J'ai grandi en prison

"Film-Noir" as Newbie Aficionados Find-Out Fast is a Tough Genre to Define, Pigeon-Hole, and Explain.

Whole Books have Attempted the Task and the Ambiguity and Miss-Identifying Remains.

Just Ask Eddie Muller who has Made a Well-Deserved Respected Career as "The Czar-of-Noir and Soldiers-On with His Film-Noir Foundation and Today Still Carries the Torch as Good as Any-Body.

Case in Point..."Outside the Wall", Written and Directed by Crane Wilbur", Little Known Hollywood Citizen, who had a Good Sense for Crackling Dialog.

A Good Cast Peppered with Ingredients the Likes of Richard Basehart with Support by Marilyn Maxwell, who had a Long Career, here in the Role of a Femme-Fatale Bleached-Blonde and is a Tough-as-Polished-Nails Nurse on the Make for Guys, "With Fancy Cars and a Pocket-Full of Miracles...

Dorthy Hart is the "Good-Girl", and Harry Morgan, Once Again Sliding Effortlessly from Cop or Criminal, this Time as a Gang Leader with a Sadistic-Side.

John Hoyt is an Aging TB Patient that Basehart Recognizes from a 15 Year Stint for Manslaughter that is Half His Life, whose Gang just Heisted a Cool-Mil from an Armored Truck and His Ruthless Ex-Wife and the Morgan Gang are Scheming to Steal.

Basehart is Terrific and the Philly Locations are the Digs where Basehart, as Naive as an Untrained Puppy, Navigates and Learns OJT, to Stay One Step Ahead of a Noir World of Bad-Guys, Dishy Blondes Void of Conscience, and the Fast-Growing, often Overwhelming Life Environs.

It's a Neat Little Movie Packaged for the Edgy Fans always on the Look-Out for Hidden-Gems Among the Pile of Rocks we Call Hollywood. While this Might Not Be Considered a "Gem" it is Part of the Better than Average B-Crime-Movies...

that May or May Not be Pure Film-Noir but are an Entertaining Enjoyment Plucked from the Pile that was a Steadily Growing Grist for the Mill of Movies from the Period that are even More than just...

Worth a Watch.

Richard Baseheart never competed with such mega stars as Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne but kept more to himself concentrating on more complicated roles on a smaller scale, like a kind of understatement actor, but the result is that his roles are always interesting and intriguing. Here he is released from prison after fifteen years at the age of 29 and knows nothing about society. His only schooling in 15 years' imprisonment has been to handle tough guys and ruffians and a thorough knowledge of the criminal type. To get away from the stress and noise of Philadelphia, he heads for the country and finds a small friendly town where nothing ever happens, where he is employed as an assistant at a hospital. So far so good, but it is not. An old fellow gangster turns up in a dying state who has hidden a million away somewhere, and the fellow hoodlums he has fooled are after him, so he is not allowed to die in peace. Unfortunately Richard Baseheart is there, they recognise each other, and the case is cooked. From there on the strain and excitement of the thriller keeps constantly rising like a fever temperature, and a few dames get involved also. This is in many ways the perfect thriller, but Richard Baseheart's acting is what keeps it glowingly alive until it bursts into flames, and the finale is an ingenious climax of the composition.

In the Hollywood of late '40s and early '50s, Richard Basehart found plenty of work in the noir cycle but never made a major mark, the mark of a Robert Mitchum or Glenn Ford or even a Dick Powell. His good looks were all-American bland - lackluster - and his acting rarely leapt to dangerous voltages. Probably more at home on stage than on the pitiless screen, he leaves one of his fullest performances in a shunted-aside noir, Outside The Wall.

Just 30 but with 15 years in stir behind him (he'd caused the death of an abusive guard when he was just a kid in reform school), he secures an unexpected release from prison. An old lifer grumbles about life outside: `Everybody's got the jitters. A buck ain't worth a buck anymore.' But mo st of all he warns about the `dames,' of whom Basehart knows absolutely nothing. He'll soon find out.

In his first night in Philadelphia, a B-girl feeds him his first taste of liquor and tries to filch his wallet; later, washing dishes, he foils a stickup and, fed up with Brotherly Love, heads for the clean country of Jewel Lake, landing a job as a lab technician at a TB sanitarium. His first patient (John Hoyt) turns out to be an ex-con he knows who's just pulled a fatal armored-car robbery. When Basehart fails to blow the whistle, the dying Hoyt trusts him enough to mule payoff money to his avaricious wife (Signe Hasso).

The straight-arrow Basehart normally wouldn't dirty his hands, but the blonde and mercenary charms of nurse Marilyn Maxwell lead him to rethink his monkish life (`I just found out what money can buy,' he tells her, forking over a platinum bracelet in his new roadster). Still, his stirring conscience beckons him to fess up about his past to good-gal Dorothy Hart. But Hoyt has the means to hold him to his bargain, while his wife and her ruthless accomplices have their own plans for him....

Crane Wilbur, who started way back in the silent era, wrote several noirs and directed a few of them, mostly about prison life (Canon City, The Story of Molly X). Here, he directs his story with some nicely observed vignettes about the dislocation awaiting released felons but, as it advances, less than persuasive plotting. But, in addition to the convincing work he coaxes from Basehart, he assembles a solid cast, with Maxwell and Hasso rivaling one another in duplicity and Hart more appealing than the saintly simp she might have been.

Harry Morgan also appears, as a thug who elicits information by sliding scalpels under fingernails. Interestingly a veteran of even more noirs than Basehart, Morgan played the heavy the year before, too, in Red Light, but couldn't hold a candle to his partner in crime, Raymond Burr. Here, he takes his place amid a balanced cast with intersecting motives that result in a movie that, while satisfying, falls well short of spectacular. Still, it merits more viewers.

Richard Basehart went into Cherry Hill Prison when he was 14. Now he's 29, and has just been pardoned. The world has grown noisy and strange, but he just wants to keep his head down, so he winds up in a small town working for almost nothing at a hospital that specializes in lungers. He vaguely hopes to get a girl friend, but doesn't know anything about women, so when nurse Marilyn Maxwell turns him down because she's looking for a rich man, he agrees to help armored-car robber Joseph Pevney get some money to his ex-wife in return for a bankroll. He impresses Miss Maxwell with the money, but the wife's mob wants all of the money from the robbery.

I'm so used to Basehart playing deep-voiced authority figures in the 1960s, that watching him play this young-old fish out of water is startling. Crane Wilbur directs his actors to very simple performances that lead you to think that this is all inevitable, while getting in a subtextual knock at society's unwillingness to accept ex-cons. With Signe Hasso, Dorothy Hart, Lloyd Gough and Harry Morgan.

Not RIOT IN CELL BLOCK 11 nor BRUTE FORCE, nor THE LAST MILE either. But it is actually a movie about an ex jail bird who was condemned for manslaughter, and who, after his release from prison, encounters many issues. Nothing really exciting, but it is an Universal crime drama, rather hard to find, and Richard Basehart is an actor who is always interesting to see in a movie, especially a thriller. The funny thing is that after this one - OUTSIDE THE WALL - director Crane Wilbur will give us INSIDE THE WALLS OF FOLSOM, and I don't even speak of his CANON CITY, made before this one. Also both prison break plots. Good little noir, pretty much enjoyable.