Hell's Highway (1932)

"Everything is written in the stars" Duke Ellis (Richard Dix) is all set to break out of the dangerous prison camp he's being held in when his younger brother John (Tom Brown) is unexpectedly delivered into custody on the eve of his planned departure. Duke decides to stay…

Jesse Snoddon

The balls of staging a prison riot when your prison uniform literally has a target painted on its back.

Horror Syndrome

Hung on just the thinnest of plots, Hell's Highway is explicitly intended as an exposé of the inhuman conditions under which chain gangs labored in the early 1930s.* Forced to work in service of capital as rented labor for private industry — the men, listed by race, are…

sakana1

-"Hey, you baboon, don’t you know better than to leave them mules out in the sun?!" -"Yas sir, boss, yas sir. Mules cost $40 a head and convicts don’t cost nothin’." Brutal RKO chain gang drama rushed out to beat Warner Bros.’ more famous I Am a Fugitive from a Chain…

Karina Oliveira

This hard-as-nails RKO chain gang pic is touched with writer-director Rowland Brown's usual malevolent machismo. The story and characterisation is otherwise fairly standard – with tough con Richard Dix trying to look after his kid brother (Tom Brown) – but its…

Rick Burin

Joe Arpaio was born the same year this film was released, and perhaps it’s where he got some of his backward ideas. “I don’t believe in coddling prisoners,” says the warden (C. Henry Gordon), as he has them whipped, starved, and tortured in order to utilize them as slave…

AntoniusBlock7

What I'll remember about this film is its unusual filmmaking, which we're not accustomed to seeing in a film from 1932. Now, whether that's down to the director or the producer, I'm unable to say. What you won't find in "Hell's Highway" are any dazzling actions…

Daniel Staebler

I am a sucker for a good prison movie, and this short, quite efficient little 1930s drama about a chain gang, is a pretty good prison movie, despite wearing a few earmarks of its time awkwardly (treatment of race, for instance) and the studio-mandated, reshot 'happy'…

Jay D 's Watching

There is more of exploitation than exposé to this film, purportedly meant to raise social consciousness to the plight of prisoners living in deplorable conditions in chain gangs. But it does do some of that, beginning with real headlines about a man who was killed inside of…

Michael Shawn