Prison Movies
by karljhickey14 | created - 11 Jul 2016 | updated - 3 weeks ago | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. The Big House (1930)
Passed | 87 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
A convict falls in love with his new cellmate's sister, only to become embroiled in a planned break-out which is certain to have lethal consequences.
Directors: George W. Hill, Ward Wing | Stars: Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Robert Montgomery
Votes: 1,679
2. The Criminal Code (1930)
Passed | 97 min | Crime, Drama, Romance
After a failed attempt at running for governor, D.A. Mark Brady is appointed warden of the state prison where many of the criminals he prosecuted are incarcerated.
Director: Howard Hawks | Stars: Walter Huston, Phillips Holmes, Constance Cummings, Boris Karloff
Votes: 851
3. 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932)
Passed | 78 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Brash hoodlum Tom Connors enters Sing Sing cocksure of himself and disrespectful toward authority, but his tough but compassionate warden changes him.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Spencer Tracy, Bette Davis, Arthur Byron, Lyle Talbot
Votes: 2,207
4. Each Dawn I Die (1939)
Approved | 92 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A corrupt D.A. with political ambitions is angered by news stories implicating him in criminal activity and decides to frame the reporter who wrote them for manslaughter in order to silence him.
Director: William Keighley | Stars: James Cagney, George Raft, Jane Bryan, George Bancroft
Votes: 2,579
5. San Quentin (1937)
Approved | 70 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
An army trainer becomes captain of the prison yard and in time, falls for the sister of a hardened inmate.
Director: Lloyd Bacon | Stars: Pat O'Brien, Ann Sheridan, Humphrey Bogart, Barton MacLane
Votes: 1,568
6. White Heat (1949)
Not Rated | 114 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A psychopathic criminal with a mother complex makes a daring break from prison and leads his old gang in a chemical plant payroll heist.
Director: Raoul Walsh | Stars: James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O'Brien, Margaret Wycherly
Votes: 25,766
7. Brute Force (1947)
Passed | 98 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
At a tough penitentiary, prisoner Joe Collins plans to rebel against Captain Munsey, the power-mad chief guard.
Director: Jules Dassin | Stars: Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford, Yvonne De Carlo
Votes: 8,077
8. Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954)
Not Rated | 80 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Fed up with the inhumane prison living conditions, a general prison riot breaks out, leading to hostage-taking, a stand-off with the guards and eventual negotiations with the prison administration officials.
Director: Don Siegel | Stars: Neville Brand, Emile Meyer, Frank Faylen, Leo Gordon
Votes: 1,482
9. Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
PG | 112 min | Biography, Crime, Drama
Alcatraz is the most secure prison of its time. It is believed that no one can ever escape from it, until three daring men make a possible successful attempt at escaping from one of the most infamous prisons in the world.
Director: Don Siegel | Stars: Clint Eastwood, Patrick McGoohan, Roberts Blossom, Jack Thibeau
Votes: 107,336 | Gross: $43.00M
10. Cool Hand Luke (1967)
GP | 127 min | Crime, Drama
A laid back Southern man is sentenced to two years in a rural prison, but refuses to conform.
Director: Stuart Rosenberg | Stars: Paul Newman, George Kennedy, Strother Martin, J.D. Cannon
Votes: 151,749 | Gross: $16.22M
11. A Man Escaped (1956)
Not Rated | 101 min | Drama
A captured French Resistance fighter during WWII engineers a daunting escape from a Nazi prison in France.
Director: Robert Bresson | Stars: François Leterrier, Charles Le Clainche, Maurice Beerblock, Roland Monod
Votes: 16,553
12. Riot (1969)
R | 96 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
A riot in a state prison is staged to cover up an escape attempt, during which many inmates and guards are killed. Shot on location at Arizona State Prison.
Director: Buzz Kulik | Stars: Jim Brown, Gene Hackman, Mike Kellin, Gerald S. O'Loughlin
Votes: 397
13. Big House, U.S.A. (1955)
Approved | 83 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Jerry Barker finds a lost boy whose rich father is extorted into paying a ransom for his return but the boy accidentally dies and Jerry goes to prison.
Director: Howard W. Koch | Stars: Broderick Crawford, Ralph Meeker, Reed Hadley, William Talman
Votes: 641
14. Crashout (1955)
Approved | 89 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
The survivors of a prison break set out on an arduous journey to retrieve some loot.
Director: Lewis R. Foster | Stars: William Bendix, Arthur Kennedy, Luther Adler, William Talman
Votes: 426
15. Caged (1950)
Not Rated | 96 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A naive nineteen year old widow becomes coarsened and cynical when she is sent to a woman's prison and is exposed to hardened criminals and sadistic guards.
Director: John Cromwell | Stars: Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead, Ellen Corby, Hope Emerson
Votes: 3,214
16. Women's Prison (1955)
Approved | 80 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Life at a 1950s women's maximum security prison where the warden and the guards are as brutal as the inmates.
Director: Lewis Seiler | Stars: Ida Lupino, Jan Sterling, Cleo Moore, Audrey Totter
Votes: 646
17. Le Trou (1960)
Not Rated | 131 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
In prison four long-sentence inmates planning an elaborate escape cautiously induct a new inmate to join in their scheme which leads to distrust and uncertainty.
Director: Jacques Becker | Stars: André Bervil, Jean Keraudy, Michel Constantin, Philippe Leroy
Votes: 13,282 | Gross: $0.03M
18. Canon City (1948)
Approved | 82 min | Action, Crime, Drama
Twelve inmates plan a prison break from the Colorado State Penitentiary but one of them reluctantly joins the group.
Director: Crane Wilbur | Stars: Scott Brady, Jeff Corey, Whit Bissell, Stanley Clements
Votes: 313
19. Convicted (1950)
Passed | 91 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A D.A. becomes the prison warden where he tries to help an inmate he prosecuted, because he believes his sentence was excessive.
Director: Henry Levin | Stars: Glenn Ford, Broderick Crawford, Millard Mitchell, Dorothy Malone
Votes: 653
20. House of Numbers (1957)
Approved | 90 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
San Quentin prison inmate Arnie Judlow asks his twin brother Bill and his wife Ruth to assist him in a daring escape plan.
Director: Russell Rouse | Stars: Jack Palance, Harold J. Stone, Edward Platt, Barbara Lang
Votes: 428
21. The Concrete Jungle (1960)
TV-14 | 86 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
In UK, after pulling a racetrack robbery, repeat offender Johnny Bannion hides the loot in a farmer's field but the police and the local mob come looking for Johnny and for the money.
Director: Joseph Losey | Stars: Stanley Baker, Sam Wanamaker, Grégoire Aslan, Margit Saad
Votes: 1,104
22. San Quentin (1946)
Passed | 66 min | Drama, Romance
Television viewer seeing this for the first time: Gee whiz, it's in black-and-white and was made in the 40's and is about crime and...Eureka!...another "noir" film is discovered. How about ... See full summary »
Director: Gordon Douglas | Stars: Lawrence Tierney, Marian Carr, Barton MacLane, Harry Shannon
Votes: 206
23. Outside the Wall (1950)
Passed | 80 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A paroled convict's infatuation with a gold-digger nurse working at a sanitarium leads him to crime.
Director: Crane Wilbur | Stars: Richard Basehart, Marilyn Maxwell, Signe Hasso, Dorothy Hart
Votes: 88
24. The Last Mile (1959)
Not Rated | 81 min | Drama, Thriller
A prison break is attempted the same night an execution occurs on death row.
Director: Howard W. Koch | Stars: Mickey Rooney, Frank Overton, Michael Constantine, John Vari
Votes: 253
25. Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951)
Approved | 87 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
At California's Folsom Prison, escape attempts and riots are on the rise due to the old-school sadistic style of management of a brutal warden.
Director: Crane Wilbur | Stars: Steve Cochran, David Brian, Philip Carey, Ted de Corsia
Votes: 201
26. The Steel Jungle (1956)
Approved | 86 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A power struggle emerges among convicts condemned to prison life.
Director: Walter Doniger | Stars: Perry Lopez, Beverly Garland, Walter Abel, Ted de Corsia
Votes: 93
27. Experiment Alcatraz (1950)
Approved | 57 min | Crime, Mystery
A doctor tests his theory that blood diseases can be cured by atomic radiation by using prison inmates as experiments.
Director: Edward L. Cahn | Stars: John Howard, Joan Dixon, Walter Kingsford, Lynne Carter
Votes: 226
28. Black Tuesday (1954)
Approved | 80 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Gangster Vincent Canelli and bank robber Peter Manning escape from Death Row minutes before their execution by electric chair.
Director: Hugo Fregonese | Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Jean Parker, Peter Graves, Milburn Stone
Votes: 256
29. Betrayed Women (1955)
70 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
The governor appoints lawyer Jeff Darrow to open an investigation on the reported cruelties inflicted on the inmates of the Bayou Reformatory For Women. The investigation is opposed by Mrs.... See full summary »
Director: Edward L. Cahn | Stars: Carole Mathews, Beverly Michaels, Peggy Knudsen, Tom Drake
Votes: 53
30. Women Without Men (1956)
Approved | 71 min | Action, Adventure, Crime
U.S. State Department agent Kent Foster, on the trail of a murderous traitor, Nick Randall, hopes to trap Randall through singer/stripper Angela Booth. The latter has promised to marry ... See full summary »
Director: Elmo Williams | Stars: Beverly Michaels, Jim Davis, Joan Rice, Richard Travis
Votes: 82
31. I Want to Live! (1958)
Approved | 120 min | Biography, Crime, Drama
A prostitute, sentenced to death for murder, pleads her innocence.
Director: Robert Wise | Stars: Susan Hayward, Simon Oakland, Virginia Vincent, Theodore Bikel
Votes: 5,325
32. Why Must I Die? (1960)
86 min | Crime, Drama
Debra Paget commits a murder for which Terry Moore (as club singer Lois King) is arrested, tried, and condemned to die. The story line wanders through the trial and Miss King's final hours ... See full summary »
Director: Roy Del Ruth | Stars: Terry Moore, Debra Paget, Bert Freed, Juli Reding
Votes: 62
33. Blonde Sinner (1956)
Not Rated | 99 min | Drama
A young woman who has been abused and taken advantage of by all the men in her life, finally finds a man she believes truly loves her, but she snaps when she finds out that he, too, is ... See full summary »
Director: J. Lee Thompson | Stars: Diana Dors, Yvonne Mitchell, Michael Craig, Marie Ney
Votes: 715
34. Cell 2455, Death Row (1955)
Approved | 77 min | Biography, Crime, Drama
Whit, condemned and awaiting execution, reviews the events of his life that has brought him to Cell 2455 on San Quentin's Death Row, a story he had told in a autobiography that became a ... See full summary »
Director: Fred F. Sears | Stars: William Campbell, R. Wright Campbell, Marian Carr, Kathryn Grant
Votes: 257
35. The Story of Molly X (1949)
Approved | 82 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
When gang leader Rick is killed, his wife Molly takes over his gang but a robbery goes wrong and Molly finds herself in jail where she undergoes a personal transformation.
Director: Crane Wilbur | Stars: June Havoc, John Russell, Dorothy Hart, Connie Gilchrist
Votes: 108
36. Unchained (1955)
75 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A convict in a medium-security prison is torn between his need to finish his sentence and get back to his wife and family, and his desire to escape the confines of prison.
Director: Hall Bartlett | Stars: Elroy 'Crazylegs' Hirsch, Barbara Hale, Chester Morris, Todd Duncan
Votes: 118
37. Under the Gun (1951)
Approved | 83 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
When a cunning, unscrupulous mobster is sentenced to a Florida prison farm, he launches a deadly escape plan.
Director: Ted Tetzlaff | Stars: Richard Conte, Audrey Totter, John McIntire, Sam Jaffe
Votes: 103
38. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)
Passed | 92 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Wrongly convicted James Allen serves in the intolerable conditions of a southern chain gang, which later comes back to haunt him.
Director: Mervyn LeRoy | Stars: Paul Muni, Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson, Noel Francis
Votes: 10,791
39. The White Trap (1959)
58 min | Crime, Drama
Serving a jail sentence for a crime he didn't commit, Paul Langley makes several attempts to escape from prison, in order to clear his name. He also has other problems, his wife is about to go into labor with their first baby.
Director: Sidney Hayers | Stars: Lee Patterson, Conrad Phillips, Michael Goodliffe, Jack Allen
Votes: 51
40. Escape by Night (1964)
75 min | Crime, Drama
A bus carrying prisoners on their way to jail, is hijacked by a gang, who want to free one of the passengers. The rest of the prisoners are locked in a petrol soaked barn, and warned not to... See full summary »
Director: Montgomery Tully | Stars: Terence Longdon, Jennifer Jayne, Harry Fowler, Peter Sallis
Votes: 144
41. Women Without Men (1956)
71 min | Crime, Drama
Seeking the whereabouts of international gangster Nick Randall, the U.S. State Department seeks the help of Scotland Yard. Nick's girl, Angela, is currently in a British prison, but has ... See full summary »
Directors: Elmo Williams, Herbert Glazer | Stars: Beverly Michaels, Joan Rice, Thora Hird, Avril Angers
Votes: 34
42. Young and Willing (1954)
Approved | 72 min | Drama
Frank "women in prison" story that sympathetically tracks several inmates through their imprisonment and subsequent return to society. Some are successfully rehabilitated; some are not.
Director: J. Lee Thompson | Stars: Glynis Johns, Diana Dors, John Gregson, Olive Sloane
Votes: 111
43. The Wayward Girl (1957)
Approved | 71 min | Drama
Director: Lesley Selander | Stars: Marcia Henderson, Peter Walker, Katherine Barrett, Whit Bissell
Votes: 27
44. The Way to the Gold (1957)
94 min | Adventure, Crime, Drama
An old inmate tells his cellmate, who's up for parole, about the location of a 35-year old gold loot and the released convict goes looking for it in Arizona.
Director: Robert D. Webb | Stars: Jeffrey Hunter, Sheree North, Barry Sullivan, Walter Brennan
Votes: 49
45. Marked Girls (1938)
102 min | Drama
Director: Roger Richebé | Stars: Viviane Romance, Renée Saint-Cyr, Marguerite Deval, Jean Worms
Votes: 15
46. ...and the Wild Wild Women (1959)
95 min | Drama
A harsh study about the grim realities of life in a non-coed, totally female prison environment. Story concerns a young girl who comes to prison and experiences the entire prison subculture... See full summary »
Director: Renato Castellani | Stars: Anna Magnani, Giulietta Masina, Cristina Gaioni, Anita Durante
Votes: 364
47. The Sinners (1949)
108 min | Drama, Romance
Story takes place in a dreadful girls' reformatory. A couple of lovers will try to escape from this living hell.
Director: Julien Duvivier | Stars: Serge Reggiani, Jean Davy, Monique Mélinand, Suzy Prim
Votes: 43
48. Raw Deal (1948)
Approved | 79 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Joe Sullivan has taken the rap for Rick who double-crosses him with a flawed escape plan and other means intended to get rid of him.
Director: Anthony Mann | Stars: Dennis O'Keefe, Claire Trevor, Marsha Hunt, John Ireland
Votes: 3,720
49. Kiss of Death (1947)
Approved | 99 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir