Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison

Country music legend Johnny Cash famously loved Crane Wilbur’s Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison and was inspired by the film to write “Folsom Prison Blues,” first recorded in 1955. An entertaining prison noir despite its extremely predictable story, the film takes some creative angles on the subgenre, including voiceover narration by the prison facility itself, making it the only noir narrated by an inanimate object (“This is a story from my rough, tough past”). Ted de Corsia plays Ben Rickey, a ruthless, punishing warden who’s required to bring on a younger, college-educated captain of the guards named Mark Benson (David Brian) who brings a more sensitive, reform-minded style to the job. The inevitable conflict between the two men unfolds against a backdrop of restless inmates like Chuck Daniels (Steve Cochran), who leads an escape attempt that unsurprisingly devolves into a bloody riot involving machine gun fire, blackouts, and explosions (the action here is very well done). The last in Wilbur’s trilogy of prison noirs, which also included Canon City (1948) and The Story of Molly X (1949), the film features plenty of gorgeous compositions, shadow and light dancing throughout vast, dramatic prison corridors, closeups capturing frightened eyes behind the grills in steel cell doors, spotlights exposing sweaty inmates struggling to fall asleep at night.