Men Without Souls

John Litel becomes the new prison chaplain to the general scorn of the warden and inmates. When fourth-billed Glenn Ford comes in as fresh fish, he does so deliberately; his father had died the previous year in the prison, the victim of guard captain Cy Kendall. Ford intends to get revenge, but Litel talks him out of it, along with Ford's girl friend, Rochelle Hudson. But Ford's cell mate, Barton Maclane, learns that Ford was supposed to stooge to Kendall, although he didn't, so he kills Kendall.... and Ford gets blamed and sentenced to death.

It's some high-powered acting chops in this Columbia B movie. Director Nick Grinde can't do much more with the script than let the performers speak their lines and go through their abbreviated character arcs, although he offers some nice crowd images with the aid of underrated DP Benjamin Kline. With Don Bedloe and Dick Curtis.

What a break for Glenn Ford! Hollywood started him off in heavy dramas (check out the same year's Babies for Sale) but when audiences liked him better as an everyman, he quickly got typecast. This is a prison movie, and instead of playing a lawyer or one of the upstanding guards, he's one of the inmates! Don't let his baby face fool you. He proves to be an enormously tough cookie throughout the movie. He's befriended by the equally tough Barton MacLane, who hates the evil prison guard, Cy Kendall. Cy is a sadistic bully, and Barton and Glenn would like nothing more than to take him down.

Among the prisoners is a very sympathetic and unorthodox reverend, John Litel. He works with the convicts and the warden, and when he starts to understand the truth of Cy's behavior, he starts to take a more active role. This movie is very heavy, and it reminds me of the pre-Code prison movies made in the early 1930s. It's violent, upsetting, and gets you hooked in with the characters from the get-go. If you like this one, check out Public Enemies with James Cagney and George Raft.

This feature is above the previous one that I reviewed: CAPTIVE WOMEN; this one, also directed by Nick Grinde, is far better, grittier, tougher, and of course Barton McLane steals the show and Glenn Ford is also better as an inmate. Rough scenes contribute to make this film a real must see and also a rare prison film, which was unusual at Columbia Pictures, and more with Metro Goldwyn mayer or Warner Brothers. It really deserves to be seen, and it's not too long either. Barton Mc Lane was used to such roles, not only convicts but also wardens, and not smooth, cool ones. Nick Grinde's movies are rather hard to purchase.

In the second of three films he was teamed with Rochelle Hudson, Glenn Ford is a man who deliberately gets himself thrown in prison so he can get the man who killed his father while dad was doing time. Hudson is Ford's sweetheart on the outside and thinks he's done a foolish thing.

How right she is as Ford gets caught up in a power play between the toughest con in the joint Barton MacLane and the sadistic head guard Cy Kendall. The only friend Ford or any of the convicts have is the new prison chaplain John Litel.

Lots of good action scenes with all the proper prison cliches used. You know we never do find out exactly what happened with Ford's father, but certain assumption are made.

Men Without Souls is one mediocre prison flick.

This is a gritty drama set inside a tough prison, with the new chaplain (John Litel) as the hero figure. However, the emphasis is not on the usual suffering, beatings, rattling locks and bars, and chain gangs of convict films, but is strongly story-oriented. The very young, almost baby-faced, Glenn Ford plays a new inmate who has committed a crime specifically with the intention of being jailed, so that he can kill the sadistic guard who murdered his elderly father, who had gone to that prison for a white collar crime. The chaplain figures this out and intervenes. (Rochelle Hudson has a brief scene in his office where she tearfully tells Glenn Ford how much she loves him and begs him to give up his mission.) There are numerous unexpected plot twists and a lot of rough stuff. Over-arching everything are moralistic concerns about the nature and justification of vengeance, of trust, of abuse of prisoners, about prisons in general. Some of the chaplain's simplistic 'hug a thug' philosophy is clearly ridiculous, but it is never pandered to in the story, since most of the cons callously reject his overtures to befriend and 'understand' them. The character actor Barton MacLane here has a rare opportunity to star in a film, as the violent inmate Blackie. His heart of gold is buried so deep you need a rock-drill to find it, but at the end, a few glints of gold appear as he dies with a confession on his lips and saying with his last breath the pathetic remnants of what he can recall of 'Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep' and making the sardonic comment to the chaplain: 'I bet you didn't think I knew any prayer'.