Last night we watched a prison movie called "The Criminal Code"(1930), directed by Howard Hawks and co-starring Boris Karloff as a convict seeking revenge against a squealer who broke his parole. Phillips Holmes stars as "Robert Graham", a young man celebrating his twentieth birthday in a big city. He's new in town, alone and looking for someone to dance with. "Gertrude Williams" (Mary Doran) happens by and they go to a nightclub. While dancing, another man accosts Gertrude. Robert is drunk and reacts by smashing him over the head with a glass bottle. The man dies and Robert is arrested. At his trial, he pleads self defense. "I thought he had a gun". From what we've seen, his claim is legit, but the D.A. (Walter Houston) is playing hardball. Robert is found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In the slam, Robert is quickly worn down. After six years, he's a shell of his former self, half-crazy and counting the hours of each day. If he has to work one more minute in the prison's polluted jute factory, he's gonna jump out of his skin. A shrink is sent to talk to him. He finds Robert to be remorseful and self aware. "He accepts responsibility for his victim's death, but he's not a killer and I believe he told the truth at his trial".
Walter Houston has now become the prison warden. As the former D.A., he's responsible for putting many of the men in there. They hate him, and stage a protest his very first day on the job, by setting a time to chant and yell in the prison yard. Houston hears them and knows he needs to make peace. One of the things he does is to call on the staff psychiatrist who examined Robert Graham. "He's typical of the way they're treated", the doc reports. "Monotonous work, in a workshop with safety hazards. No sunlight. They never see a female. The guards break the rules and treat them roughly without cause". Houston decides to do something about these conditions. He interviews Graham and offers him a job as his driver. Graham slowly comes back to life. He can see the light at the end of the tunnel. "I have three years left to serve", he tells a cellmate. "But I know I can do it now". Conditions are improved across the board. Family visits are increased. But Houston can't control everything. Some of his guards still get away with harsh treatment. One is particularly brutal.
Graham has another cellmate named "Galloway" (Karloff). He's got his eye on "Captain Gleason" (DeWitt Jennings), the brutal guard. "He's the reason I got sent back here". It seems that Boris got paroled, and one night went out for a beer. "I slipped up. Alcohol is forbidden for parolees. Wouldn't you know it? Gleason was in that bar. He saw me and reported me to my parole officer. Now I've got eight more years to do, but he's gonna pay the price, you can count on it". Boris is waiting for the right moment to catch Gleason alone. Then he's gonna kill him. Graham's other cellmate is planning to escape. Graham just wants to do his time and go free, but now he's gotta keep silent about his cellies. That's "The Criminal Code" of the title. When Karloff does kill the guard, Graham's in an extremely difficult position because he was in the next room when it happened. Warden Houston doesn't believe him when he says he saw nothing. "How could you have missed it? There's only one door in and out"! Graham maintains his silence and gets sent to The Hole, where he reverts to his former state. Broken again, he's near collapse after thirty days. But during the course of the movie, when he was the Warden's valet, he had the occasion to drive his daughter "Mary" (Constance Cummings) around. She fell in love with him and is horrified with what her father has done. She returns from a trip, sees what's happened to Graham, and demands that Dad set him free.
It's an epic story, combining Robert Graham's trajectory with a commentary on prison conditions. Because it was made in the early days of sound, the absence of even incidental music and silence between dialogue indicates, to me at least, that the filmmakers were still adjusting to the new technology. At times, it sounds like the actors are reciting their lines in a vacuum. Howard Hawks, of course, was a legend and he does show a grasp for grand-scale storytelling. I give "The Criminal Code" Two Big Thumbs Up. It almost rates Two Huge. Some of the fans at IMDB call it the greatest prison movie ever made. Watch it yourself and decide. It's very, very highly recommended. One final note : apparently, James Whale saw the film and Karloff's performance as the ruthless "Galloway" convinced him to cast Boris as "Frankenstein". The rest is freakin' history. /////
The previous night we were back in the swamp, with "Swamp Water"(1941), a Swamp Opera/Melodrama about a man who goes looking for his dog in the Okefenokee and gets more of a morass than he bargained for. Dana Andrews stars as "Ben", the adult son of hard-bitten "Thursday Ragan" (Walter Houston again), a shack dweller who lives at water's edge with his young wife "Hannah" (Mary Howard). Ben wants to become a trapper. Dad Thursday forbids it, because it entails going into the swamp. It's a dangerous place, full of gators and cottonmouth snakes. But when Ben's dog "Trouble" (Fleeter) runs off after a deer, he wants to go find him. "All right", Dad relents. "But swear you'll be back in two days".
Ben heads out with his canoe and pole and finds a small patch of solid ground on which to spend the night. He builds a fire and tries to stay awake (gotta be vigilant against them gators), but sleep takes him over and the next morning he arises tied to a tree. An interloper has skulked into his camp during the wee hours. "Tom Keefer" (Walter Brennan, not the guy from Cinderella) is a fugitive on the run from a framed-up murder rap. He's been living in the Okefenokee for many moons. The joint is 700 square miles of quagmire and critters. Some you can catch and eat, others are beasts that will eat you. Keefer's a survival expert. That's how he snuck up on young Ben and bound him to a tupelo tree, but after some tussling and a trade of information they become allies. It turns out Ben knows Tom's daughter, a squatter scruff named "Julie" (Anne Baxter), who's lot in life is tied to her Dad's (donald)-trumped up conviction.
Now, there's another gal in Shacksville who's got the hots for Ben. "Mabel MacKenzie" (Virginia Gilmore) is oversexed and overwrought. She thinks her feelings are mutual, so when she sees Ben at the Saturday night dance with Julie Keefer, she becomes A Woman Scorned. Hell hath no fury like Mabel, who starts spreading the news that Julie is Tom's daughter - which everyone already knew, but - much more importantly - that it must be the reason Ben has a sudden interest in her, and why he's spending so much time in the swamp. "Tom Keefer's gotta be hiding in there and Ben's helping him, bringing him food"!
Two local trappers bend an ear. "What?! That murderer"?, says one (Ward Bond). "If he's in there we oughta go in and get 'im"!
"Dang tootin'"!, says the other (Big Boy McGuinn). "No tellin' how many others he'll kill if we leave him out there to hunt us".
"He's not out there"!, Ben states emphatically, but he doth protest too much and the trappers don't believe him. Neither do the rest of the residents of swampland, who think Tom Keefer's guilty and want him on the end of a rope. Then one day Ben learns a secret. Bond and Big Boy have a side business in addition to their fur trapping. By night they're a couple of hog thieves. This revelation first leads them to stalk and threaten Ben, but when he gets the Sheriff on his side, they back off and leave him alone. The trappers are the ones who lead the charge against Tom, because they're in cahoots with a local goon named "Jesse Wick" (John Carradine), who knows about their secret thievery. They know something about Wick, too, so it's a mutually assured standoff. Honor among thieves causes the bad guys to stick together and railroad Tom Keefer, a trapper himself but an honest one.
It's a gumbo-pot boiler of a story, part 'Lil Abner and part "Southern Comfort" Backwoodserism. "Swamp Water" is directed by Jean Renoir, of all people, he of " La Grande Illusion" and "Rules of the Game", which Roger Ebert called the greatest film ever made (I don't agree). For Renoir to canoe down the Okefenokee strikes some critics as "he's slumming it", but I don't agree with that assessment either. There's nothing wrong with a French director goin' South by way of Hollywood. The production values are good and he used the real swamp on location. Dana Andrews is likeable as always, Walter Brennan is sympathetic, and Walter Houston is tough and excellent in both movies reviewed herein. I give "Swamp Water" Two Big Thumbs Up. Watch it with a big plate of Jumbo Shramp....er, Shrimp?.....no, Shramp. Just like Bubba Gump says in the movie. ////
That's all I've got for the moment. I hope you had a nice day. I send you Tons of Love as always!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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