Big House, U.S.A.

Big House, U.S.A. is directed by Howard W. Koch and written by John C. Higgins, George George and George Slavin. It stars Broderick Crawford, Ralph Meeker, Reed Hadley, William Talman, Lon Chaney Jr., Charles Bronson and Felicia Farr. Music is by Paul Dunlap and cinematography by Gordon Avil.

A Kidnap, A Ransom and A Prison Break = Powder Keg.

Out of Bel-Air Productions, Big House, U.S.A. is a relentlessly tough and gritty picture. Beginning with the kidnapping of a young boy from a country camp, Howard Koch's film has no intentions of making you feel good about things. Deaths do occur and we feel the impact wholesale, tactics and actions perpetrated by the bad guys in the play punch the gut, while the finale, if somewhat expected in the scheme of good versus bad classic movies, still leaves a chill that is hard to shake off.

Split into two halves, we first observe the kidnap and ransom part of the story, then for the second part we enter prison where we become cell mates with five tough muthas. Crawford, Chaney, Meeker, Bronson and Talman, it's a roll call of macho nastiness unfurled by character actors worthy of the Big House surroundings. The locations play a big part in the pervading sense of doom that hangs over proceedings, Cascabel Island Prison (really McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary) is every bit as grim as you would expect it to be, and the stunning vistas of Royal Gorge in Colorado proves to be a foreboding backdrop for much of the picture.

Although it sadly lacks chiaroscuro photography, something which would have been perfect for this movie and elevated it to the standard of Brute Force and Riot in Cell Block 11, Avil's photography still has the requisite starkness about it. While Dunlap scores it with escalating menace. Not all the performances are top draw, more so on the good guy side of the fence, and some characters such as Chaney's Alamo Smith don't get nearly enough lines to spit, but this is still one bad boy of an experience and recommended to fans of old black and white crims and coppers movies. 8/10

The story begins with a lost boy, a kidnapping, a ransom as extortionist RALPH MEEKER takes advantage of a situation which led to the death of the boy. The F.B.I. is soon on the case when the boy's father reports his disappearance. Meeker is sent to an island prison to serve a sentence as an extortionist who has $200,000 hidden somewhere.

He's thrown in with some hardened criminal types--CHARLES BRONSON, BRODERICK CRAWFORD, LON CHANEY, JR.--labeled "the Iceman" because of his cool demeanor and icy gaze. Crawford has one of the film's best lines: "Well, the iceman cometh." Since no prison drama would be complete without an escape plan being hatched, BIG HOUSE U.S.A. is no exception. The suspense lies mainly in the survival of Meeker who is known as the most hated man in prison because he harmed a boy. Crawford devises an escape plan that includes Meeker, "the goose that laid the golden egg", so he can share the hidden loot with them. Of course, it's a crime doesn't pay melodrama, so in the end all their best laid plans go awry.

Nice outdoor photography in Royal Gorge Park, Colorado, for the rugged scenes in the finale.

Summing up: Well worth your time--interesting and gritty.

The early 1950's witnessed a number of high profile kidnappings of wealthy offspring, the most notorious being the Greenlease grab in Kansas City for which the perpetrators were executed and the arresting detectives jailed for stealing the ransom money! It's not surprising that these headlines eventually worked their way into the movies. And a good little kidnapping and prison film this is.

Big House USA benefits greatly from on-location photography in the scenic foothills of south-central Colorado, near the state penitentiary in Canon City where the prison scenes were filmed. The producers had the good sense to make the most of this unusual backdrop to a story line that is in many ways exciting but unexceptional. ( The only real drawback-- the underwater scenes of the prison escape, which appear to have been shot in a neighbor's backyard pool. The phony plants even bounce off the bottom as swimmers go by! Where was quality control on this one.)

The producers also hired an outstanding cast of has-beens (Crawford and Chaney), up & comers (Bronson, Meeker, and Farr), along with the stentorian voiced Reed Hadley as the long arm of the law, and Peter Votrian, an appropriately sickly looking kid whose whiney demeanor could make you think twice about becoming a parent. The result, all in all, is a very watchable 90 minutes of cops vs. robbers and cons vs. screws. Then too, no movie from this period that features the bug-eyed William Talman should be passed up.

This film is not the best of it's genre. It is like a low budget version of the 1950's Dragnet series. The cast is something else.

Broderirck Crawford, William Talman, a young Charles Bronson, & Lon Chaney Jr make interesting cell mates in a maximum security island prison. When the Ice Man joins them, they hatch an escape plot involving his ransom money. Like Dragnet, in this movie, the police appear to be a lot smarter than the crooks/murderers/thieves.

This could have been better but it is obvious that this is a low budget thriller. The acting talent only gets an average script to work with. While the film is based on fact, it does not quite rise to the level of a great film.

For those who like the familiar faces it is OK. It is fictionally based upon a real incident. Only the names were changed to protect the guilty, or is that innocent? Actually, the story is good enough to involve the viewer, but it does not become a must see movie.

The film begins with a little boy getting lost while at summer camp. Ralph Meeker finds the boy and pretends to be helping him, but actually is intent on kidnapping him and holding him for a huge ransom. Unfortunately, the kid dies while in his care but Meeker is an animal and STILL proceeds to get the money and then tries to skip town. However, the cold and calculating killer is caught and sent to prison--but unfortunately, all they can prove is that he extorted the money--not that he had anything to do with the boy's disappearance.

This is sort of like a prison movie merged with a Film Noir flick. That's because much of the beginning and ending of the film is set outside prison and its style throughout was rather Noir inspired--with a format much like an episode of DRAGNET (the bloodier 1950s version, not the late 60s incarnation). However, it did lack some of the great Noir camera-work and lighting as well as the cool Noir lingo--but it still succeeded in telling a great story. What was definitely Noir was the unrelentingly awful and brutal nature of the film--a plus for Noir fans. Now I hate violent and bloody films, but this one was a bit more restrained but still very shocking for a 1950s audience--featuring some of the most brutal plot elements of the decade (tossing a child's body off a cliff, burning a corpse with a blowtorch to confuse in the identification of another corpse and the scene with the escaped prisoner who is scalded to death). Because of all this, the film was above all else, realistic and shocking--much of it due to the excellent script, straight-forward acting and a few excellent and unexpected plot twists.

By the way, this is one of the earliest films in which Charles Bronson appears with this name (previously, he'd been billed as "Charlie Buchinsky"). When he takes his shirt off in the film, take a look at how muscle-bound he was--I sure would have hated to have tangled with him!! In his prime, he might have been the most buff actor in Hollywood history who DIDN'T suck down steroids (and, consequently, had minuscule testicles from this drug).