User Reviews

This is Ben Gazzara's movie. He's at his best, doing a terrific job, looks great, and has plenty of range for the character's needs. It's a typical prison movie--nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't do anything really unusual. The supporting roles are mostly minor. If you're looking for a great, 'lost' Timothy Carey performance, this might disappoint you: he's got his teeth clenched throughout--literally, appears to be dubbed most of the time and his character never really comes to life. The real Timothy Carey role is given to Ray Walston (completely over-the-top, volatile and off the wall from the word go--actually rather funny at times). Carey and most of the rest, like Sammy Davis Jr, Vincent Price (the art expert of course), Broderick Crawford, Rod Steiger (relishing every second of his 3 minutes on screen) are really not doing much more than cameo appearances. Davis's character is developed and then dropped midway. Stuart Whitman is reduced to a well-meaning nice guy. Still, it's fun to see who will walk through the door next, and former Film Noir stalwarts like John Kellogg and Adam Williams (as prison guards) are always welcome. It's a Hollywood movie pretty much all the way to the end. Worth seeing for fans of Gazzara and the supporting actors.

Some trivia: Jack Kruschen and Naomi Stevens, who play Gazzara's parents here, also play a married couple two years earlier, in THE APARTMENT.

This may have been intended as either a rival or a companion piece to the same year's BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ – since both deal with the true story of a 'lifer' (the capital punishment here having been revoked at the proverbial eleventh hour, hence the alternate title REPRIEVE) making a name for himself in some specialized field: painting in this case and ornithology in the John Frankenheimer film. With that one, however, it also shared the gritty quality of the photography (courtesy of veteran Joseph Biroc) – being in this way redolent of American cinema's maturity, mainly brought on by theatre or TV-derived talents, and which was particularly felt around this time. In any case, CONVICTS 4 proved the sole directorial stint for scriptwriter Millard Kaufman (still best-known for John Sturges' BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK {1955}): his expertise in one field and, at the same time, inexperience in the other were ultimately responsible for a film that is undeniably literary yet needlessly muddled, seeing how it resolves itself via an unprecedented episodic structure that throws in a clutch of rather pointless 'guest appearances' along the way!

Ben Gazzara is the overwrought family man in Depression-era America who shoots a storekeeper (with his own gun!) over a $3.95 teddy-bear he could not afford to buy his daughter for Christmas – such overt melodrama would be deemed risible were it not 'The Gospel Truth'! His gallery of co-stars, then, includes: Stuart Whitman as a prison guard-turned-warden (who first meets our hero at his interrupted execution in Sing Sing), Ray Walston (as Gazzara's irascible cellmate, whom he eventually persuades to burrow underground towards freedom but gets caught in comically ironic fashion: the protagonist's subsequent desperate solo escape attempt results in being similarly fruitless) and Sammy Davis Jr. (as a slick fellow convict whom the hero teaches, off-screen, how to read, though the solitary source at hand is the Holy Bible!). The roles played by all of these are sizeable, though Davis' could safely be removed without the film losing anything from its plot line or scope!

Vincent Price, however, turns up towards the end as an art critic – he was a connoisseur in real life – but is on screen for no more than 3 minutes(!), ditto Rod Steiger in a one-scene appearance, albeit typically intense and compelling as a facially-scarred and sadistic guard nicknamed "Tiptoes", while Broderick Crawford (who has done his fair share of prison pictures) chimes in briefly as the obligatory 'old school' warden. Also on hand are: Jack Kruschen as the hero's father who decides to atone for his son's crime by saving a life, but his off-screen spell as a bay-watcher proves fatal to himself!; Jack Albertson as Gazzara's art teacher; Reggie Nalder as yet another prisoner; best of all, however, is Timothy Carey in a characteristically eccentric turn as Gazzara's boyhood pal and fellow lifer: he incessantly hams it up by constantly talking through his teeth and, at one point, eating a huge piece of cake, thus making for a welcome distraction from the surrounding gloom!

An interesting point emerges when his wife tells Gazzara that she is leaving him for another man: when he states he will never grant her a divorce, she retorts by saying that one is not needed since technically he is dead to the outside world!; on finally being released (having done 18 years in the penitentiary), he is met by his grown-up daughter and her own child. By the way, the film's official title is an odd one: who is the fourth convict supposed to be – surely not Carey (whose part, while showy, is not a central one), so I assume it must be referring to Whitman who, in having pushed the protagonist towards rehabilitation, was as much an outsider within the system as any of the inmates!

Convicts 4 is based on the true story of John Resko, a resident of New York State's correctional system for a couple of decades who got a lucky commutation after a brutal depression era shooting of a storeowner in hungry desperate times and eventually a reprieve from the life sentence. All owing to a talent for art which was nurtured within the prison walls of Sing Sing and then Dannemora. Ben Gazzara plays the angry Resko who eventually learns to both work the system and then get the reprieve under Stuart Whitman who is first a guard in both places he served and who eventually becomes the warden at Dannemora.

Some obvious parallels with Birdman Of Alcatraz have to be mentioned here. Unlike Robert Stroud who not only killed on the outside, but killed a prison guard as well, Gazzara may have been a troublemaker at first, but he did not kill one of the guards. Even though New York did not have the death penalty for many years long after Resko was in prison the one exception in the law was for correctional employees. It was their only weapon for keeping some of society's rejects in line. Resko always had a better chance of making it outside than Stroud.

Some name players did some small roles here, they must have believed in the project. Broderick Crawford and Rod Steiger are memorable as Dannemora's first warden and chief guard. So is Ray Walston as a stir crazy convict. Most of all Sammy Davis, Jr. who is Gazzara's cellmate dropped the song and dance talent he was best known for and did a really serious part.

Gazzara hit all the right notes a lot of them as chords as he essayed many different and conflicting levels of emotion as Resko. This film just might have been his career role on the big screen. Convicts 4 wins an honored place among prison films for the big screen.

Gazarra carries the movie, although his low key emoting and lack of reaction to events around him make it seem a little too "Method" for my taste. The screenplay is too superficial in moving him swiftly from Death Row, in flashback to the crime and forward to Folsom.

Opening titles blare that Rod Steiger, Broderick Crawford and Vincent Price are featured players but taking a bathroom break could cause you to miss any of them. Steiger chews the scenery introducing himself as the steely chief warder who wields a big stick, but is never seen again. Crawford in a silk suit (???) is a "Big Daddy" style head of the prison reviewing the new prisoners and after a brief exposition with Stuart Whitman wanders off into the prison. Price gets the best deal, playing to his strength as a slightly arch art critic visiting the prison his interaction with Gazarra is believable and moves the plot along swiftly. Ray Walston can't make his mind up whether to be tough, kooky or homicidal (maybe the script gave too many options?) but steals scenes with ease. Sammy David Jnr has the chops to play the tough, little guy but is mostly there as the token black who is given a window into life with Gazarra teaches him to read (alluded to but never shown). What could have been a meaningful look at the US prison system is no more than a formulaic "big house" story that could have been made in the 1930's

I really liked this film, even Sammy D rocks in this. If you love prison movies (and I DO) this one floats way up there. Ben G's character is stuck in the depression and does somethin out of desperation that lands him on death row, he is kind and tries to deal with JAIL but NO-ONE comes out better than when they went in. Sammy Davis J will tell ya all about it! Nice solid performances in this film noir type gem although, really Vincent price's role is BARELY a cameo. I was all jazzed to see him do serious stuff but although his acting was rad (he plays an art critic) he is only in the damn thing for five if that minutes. Very pleased WB have released this on their new archive collection. No COOL features that it deserves but...... that may come.