Big House, U.S.A.
Tags: murder

Plot synopsis:
In a Colorado national park, a boy having an asthma attack is approached by a nurse, Emily Evans, with a syringe. Frightened of needles, the boy flees into the woods, where Jerry Barker finds him.
Park ranger Erickson tries to calm wealthy Robertson Lambert, the missing boy's frantic father. Barker demands a $200,000 ransom for the kid's safe return. But while collecting the money, Barker leaves behind the boy, who accidentally falls to his death. Barker coldly disposes of the body and buries most of the money.
Caught by agent Madden of the FBI, Barker is convicted of extortion, but not murder because no corpse is found. He is sent to prison, where the warden hopes to intimidate Barker by throwing the child killer together with four of the most hardened convicts in stir, bank robber Rollo Lamar, smuggler Alamo Smith, and cold-blooded killers Mason and Kelly.
Barker becomes known as the "ice man" because of his cold, icy persona in court when he was convicted. He also gains the prisoners' trust after discovering their escape plan and not informing. But when they take him along on the breakout, it is not out of friendship but because they're after the hidden ransom money.
Madden is in hot pursuit. He has discovered that Emily, the nurse, had been in on Barker's scheme from the start. Back in the park, the fugitives turn on one another until only two are left. Mason is gunned down, and Lamar begs for his life. The money is recovered, Barker is going back to prison, and Emily's given a sentence behind bars of her own.

Review: Juicy Slice of Thick Ear. 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!
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 only real drawback-- the underwater scenes of the prison escape, which appear to have been shot in a neighbor's backyard pool.
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 film begins with a little boy getting lost while at summer camp.
Ralph Meeker finds the boy and pretends to be helping him, but actually is intent on kidnapping him and holding him for a huge ransom.
However, the cold and calculating killer is caught and sent to prison--but unfortunately, all they can prove is that he extorted the money--not that he had anything to do with the boy's disappearance.This is sort of like a prison movie merged with a Film Noir flick.
That's because much of the beginning and ending of the film is set outside prison and its style throughout was rather Noir inspired--with a format much like an episode of DRAGNET (the bloodier 1950s version, not the late 60s incarnation).
Now I hate violent and bloody films, but this one was a bit more restrained but still very shocking for a 1950s audience--featuring some of the most brutal plot elements of the decade (tossing a child's body off a cliff, burning a corpse with a blowtorch to confuse in the identification of another corpse and the scene with the escaped prisoner who is scalded to death).
Because of all this, the film was above all else, realistic and shocking--much of it due to the excellent script, straight-forward acting and a few excellent and unexpected plot twists.By the way, this is one of the earliest films in which Charles Bronson appears with this name (previously, he'd been billed as "Charlie Buchinsky").
Rugged mid-fifties prison break flick with great cast,--Broderick Crawford, Ralph Meeker, Lon Chaney, Jr., Charles Bronson, Reed Hadley, Bill Bouchey and Roy Roberts--it oozes violence and cruelty, and is even today one tough, convincing little movie.
Ralph Meeker is excellent as a cold-blooded killer known as 'the iceman", but Crawford has the film's best line when Meeker joins his prison cell: "The iceman cometh".
Very watchable and outdoorsy, with fine work by a virile cast, it rather resembles stylistically Crawford's TV series Highway Patrol in its plain, police procedural take on the American western landscape of the fifties, with killers, like Commies, lurking behind every rock and tree.
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.
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..
It stars Broderick Crawford, Ralph Meeker, Reed Hadley, William Talman, Lon Chaney Jr., Charles Bronson and Felicia Farr.
Music is by Paul Dunlap and cinematography by Gordon Avil.A Kidnap, A Ransom and A Prison Break = Powder Keg.Out of Bel-Air Productions, Big House, U.S.A. is a relentlessly tough and gritty picture.
Beginning with the kidnapping of a young boy from a country camp, Howard Koch's film has no intentions of making you feel good about things.
Deaths do occur and we feel the impact wholesale, tactics and actions perpetrated by the bad guys in the play punch the gut, while the finale, if somewhat expected in the scheme of good versus bad classic movies, still leaves a chill that is hard to shake off.Split into two halves, we first observe the kidnap and ransom part of the story, then for the second part we enter prison where we become cell mates with five tough muthas.
Crawford, Chaney, Meeker, Bronson and Talman, it's a roll call of macho nastiness unfurled by character actors worthy of the Big House surroundings.
The locations play a big part in the pervading sense of doom that hangs over proceedings, Cascabel Island Prison (really McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary) is every bit as grim as you would expect it to be, and the stunning vistas of Royal Gorge in Colorado proves to be a foreboding backdrop for much of the picture.Although it sadly lacks chiaroscuro photography, something which would have been perfect for this movie and elevated it to the standard of Brute Force and Riot in Cell Block 11, Avil's photography still has the requisite starkness about it.
Not all the performances are top draw, more so on the good guy side of the fence, and some characters such as Chaney's Alamo Smith don't get nearly enough lines to spit, but this is still one bad boy of an experience and recommended to fans of old black and white crims and coppers movies.
at the time when a call came in for extras for a summer camp scene.This movie was filmed in and around the Cannon City area,Westcliffe and Royal Gorge.
Broderick Crawford had a popular TV series at the time called Highway Patrol.This was one of Charles Bronson's earliest movies, he had just done House of Wax a year or two before.Reed Hadley also had a popular detective TV series at the time..
Per the Lindbergh Law. Big House USA sounds like a prison picture, but only in part of the film is the setting a maximum security prison.
There is the part how Ralph Meeker got there and the last part about his escape with several other solid citizens, residents of Big House USA.A young boy with one rich father is kidnapped by Meeker and dies while in his custody.
Father Willis Bouchey pays the ransom, but gets no child back.Meeker is arrested, but all he's charged with is extortion, without a body dead or alive, the authorities can do no more.
But with the reputation as a child killer, Meeker's not going to be a popular guy even in the maximum security federal penitentiary he's sent.But cell-mate Broderick Crawford has other ideas about the ransom money never recovered and buried in a national park.
He and confederates Lon Chaney, Jr., William Talman, and Charles Bronson escape with Meeker.
They had an escape plan in the works already, a quite ingenious one which costs another prisoner his life during a dry run.A chance to see all these guys in a film is never to be passed up.
Big House USA spends more time in the wide open spaces than in a maximum security prison.
Still it's a tight little noir film with a fine cast of players..
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.
Crawford, Chaney, Bronson, and Talman -- Cell-Mates!.
The film begins with an accidental (convenient?) kidnapping, which leads to one thing, and another - which doesn't really indicate the main story, which is a "Big House, U.S.A." prison break story.
Picture this: Ralph Meeker is sent to prison; his cell-mates are the following criminals: Broderick Crawford, Lon Chaney Jr., Charles Bronson (reading a "Muscle" magazine!), and William Talman (reading a "Detective" magazine!).
Koch ~ Broderick Crawford, Ralph Meeker, Reed Hadley.
Unintentional riot about a stony-faced extortionist (Ralph Meeker) arrested and copping a plea bargain with the courts, ending up in an impenetrable prison.
Meeker's link to the kidnapping/disappearance of a child makes him quite unpopular with his cell-mates (including Charles Bronson, pumped up and perusing muscle magazines); fortunately for Ralph, this cell-block gang--led by a wily but not quite brutish Broderick Crawford--already have a break-out plan in the works.
It's about a man, Jerry Barker, that kidnaps a sick child, holds him hostage and asks the father for ransom money for the safe return of the child.
Barker gets his money but the boy ends up dead and Barker in prison.
He became known as The Ice Man in the news papers and well hated in prison for killing a child.
A worthwhile crime-prison film to watch.
NOT a typical prison picture--an amazing cast, a major twist, great locations....
At first you are lulled into thinking we're in an ordinary crime drama: a rich kid is kidnapped from a Colorado mountain summer camp.
All of this takes awhile to happen and is pretty interesting, especially set out in the big landscape and bright air of the Rockies.But then our main character finds himself in a jail cell with some hardened thugs.
Broderick Crawford, who plays loud and brash characters as good as anyone, and who is sharp as a whip here, the gangleader and intellectual.Ralph Meeker, the man who played Mike Hammer in the following year's "Kiss Me Deadly" and is a good hardened criminal.William Talman, most memorable in Ida Lupino's "The Hitchhiker" as the sinister kidnapper with one eye which stayed open even when he slept, and here plays an equally cold and brutal type.Lon Chaney (this would be Lon Chaney Jr. of course) who continued his career are "Wolfman" in roles demanding his broad nice guy quality that here gets twisted since he's also a thug.Charles Bronson, yes, whose big fame was still ahead ("Magnificent Seven" and "The Great Escape") and who appears here without his shirt on, of course (he's ripped).The rest of the movie follows these men as they escape, audaciously, and begin to rip into each other in an effort to find the hidden ransom money.There are a few stumbles and improbable turns here, but it's all done with such high stakes energy it really works.
Loosely inspired by a real life case, this gritty little film documents the fate of a ne'er do well drifter who seizes the opportunity to make money off the disappearance of a wealthy child.
Meeker plays the stoic (and uncomfortably good-looking) extortionist who locates a missing boy only to hole him up in a condemned ranger station while he attempts to milk $200,000 from the boy's panicked father Bouchey.
Meeker is convicted of extortion (not kidnapping!) and sent to the Big House where he's confronted with some unfriendly cellmates.
Crawford is the burly ringleader, Chaney is the more sensitive, lunkheaded one, Bronson is an antagonistic muscle man and Talman is a skittish follower.
All of them wish to escape and when they find out that Meeker has some ransom money hidden on the outside, they decide to drag him along with them so they can split it up!
Crawford, top-billed though he takes quite a while to show up, is savvy and ruthless (and, unfortunately, shows off far more chest that Meeker does!) Talman, infamous as the constant nemesis of "Perry Mason", and Chaney don't get a lot of screen time, but handle what they get effectively.
It's a startlingly brutal piece of movie-making for its time with a couple of really rough deaths including a bad fall, a broiling in a steam tank and a hammer to the head, followed by a face-roasting via a flame gun!
One great thing is the use of outdoor locations and the assemblage of interesting cast members.
He gets caught and sent to a BIG HOUSE on a fakey looking island in the USA.
His cell-mates are: Broderick Crawford, chess playing chief mastermind, Lon Chaney Jr., lovable loony who reads romance magazines, Charles Bronson, ever shirtless and bulging with greased up muscles(reading muscle magazines) and William Talman (Perry Masons own D.A., Hamilton Burger) They are about to escape.
They kidnap the kidnapper to make him take them to the ransom money.
After the escape Crawford makes Talman bash Bronson's brains in and blow torch his body.
Then Crawford shoots Chaney Jr. This leaves Meeker to lead Crawford & Talman to the ransom loot.
Talman get shot about twenty seven times by the F.B.I guy and Crawford gives himself up, sniveling like a baby.
Voice-over says Crawford & Meeker get nuked in the BIG HOUSE.
This independent film simply adds "USA" to the title (minus "The") of the 1930 prison movie that was way ahead of its time in its depiction of prison violence.
It is, however, the genesis of a crime, here a kidnapping gone wrong, that results in the criminal (Ralph Meeker) gaining the nickname "Ice Man" in prison for his cold demeanor in the way he denies having seen the victim, sadly an 8 year old boy he kept hidden while trying to extort money from his wealthy father.Like child molesters, kidnappers of children in prison are considered the lowest of the low, and in this case, Meeker's cell-mates (Broderick Crawford, Lon Chaney Jr., Charles Bronson) ostracize him immediately.
But knowing he has ransom money stashed away, they decide to include him in on their escape plans, with the intention of killing him once he leads them to it.
The prison scenes don't begin until half way through the film even though Crawford is top-billed.
This case history of a crime begins in the great outdoors.
A sick young boy with asthma runs away from camp after being scared by the nurse at the camp (a young Felicia Farr who made her feature debut with this film as Randy Farr) The boy is 'helped' by a strange man (Ralph Meeker) who then kidnaps him and proceeds to blackmail the boy's wealthy father.But then the the boy accidentally dies in a fall from a condemned forest lookout tower where the man had put him.
And because the body id never found, Meeker can only be convicted on a extortion charge.The story then shifts gears entirely turning to prison drama which was filmed at the Cascabel Island facility.
The plot now focuses on four cutthroat convicts: Broderick Crawford, William Talman, Lon Chaney Jr., and a young, super ripped muscle bound Charles Bronson.
A breakout is planned, of course, with their target the hidden $200,000 ransom money Meeker hid away before being arrested.
A gun battle ensues with the remaining gang and one more is killed and the remaining are arrested once again.All in all not a great film but what a great cast of convicts!
Higgins gave him the short end of the stick by killing Bronson off once the prison escape had been effected.
Crawford orders Talman to use a blowtorch on Bronson's face and fingers to obliterate any means of identification in a effort to distract the police.
Meeker did a great job as a cold-blooded crook nicknamed "The Iceman" by Crawford.
Talman , Chaney and especially Bronson made great members of Crawford's gang..
***SPOILERS*** Even though the movie "Big House U.S.A" runs for a scant 83 minutes it seems like well over two hours watching it and all the side plots that's in it.
In fact we never get to see the big man or top star Braderick Crawford, the psycho as well as wimpy sadist killer Rollo Lamar, until almost halfway into the film.The story starts with good natured fisherman Jerry Baker, Ralph Meeker, giving a hand to this runaway boy Danny Lambert, Peter J.
Trying to escape Danny falls to his death and with that Baker if caught faces the death penalty for, a federal charge, kidnap/murder.Caught by the FBI lead by Special Agent James Madden, Reed Hadley, Baker being a step ahead of the law had disposed of Danny's body and hid the ransom money where he only faced and got a one to five year sentence at the top security Cascaville prison.
Headed by the brains of the outfit Rollo Lamar Baker is forced to break out of jail with Rollo and his fellow cell-mates the worst bunch of convicts in the entire prison system.
It's not that Rollo liked Baker but the fact that Baker knew where he stashed the $200,000.00 ransom money was worth saving his life; That's until Rollo got his hands on that cash and then he's history!Worth watching just to see future action star Charles Bronson all pumped up, the guy would give Arnold Schwartznegger a run for his money in a body building contest, and crazy with future District Attorney Berger, William Talman, in the Perry Mason TV show as, this really takes the cake, William "Machine Gun" Mason!
In fact three years later Charles Bronson would get the lead role as the real, whom Talman's character was obviously based on, Machine Gun Kelly.P.S There's also horror star Lon Cheney Jr. as the dim witted and lovable convicted murderer Lenny Alamo Smith.
It fact it was Lenny that Lon Chaney played in the 1939 film "Of Mice & Men" that made him a star.