Warner Brothers classic I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang coming from a bigger studio as it did overshadowed RKO's Hell's Highway. While it's not as timeless and important as 'I Am a Fugitive.', it is, nonetheless, well worth seeing and might surprise you at the film's quality and strength. The film excels due to pretty good acting and an exciting script. Amidst this strange family reunion is the purpose of this chain gang-not to rehabilitate but to provide cheap labor for a jerk trying to produce a road and make himself rich in the process. Only when his young brother is also committed to this same chain gang is Dix's toughness challenged. He plays perhaps the toughest of all these prisoners-a guy respected yet feared by everyone. The film stars Richard Dix in an unusual role. The public no doubt was torn between hating the prisoners and the system that mistreated them. Killers, thieves, cut-throats and homosexuals seem to make up most of the prisoners-so at the time the message of reform was somehow lost. In 'Hell's Highway', while the system is bad, the movie ALSO focuses on the inmates-and shows them, in most cases, as a bunch of bad folks. So why is the latter film a super-famous film for its social commentary and 'Hell's Highway' is pretty much forgotten? Well, the biggest reason is focus. What surprised me about 'Hell's Highway' more than anything else was that it addressed the abuses of the chain gang system two months before the much more famous 'I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang' debuted.

Blood money movie 1932