Big House, U.S.A.

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.

1955's "Big House, U. S. A." sounds like it might be spoofing the old prison pictures from prior decades, but don't let such a sadly generic title put you off from a bleak noir that deserves more than its ongoing obscurity. On location shooting at Royal Gorge Park in Colorado adds authenticity to a documentary-style account of an asthmatic boy reported lost in the wilderness, and the successful attempt by kidnapper Jerry Barker (Ralph Meeker) to blackmail $200,000 from his distraught father (Willis B. Bouchey), only to see the lad fall to an accidental death, Barker callously tossing the corpse into the gorge, never to be found by the authorities. Once caught, the unrepentant villain's unshakable demeanor earns him the moniker 'The Iceman,' an extortion conviction putting him in a prison cell next to a real wild bunch: Broderick Crawford top billed as ringleader Rollo Lamar, expertly planning a breakout; Lon Chaney as dope smuggler Alamo Smith; William Talman as small time murder for hire Machine Gun Mason; and a buff Charles Bronson as Benny Kelly, taking potshots at the newcomer as a cowardly baby snatcher. Rollo intends to 'kidnap the kidnapper' to force him to deliver the money secretly stashed away at the gorge, leaving behind a trail of dead bodies in his wake, scalded, shot, drowned, or just plain mutilated. It's truly grim stuff, surprisingly brutal for its time though curiously forgotten since Meeker's next role was that of Mike Hammer in Kubrick's 1956 classic "Kiss Me Deadly." Amidst these nefarious tough guys, leave it to reliable Lon Chaney to portray the lone character to earn any sympathy, he may also be a killer but in his carvings of beautiful women appears to have been a ladies man, still pining for the good old days much to Rollo's amusement. This was his 4th and final teaming with drinking buddy Brod Crawford, who was apparently less capable than Chaney of concealing his affliction off camera, while up and coming Charles Bronson shows he already had the physical stature to become an action star to be reckoned with.

A 1955 docudrama of a kidnapping gone wrong & the man who tried to make it happen. When an asthmatic kid goes missing in a national park, a crooked opportunist hears of this & tries to milk the situation by collecting ransom from his distraught father. Little does all concerned know that the poor boy would fall to his death from an elevated cabin which he escaped from, only for the kidnapper, played by Ralph Meeker, to toss his body into a forest canyon below. The FBI is called in & they capture Meeker sending him to jail w/o getting the particulars of the crime (Meeker is dubbed the Iceman for his reticence in not divulging any information). Once in stir, he meets up w/a group of convicts (Charles Bronson, Broderick Crawford, Lon Chaney, Jr. & William Talman make up some of this unit) looking to break out of prison w/the remaining ransom money (which Meeker stashed) used as a boon to keep himself alive during the escape which goes off w/o a hitch w/some of the team being killed along the way until the law finally catches up w/them back at the park. A great first half of the film gets lost in the second (almost feeling like two separate narratives which don't congeal in this 90 minutes affair!) w/a lot of the story beats sped along just to reach the end credits but I'd still recommend it for the terse first 45 minutes as the kidnapping & aftermath is thrilling & heartbreaking. Also starring Felicia Farr (she was married to Jack Lemmon) as one of Meeker's helpers, Stafford Repp (Chief O'Hara from TV's Batman) as the prison warden & William Boyett (from Adam 12) as a park ranger.

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.