mark.waltz
This is a z grade snooze fest, one of the worst prison movies I've ever seen, which really gives PRC the name of perfectly rotten cinema. It surrounds the trustee of a prison who is framed on a murder charge and faces the death penalty. The convoluted plot keeps falling through the invisible sieve, so many holes and nothing coming out of it. This is extremely difficult to get through with Wilcox giving too moody of a performance to sympathize with and Beverly Roberts, once a Warner Brothers leading lady, absolutely lifeless. This is especially surprising to be so dull with cult director Victor Halperin at the helm. Even the intense prison scenes fall flat, and a seemingly serious car accident is badly staged with unrealistic details surrounding the crash.
Red-Barracuda
This mind-bogglingly tedious and utterly meaninglessly titled prison-drama is about a convict who is wrongly accused of killing a prison guard and subsequently sentenced to death by electric chair. Victor Halperin is at the helm here, he will be known to some as a director of some low grade poverty row genre pictures of the 30's. This has to be his least enjoyable feature that I have seen so far. It simply never gets going. It's very much a drama with little in the way of thrills; however, this is not a problem in itself. The issue is that the set-up and character relationships are not believable or compelling. The prison itself is like no other I know of, where felons are allowed out to work as chauffeurs for staff and even go drinking with them in bars in town. It's very silly. So too is the romantic sub-plot, where it seems that every man in the prison is deeply in love with the nurse/token woman. It's kind of trite and is a weak and pointless thread, as it doesn't really generate any worthwhile developments in the plot.One of the few points of interest in the plot is the way the film deals with the issue of capitol punishment. It seems to be very much anti-death penalty. This surprised me, as I thought that the general consensus back in the 30's would have been 'kill them, kill them!' Shows you what I know, turns out there were some very libertarian humanistic views on the subject back then. So that was quite interesting. Sadly not a lot else actually was.
Hitchcoc
Let's see now. A central figure is the guy who throws the switch at electrocutions. There are three guys in love with a woman who works as a nurse at the prison hospital. One of the prisoners gets to dress up in a suit and drive people around. The warden spends all of his time trying to help this guy. The security is non-existent. The nurse falls in love with the convict rather than the three guys who are in love with her. If prisons were run like this, they would be empty. Everyone would have walked away. My favorite character is the executioner. He has the shakes but can't seem to quit the job. About once a month he puts the juice to someone. He really wants to buy a farm and raise chickens. Oh, there's also a chaplain who is in love with this woman. Then there is an evil reporter who frames the poor schmoe. Does this sound like something you'd like to see?
wes-connors
"A prison trustee is soon to be released from prison when he ends up stopping a bar brawl involving one of the prison guards. After some unkind press for him on the bar brawl, the convict is turned down for his early parole. Will his love for the prison nurse help him in getting past all of the people trying to keep him in prison and looking at the electric chair?" according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis."Buried Alive" is a potentially interesting look at the electric chair era, and the public servants who organize the executions. But, the main story, involving handsome Robert Wilcox (as Johnny Martin) doesn't end up serving the film's morality question; at least, not the one introduced in the opening, by twitchy switch-puller George Pembroke (as Ernie Matthews).A "love story" between Mr. Wilcox and beautiful nurse Beverly Roberts (as Joan Wright) isn't terribly exciting. The book Wilcox describes, while driving, is John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" - which makes Wilcox "George" and cell-mate Don Rowan (as Big Billy) "Lennie". In the 1929s, prisoners did a lot more reading (and motion pictures were sometimes too talky).*** Buried Alive (11/6/39) Victor Halperin ~ Robert Wilcox, Beverly Roberts, George Pembroke
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