This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

One of the dirtiest, grittiest crime noirs to come out of the 1950s. It's about a man, Jerry Barker, that kidnaps a sick child, holds him hostage and asks the father for ransom money for the safe return of the child. Barker gets his money but the boy ends up dead and Barker in prison. He became known as The Ice Man in the news papers and well hated in prison for killing a child. Barker's troubles become worse inside the penitentiary.Great casting, superb acting, cinematography is beautiful and a story that can leave you on the edge of your seat. A worthwhile crime-prison film to watch. It is really rough at times but a darn good film. Great to see this one again! 9/10

Big House USA sounds like a prison picture, but only in part of the film is the setting a maximum security prison. There is the part how Ralph Meeker got there and the last part about his escape with several other solid citizens, residents of Big House USA.A young boy with one rich father is kidnapped by Meeker and dies while in his custody. Not that he killed him, but kidnapping alone as per the Lindbergh law gets him the gas chamber. Father Willis Bouchey pays the ransom, but gets no child back.Meeker is arrested, but all he's charged with is extortion, without a body dead or alive, the authorities can do no more. But with the reputation as a child killer, Meeker's not going to be a popular guy even in the maximum security federal penitentiary he's sent.But cell-mate Broderick Crawford has other ideas about the ransom money never recovered and buried in a national park. He and confederates Lon Chaney, Jr., William Talman, and Charles Bronson escape with Meeker. They had an escape plan in the works already, a quite ingenious one which costs another prisoner his life during a dry run.A chance to see all these guys in a film is never to be passed up. Crawford we're told is a smart guy. Personally if he were that smart he'd have realized that the authorities would know full well he was heading for the park and go anywhere else. But greed overtakes intelligence.There's also a nice role here for Felicia Farr as Meeker's accomplice. FBI man Reed Hadley and chief forest ranger Roy Roberts represent the law. Big House USA spends more time in the wide open spaces than in a maximum security prison. Still it's a tight little noir film with a fine cast of players.

Meeker kidnaps a kid, but kid dies in an accident so Meeker tosses him into a 1,000 foot deep rugged Gorge but manages to get $200k ransom which he stashes. He gets caught and sent to a BIG HOUSE on a fakey looking island in the USA. His cell-mates are: Broderick Crawford, chess playing chief mastermind, Lon Chaney Jr., lovable loony who reads romance magazines, Charles Bronson, ever shirtless and bulging with greased up muscles(reading muscle magazines) and William Talman (Perry Masons own D.A., Hamilton Burger) They are about to escape. They kidnap the kidnapper to make him take them to the ransom money. After the escape Crawford makes Talman bash Bronson's brains in and blow torch his body. Then Crawford shoots Chaney Jr. This leaves Meeker to lead Crawford & Talman to the ransom loot. When they get to the stash, they conk Meeker on the noggin but now the Park Rangers and F.B.I. ambush them. Talman get shot about twenty seven times by the F.B.I guy and Crawford gives himself up, sniveling like a baby. The coward. Voice-over says Crawford & Meeker get nuked in the BIG HOUSE. This is a kidnap story but I guess BIG HOUSE, USA sounds more fun than KIDNAP, USA. The flick is fun. You won't hate it, nor will you insist on getting back the time you spent watching it.

***SPOILERS*** Even though the movie "Big House U.S.A" runs for a scant 83 minutes it seems like well over two hours watching it and all the side plots that's in it. In fact we never get to see the big man or top star Braderick Crawford, the psycho as well as wimpy sadist killer Rollo Lamar, until almost halfway into the film.The story starts with good natured fisherman Jerry Baker, Ralph Meeker, giving a hand to this runaway boy Danny Lambert, Peter J. Votrian, who checked out of camp when he was about to be giving an injection for his serious asthma condition. As it turned Baker was on to little Danny in that his dad Mr. Lambert, Willis Bouchey, being one of the riches men in the state of Colorado. Holding little Danny hostage for a ransom of $200,000.00 Baker makes the mistake in leaving the kid alone in this dilapidate fire tower in the woods. Trying to escape Danny falls to his death and with that Baker if caught faces the death penalty for, a federal charge, kidnap/murder.Caught by the FBI lead by Special Agent James Madden, Reed Hadley, Baker being a step ahead of the law had disposed of Danny's body and hid the ransom money where he only faced and got a one to five year sentence at the top security Cascaville prison. It's behind bars that Baker got involved, since he had no choice in the matter, with his cell-mates who were serving time for a slew of multiple murders all across the country. Headed by the brains of the outfit Rollo Lamar Baker is forced to break out of jail with Rollo and his fellow cell-mates the worst bunch of convicts in the entire prison system. It's not that Rollo liked Baker but the fact that Baker knew where he stashed the $200,000.00 ransom money was worth saving his life; That's until Rollo got his hands on that cash and then he's history!Worth watching just to see future action star Charles Bronson all pumped up, the guy would give Arnold Schwartznegger a run for his money in a body building contest, and crazy with future District Attorney Berger, William Talman, in the Perry Mason TV show as, this really takes the cake, William "Machine Gun" Mason! In fact three years later Charles Bronson would get the lead role as the real, whom Talman's character was obviously based on, Machine Gun Kelly.P.S There's also horror star Lon Cheney Jr. as the dim witted and lovable convicted murderer Lenny Alamo Smith. It fact it was Lenny that Lon Chaney played in the 1939 film "Of Mice & Men" that made him a star. And talking about Lenny in "Of Mice & Men" it was non-other then Broderick Crawford who originated the role on Broadway three years earlier!