The Last Mile (DVD)

Richard Walters is convicted of a murder he didn't commit. Sentenced to the electric chair, he is thrown in with the condemned men on death row. The guards treat Walters and his cellmates with utter contempt, causing tensions to rise. One embittered convict, "Killer" Mears, manages to overpower a guard and take his keys. He leads the men in a full-scale riot and issues demands to the warden. Walters, still convinced of his own innocence, must now decide whether to remain in his cell or join the hardened men desperately attempting to regain their freedom...

The Last Mile is the first example of the "men-in-prison" genre that would become so popular with movie audiences during the Great Depression. It even predates the immortal I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (in fact, Preston Foster was cast in that classic film because of his memorable performance as "Killer" Mears in The Last Mile.) Character actor George E. Stone had recently played Edward G. Robinson's right-hand man in the Warner Brothers gangster classic Little Caesar (1931). Edward Van Sloan, famous as Dr. Van Helsing in Dracula (1931), has a small role as a rabbi visiting Stone's character. The Last Mile's gritty realism and shocking violence could have only been possible during the "Pre-Code" era. In Britain, where censorship was already becoming more strict, it was refused a UK cinema certificate.

• drama