Prisons sans chaînes

No real stars and no budget makes a B movie. In this case an excellent B movie. The script is solid and confronts a real issue (though I don't believe the "over the fence" element). Maybe not stars but good actors like John Quaylen, Barbara Hale, Chester Morris, Jerry Paris, Johnny Johnston and the lead, Elroy Hirsh. Most people are interested in the movie because of the famous song. It is performed by Todd Duncan who also gives the movie's strongest performance. But I am certain most people except for true opera and theatre lovers know that Todd Duncan was the 1935 original lead in the stage production of "Porgy and Bess."

I saw the movie on the "big screen" as a boy, in a small town theater somewhere in New Mexico, I think. My family was on vacation at the time. My recollection is that the movie was uninteresting (to a 15 year old). I would love to see it again now, just to experience the difference that 50 years of living (my own) makes to the viewers perspective. Something about the movie must have stuck with me (and thousands of other folks), because the haunting theme song, Unchained Melody, became an inseparable component of both my adolescent and adult years.

You can review more info on the movie, and the authors of its indelible theme song on these web pages:

http://www.martin.mesanetworks.net/unchained/unchained.html

Unchained Melody was not written by William Stirrat who was an impostor of and NOT Hy Zaret and had nothing to do with writing Unchained Melody. This is apparently a blatant hoax and has been discredited. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stirrat

Hy Zaret was/is Hy Zaret. Stirrat was an electrical engineer who became an impostor of HY Zaret. Stirrat filed a lot of copyright claims but didn't get around to filing one for "Unchained Melody" until 1982--27 years after the 1955 film "Unchained" and "Unchained Melody" hit the Billboard and Cashbox Charts and 26 years after "Unchained" had been nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song for "Unchained Melody"!

Stirrat talked to a reporter of a local newspaper who wrote a maudlin story about him and how he had written the lyrics to "Unchained Melody" back in 1936 when he was sixteen and smitten with a girl. (The absurdity that co-writer Alex North who would have been 26 then would have collaborated with a 16 year old high school student did not seem to occur to the reporter.) Apparently the reporter and newspaper did no checking of the claim but in 2003 just printed it as fact. "News Transcript" December 3, 2003. It was repeated again in Stirrat's obituary the following year and since then has been republished all over the internet (including IMDb's mini biography of Hy Zaret!) and is one of the most prevalent internet hoaxes.

This author attempted to submit a corrected biography to IMDb but it has gotten nowhere.

If anyone other than the real Zaret/North arguably deserve credit for contributing to this song it might be Phil Spector and Bobby Hatfield, producer and lead singer respectively of the 1965 Philles Righteous Brothers release.

With all the junk that has "bonus" material available when it goes straight to video, it's a shame that this lost gem isn't released yet. I saw it on TV when I was in my teens. I loved the song. It's the version that comes to mind first for me, before the Platters or the Righteous Brothers version. The plot details are a little hazy, which is why I was hoping that it had made the cut.

Would whoever holds the rights to this movie please release it on DVD? I'd really enjoy seeing it again. It doesn't have the star power of The Defiant Ones, perhaps, but it was well-written and acted. The fact that it was filmed 'on location' at Chino when this wasn't common.

Thanks to everyone else here that's posted about the movie.

Long before Whoopi and Swayze, even before the Righteous Brothers, came this dandy little low budget tale of the men's prison at Chino, California. The drama centers on the division of one man's soul...part of him wants to continue his criminal ways, and attempt escape, while the other half wants to get home to his wife and family. Former sports great Hirsch turns in a surprising inspired performance, and Hale and Morris prove up to their respective tasks. And of course, the haunting "Unchained Melody" is enough to make you want to watch it over and over.