More a legit film noir than the b-crime programmer it seems despite the action-faring, plot-describing title, which can mislead viewers into thinking ESCAPE FROM SAN QUENTIN centers more on high octane breakout bedlam than dialogue-driven suspense with a side dish of gun-wielding intrigue since all the usual hackneyed prison devices are absent, including makeshift underground tunnels, irritable guards, a Fascist warden and convicts tapping messages on the walls...
Instead, the rudimentary setting is a work farm not a prison; and it's one man's occupation, or in this case, previous skill that makes real life crooner Johnny Desmond a lucrative player for his hardened convict and cellmate "buddy" Richard Devon, whose tough lifer character, Roy, unlike Johnny's Mike who has only two years left, goads him into flying a small plane to freedom in what's ultimately a much too simple escape, especially for the movie to be named after: the duo headed to the same town where Roy buried a bag of loot...
The good guy's no-good wife, who wants nothing to do with her convict husband, has a younger sister in Merry Anders' girl-next-door, Robbie, with a lifelong crush on her brother-in-law. She alone turns out being used and abused by the film's progressively desperate and vile heavy, Devon's Roy, in order to keep his sidekick from ratting out and ruining the whole plan: One that entails far more than picking up a load of hidden cash -- surrounded by a group of backstabbing thugs, Roy didn't steal that money by himself, but he alone buried it...
Eventually there are far too many cooks here, making ESCAPE a proverbial crowded room in an otherwise vacant house: Merry Andrews is pretty and vulnerable while Johnny Desmond (singing just one tune while lounging in prison) has an easygoing and laidback aura; that is, until the end when his eyes bug out and he channels old Warner Bros gangster flicks, and he does a good job except that the movie's almost finished...
But it's his vicious cellmate, Devon, and overall orchestrator, in over his head with the assembly of even more 11th hour goons, who not only carries the picture but is the only person carried by the plot he's responsible for. Plus, his anti-chemistry with our token distressed-damsel far exceeds her more brotherly than romantic connection with the hero...
And despite spending more time outside the work farm than inside, Fred F. Sears' ESCAPE FROM SAN QUENTIN has a great first act behind bars, with terrific devil-temping dialogue between good convict and bad... feeling like a short movie in itself: one that truly stars buried lead/stock heavy Richard Devon, the only character who really needs something and who returns in another B-Picture -- directed by Roger Corman titled WAR OF THE SATELLITES.
