The Last Mile

“You guys do what you want. I’m gonna get me some fresh air.” Mickey Rooney morphed from victim to villain in his half-dozen noirs released throughout the 1950’s, becoming increasingly psychotic in the final three: Baby Face Nelson (1957), The Big Operator (1959), and this one, The Last Mile (1959), a remake of the 1932 film of the same name and a thoroughly bleak prison noir drama that illustrates how, despite the Production Code, movie violence was becoming increasingly explicit in the late 1950’s: bullets puncture bleeding bodies, a man is shot in the forehead, etc. Rooney plays “Killer” Mears, the putative leader of nine prison inmates on Death Row (“the death house”) whose anticipation of their deaths has led to anxiety, anger, hate, insanity, and, finally, a spontaneous escape attempt in which the men overpower the guards, swipe their shotguns (which have been conveniently lined up for the taking), and enter a deadly standoff with the warden’s men through cell windows (“I sure would have liked to see outside just once more,” says one inmate while taking his last breath). As ammunition runs out and Mears’ demand for a car is rejected, deliberate murder is used as a potential bargaining chip. While Alexander’s jazzy, loungey score doesn’t quite match the subject matter at times (like when the inmates watch the lights dim during an electrocution), Koch does a nice job maximizing a low budget, using the claustrophobic setting and deep shadows to intensify the emotional explosion inside the ward. The character of the prison chaplain, played by Frank Overton, attempts to add a redemptive message, but even he is taken hostage and placed on the death list (“What is this other world of yours?” Mears asks him mockingly. “Have you ever seen it? Has anyone ever seen it?”)