Hommes sans âme

In the 1930s and 40s, there were many prison films...it was a popular genre. Many of them focused on the awful prisoners...but a few were moral crusade films were made with the intention to reform prisons. These well meaning films show the ugly side of prison and propose that prisoners become hardened criminals, in many cases, because they were so dehumanized in the prison system. Films like "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang", "Blackwell's Island", "Crime School", "20,000 Years in Sing Sing" and "Brute Force" are all such crusade pictures....and so is "Men Without Souls".

The story begins with a new chaplain being appointed to a tough prison. The warden immediately dislikes Reverend Storm (John Litel), as Storm has complained about how the warden runs the place....and when he goes to work there, you know he'll receive little support from him. But the reverend also gains the enmity of the prisoners when he breaks up a prison riot. He did it to stop the slaughter of the rioters...but their leader, 'Blackie' (Barton MacLane with a great name, huh??) leads a solid front against cooperating with the chaplain.

A new prisoner (Glenn Ford) arrives and is placed in the cell with Blackie. The guards push the new guy to become a stoolie...but Johnny hates the guards and wants to kill the one in charge. After all, Johnny's own father had been incarcerated there and the guards did everything they could to make his life a living nightmare....and revenge is foremost on his mind. But the chaplain insists that Johnny could be saved...and works to help Johnny see the light. And, saving he'll need when Blackie sets up Johnny to take a fall.

So is this any good? Well, yes and no. While many of these crusading films are classics, this one is good but not nearly to the same level...mostly because the plot is laid on a bit thick at times. Imagine...a baddie named 'Blackie'! Plus, believability isn't exactly the case late in the film when Blackie uncharacteristically shows a decent side...even though he'd been a scum-bag for the previous 55 minutes! This is why I bumped the score down to 6...as the ending was incredibly unlikely to say the least!! Well acted and well-intentioned...it is entertaining throughout.

What a break for Glenn Ford! Hollywood started him off in heavy dramas (check out the same year's Babies for Sale) but when audiences liked him better as an everyman, he quickly got typecast. This is a prison movie, and instead of playing a lawyer or one of the upstanding guards, he's one of the inmates! Don't let his baby face fool you. He proves to be an enormously tough cookie throughout the movie. He's befriended by the equally tough Barton MacLane, who hates the evil prison guard, Cy Kendall. Cy is a sadistic bully, and Barton and Glenn would like nothing more than to take him down.

Among the prisoners is a very sympathetic and unorthodox reverend, John Litel. He works with the convicts and the warden, and when he starts to understand the truth of Cy's behavior, he starts to take a more active role. This movie is very heavy, and it reminds me of the pre-Code prison movies made in the early 1930s. It's violent, upsetting, and gets you hooked in with the characters from the get-go. If you like this one, check out Public Enemies with James Cagney and George Raft.

In the second of three films he was teamed with Rochelle Hudson, Glenn Ford is a man who deliberately gets himself thrown in prison so he can get the man who killed his father while dad was doing time. Hudson is Ford's sweetheart on the outside and thinks he's done a foolish thing.

How right she is as Ford gets caught up in a power play between the toughest con in the joint Barton MacLane and the sadistic head guard Cy Kendall. The only friend Ford or any of the convicts have is the new prison chaplain John Litel.

Lots of good action scenes with all the proper prison cliches used. You know we never do find out exactly what happened with Ford's father, but certain assumption are made.

Men Without Souls is one mediocre prison flick.

New prison chaplain John Litel (Reverend Storm) arrives at his new post in the middle of an escape attempt and tries to win the prisoners over. He doesn't on this occasion, but that's his mission. You see, Litel is one of those people who think that people are not born evil and everyone should be given a second chance. A person's life is shaped by the tough breaks they have had as children. However, for such an understanding chaplain, he's pretty handy with his fists! Anyway, into this prison comes Glenn Ford (Johnny) intent on getting revenge on sadistic prison guard Cy Kendall (Captain White) who killed Ford's father a few years earlier in the same prison. Ford gets put into the same cell as troublesome ring-leader Barton MacLane (Blackie). Can they forge a friendship……?

This film cracks along at a good pace. Unfortunately, the sound quality isn't great and there is occasional interference with the picture but it is not enough to spoil the viewing. I found it an enjoyable journey, but it's one that doesn't really allow any emotional connections. It just cracks along until it reaches the conclusion. Not bad, though. And why on earth is Rochelle Hudson 3rd billed when she only has one small scene?

This is a gritty drama set inside a tough prison, with the new chaplain (John Litel) as the hero figure. However, the emphasis is not on the usual suffering, beatings, rattling locks and bars, and chain gangs of convict films, but is strongly story-oriented. The very young, almost baby-faced, Glenn Ford plays a new inmate who has committed a crime specifically with the intention of being jailed, so that he can kill the sadistic guard who murdered his elderly father, who had gone to that prison for a white collar crime. The chaplain figures this out and intervenes. (Rochelle Hudson has a brief scene in his office where she tearfully tells Glenn Ford how much she loves him and begs him to give up his mission.) There are numerous unexpected plot twists and a lot of rough stuff. Over-arching everything are moralistic concerns about the nature and justification of vengeance, of trust, of abuse of prisoners, about prisons in general. Some of the chaplain's simplistic 'hug a thug' philosophy is clearly ridiculous, but it is never pandered to in the story, since most of the cons callously reject his overtures to befriend and 'understand' them. The character actor Barton MacLane here has a rare opportunity to star in a film, as the violent inmate Blackie. His heart of gold is buried so deep you need a rock-drill to find it, but at the end, a few glints of gold appear as he dies with a confession on his lips and saying with his last breath the pathetic remnants of what he can recall of 'Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep' and making the sardonic comment to the chaplain: 'I bet you didn't think I knew any prayer'.