Outside the Wall

Recently released from prison, where he spent his entire adult life after accidentally murdering a guard while in juvenile hall, Larry Nelson (Richard Basehart) eventually finds employment as a sanitarium lab assistant in Crane Wilbur’s Outside the Wall, where his romantic attentions are tugged between “good” nurse Ann (Dorothy Hart) and “bad” nurse Charlotte (Marilyn Maxwell). When armored car robber Red Chaney (Lloyd Gough) winds up admitted with tuberculosis, Nelson, who’s been committed to a straight and narrow life “outside the wall,” eventually and reluctantly agrees to work a shady deal with Chaney’s contacts for a big cash pile that he hopes will impress the money-obsessed Ann. Temptation leads to turmoil, however, as Nelson becomes a target for Garth (Harry Morgan) and his thugs, leading to kidnapping, torture, and final payback. With his boyish good looks and lack of experience in civil society, Nelson is a babe magnet: passersby, barflies, and nurses bat their eyelashes, perfectly willing to show him the ways of the world. From the prison’s stunning barrel vault to the urban pandemonium outside to the sanatorium gates at night to the cabin in the woods, the film punches above its weight on style, the noir paint tube squeezed wherever possible, the shifting atmosphere always hinting at chaos to come.