Revolt in the Big House

Apart from the 'women in prison' exploitation films of the early 1970s, prison films usually are among the better movies you can find. Now I am not saying they all are great movies...but finding a bad prison film isn't easy. So, I wasn't very surprised that "Revolt in the Big House" turned out to be very watchable and well made.

When the story begins, tough guy Lou Gannon (Gene Evans) has arrived at prison. He apparently was a very famous criminal but getting the goods on him wasn't easy...and he FINALLY has run out of luck. Once there, he meets up with an old friend, 'Bugsy' (Timothy Carey) and the pair work on a plan for a big escape. This involves coming up with a plan to smuggle guns into the prison...and you'll have to watch the film to see what's next.

The acting, script and direction are all good here. In fact, I can't think of any big problems with the film and a score of 8 is awfully good for such a low budgeted picture. My one complaint is when one of the prisoners gets machined gunned....and not a single hole nor speck of blood is seen...nothing. Quite enjoyable overall.

The joy of this movie is that it filled with generic (corny) lines and situations throughout, yet it is still a great yarn. Some friends and I discovered this flick accidentally on TV years ago in the 70's and it has enjoyed a surreptitious cult-like status ever since. With lines like, "I can't eat, I can't sleep, food turns sour in my belly," and characters with a name like Bugsy, and a very young Robert Blake spouting, "Oh, holy Toledo!" you just cannot go wrong watching this movie with some friends. I challenge anybody who sees this movie to try and not quote at least one of the many unforgettable lines for days and/or years after seeing Lou and the gangs travails inside the unforgiving walls of "the big house."

In most prison flicks, whenever a convict returns from solitary confinement... a week or longer in almost pitch dark... they'd emerge like from a well-lit office, maybe a little more tired, ragged...

But Robert Blake in the low-budget potboiler REVOLT IN THE BIG HOUSE has an extremely jaded expression, rubbing his eyes while suffering the proverbial devil's hangover, back into the flow of prisoners that includes our main star, Gene Barry, as a once-powerful headline-making mobster, now doing twenty years to life...

Blake's Mexican twenty-something Rudy Hernandez is his cellmate, initially providing a monologue summing up his entire wrong-side-of-the-streets existence in an overlong six minutes... and every minute counts in what's a programmer/exploitation, practically a remake of Don Siegel's RIOT IN CELL BLOCK 11...

Both have Emile Meyer as an open-minded warden, and while that's a far superior picture, REVOLT intentionally packs more of a violent wallop, including chief guard Walter Barnes... a composite of all guards... who can't stop bullying Blake... in fact he's the reason the poor kind wound up in solitaire...

The best scenes occur during the first half as Gene Evan's Lou Gannon plays it mellow and slow-burn, getting a soft job and, within the main interior set of gathered prisoners (contrasting to random grainy real-life stock footage of a real prison), he subtly collects willing criminals for the second half's anticipated and thus inevitable titular REVOLT aka attempted breakout...

And once again, Timothy Carey is the scene-stealer, about thirty-pounds too heavy for an agile and cunning heavy yet his signature gritting teeth and firebrand temper is always fun, helping to turn this BIG HOUSE into a neat ensemble of character-driven scenes that, as a whole, smoothly passes the time without feeling like doing time.

Another prison revolt/escape movie, this time it's Allied Artists that tries for that Warner Bros. stock story. Gene Evans plays the new boss-like inmate with a 20-year sentence that he's not about to tolerate. He rouses everyone he meets with the idea of breaking out. But Evan's character is more slippery than you think, giving the film its only strength, story-wise. He's got tricks up his sleeve, and a cold, cold heart that's revealed at the end. Evans is solid, as is Robert Blake who struggles with a Mexican accent but gets a lot of dialogue and handles it well. The standout is Timothy Carey, playing the half-smart tough guy inmate used like all the others by Evans. Carey is convincingly creepy and menacing... aw heck, he's just plain weird throughout.

Not a bad little movie, but it does take a while to get going, and the titled "revolt" doesn't occur until late in the proceedings, and shows the budget limitations (the staging is mostly awful, too) and ends fairly quickly. Doesn't hold a candle to the energetic old Warner Bros. prison thrillers.

Robert Blake is a young man sent to prison. The guards are corrupt, the warden, played by Emile Mayer, is an uncaring bureaucrat, and Blake's cellmate is Gene Evans, who tries to get him to start a riot to cover Evans' prison break.

R.G. Springsteen was a ver competent B western director. He was so good he survived directing them after they were long dead. A few times he got to direct crime dramas, and he knew how to take people like Evans, who usually played henchmen in oaters, and bring him up to date.

The 1930s had prison dramas that were about the reforming power, about how thoughtful, caring authorities. The 1950s brought a new look, stories about the bad, bad men -- and women -- locked up there, and how they mistreated themselves, creatures of violence from which society must be guarded; perhaps there was a bit of paranoia about communism lurking in the subtext. Robert Blake is not there to be reformed. He is a vicious, dangerous creature in the eyes of the warden, who believes the guards who plant a knife on him. If he is to be reformed, he must do it himself. He must realize that the life of a criminal will kill him and the few decent men in prison and make the effort without help.