Crashout

Lewis R. Foster’s tragically underappreciated Crashout is not quite a prison break film as the escape takes place practically before the opening credits are finished; instead, the film follows a gang of six escapees as they hide, steal, assault, and kill as needed to survive and find a pile of hidden loot that could help them get on their feet. Ostensibly led by the injured Van Morgan Duff (noir fixture William Bendix) and Joe Quinn (Arthur Kennedy), the escapees hide out in an abandoned mine, force a doctor to treat them, steal a car, board a train, kill a cop, take over a restaurant, invade a farmhouse, and climb a mountain during a blizzard (without wearing gloves!). The script explores not just the moral conflicts between the gang and the outside world but the moral conflicts among the six of them; as time goes by, the false brotherhood unravels and their numbers dwindle (one of them burns to death and another is quite literally stabbed in the back). B-movie bombshell Beverly Michaels plays farm worker and single mother Alice Mosher whose own moral failings — and their attendant guilt — pale in comparison to those of her visitors (“Money’s a lot like love; there’s a dirty kind and a clean kind”).  This is a compelling and entertaining film that doesn’t sacrifice character development, doesn’t shy away from brutality, and doesn’t come anywhere close to having a happy ending: at the start of the film, one of the men baptizes a near-death Duff, but by the end Duff’s accused of being the devil.