - there are really only three ways it can end (escaped, captured or killed) but I think it still managed to do a lot within the confines of the plot. The men find a lonely woman with a son, and after forcing her to cook for them, the story takes a bit of an unexpected turn, and the question is raised - are these two men better off apart, or together? Since the police are looking for two men together, logic would dictate that they'd double their chances of escape by separating and blending in. But the world is not always logical.
And as I said yesterday, movies often remind us that no matter how bad things get, they could always be worse. So when I'm doing a 10-hour shift next week in a tiny 10x10 booth with people getting on my nerves, I should be thankful I'm not chained to another man while trying to escape from a Southern posse.
Also starring Tony Curtis (last seen in "Sex and the Single Girl"), Theodore Bikel, Charles McGraw (last seen in "The Birds"), Cara Williams, Lon Chaney, Jr., Claude Akins (last seen in "Return of the Seven"), with a cameo from Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer.
RATING: 5 out of 10 transistor radios
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