Tuna boat skipper Joaquin Shannon is enjoying his best mate's bucks party (he is engaged to Joaquin's sister) when his own fiancée Joan's brother shows up to pass on his father's hostility to Joaquin's proposal to him marrying Joan. Joaquin kicks him out of the bar but a mysterious man kills the brother & flees. Thinking that the groom might have killed him (since he was drunk & asleep next to the corpse) Joaquin decides to take the rap. Convicted of manslaughter, he is sent to prison for ten years but told that he will get out after a year if he keeps his nose clean. Once on the inside, Joaquin does his best to mind his own business. But when a cheap thug named Red Kincaid returns to prison after a spell outside, Joaquin's life gets harder. Red decides to ruin Joaquin's hopes of parole by taunting him into a fight, which he succeeds due to Joaquin's easy temper. But Joaquin has the last laugh when he singlehandedly foils Red's daring escape attempt. Given parole at last, Joaquin tries to adjust to civilian life. But Jean's father does his best to derail his career options. When Red finally manages to escape the prison, he forces Joaquin to join him on a little boat trip to Ecuador.
Barton MacLane must have some kind of record for appearing in the most prison films. Besides Prison Break, he had appeared in the following prison films – San Quentin (1937), I Was a Convict (1939), Mutiny in the Big House (1939), Men Without Souls (1940), a different San Quentin in 1946 & finally Jail Breakers in 1955. With that kind of track record he must have had some good experience playing convicts.
Prison Break is something of a morality tale of life in prison, although the title is somewhat inaccurate – MacLane doesn't actually take part in any prison escape (although he foils one himself) & the actual successful escape takes place offscreen. Instead, it's more of a story on how a man takes some rash & very poor choices to protect his friends & finds himself in almost perpetual trouble with the law. First, his fiancée's father objects to him marrying his daughter, which causes the woman's brother to try to stop him but ends up being killed by a stranger who flees the scene. Second, he takes the rap to protect a friend he believes caused the death, causing him to go to jail for a decade but with the option of parole if he stays clean in jail, which is going to be impossible with the prison heavy after him. Third is after he gets his parole, where his fiancée's father tries to keep him out of work, forcing him into a confrontation with the escaped heavy, who is finally revealed (SPOILER ALERT) to be the man whose actions in killing the woman's brother that landed MacLane in jail. The film is not always totally convincing but is pretty realistic, MacLane does his best to make the material work & the 1930s production values add some sort of modest thriller mechanics to the film.
Barton MacLane must have some kind of record for appearing in the most prison films. Besides Prison Break, he had appeared in the following prison films – San Quentin (1937), I Was a Convict (1939), Mutiny in the Big House (1939), Men Without Souls (1940), a different San Quentin in 1946 & finally Jail Breakers in 1955. With that kind of track record he must have had some good experience playing convicts.
Prison Break is something of a morality tale of life in prison, although the title is somewhat inaccurate – MacLane doesn't actually take part in any prison escape (although he foils one himself) & the actual successful escape takes place offscreen. Instead, it's more of a story on how a man takes some rash & very poor choices to protect his friends & finds himself in almost perpetual trouble with the law. First, his fiancée's father objects to him marrying his daughter, which causes the woman's brother to try to stop him but ends up being killed by a stranger who flees the scene. Second, he takes the rap to protect a friend he believes caused the death, causing him to go to jail for a decade but with the option of parole if he stays clean in jail, which is going to be impossible with the prison heavy after him. Third is after he gets his parole, where his fiancée's father tries to keep him out of work, forcing him into a confrontation with the escaped heavy, who is finally revealed (SPOILER ALERT) to be the man whose actions in killing the woman's brother that landed MacLane in jail. The film is not always totally convincing but is pretty realistic, MacLane does his best to make the material work & the 1930s production values add some sort of modest thriller mechanics to the film.