This blog entry is part of my "movie year countdown round #2". Read more about that here.
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
This film truly made me feel the horror and desperation of what it must have been like to work on a real chain gang. Even though the film was release prior to Hollywood's explicit self censorship with the Hayes code, there was still a lot of conscious self censorship from showing anything too explicit. Nonetheless the horrors come through powerfully. And then to find out this was based on a true story made it even more frightening and astounding. And then on top of that even, this is touted as a rare film in history that seemed to fairly concretely play a huge role in reforming the system that it was criticizing. Chain gangs were done away with soon after the release of this film and with the popularity of the film, it's safe to assume it played a considerable role. At least this is all based on info presented in the DVD commentary for the film, which I would highly recommend listening to.
The only reason I can't give this a perfect score is because some of the acting and dialogue seemed a little corny. And some of the story structure seemed a bit dated. The scenes that mattered hit hard when it counted though. The final image of this film is perfect and haunting.
Rating: 8/10