**SPOILERS**Explosive exposure of the brutal prison system in the south circa 1932. With the use of chain gangs and sweat boxes to keep the inmates in line and in order but where in many cases these brutal practices are used as medieval torture devices. By the sadistic guards and their overseers, the big boss men, who worked prisoners almost to, and many times passed, the point of death.
We get to see what's happening at the prison camp when one of the new inmates Carter,John Arledge, who's unable to keep up with his fellow prisoners at the rock pile is thrown into the notorious sweat-box. Put in a stress-position the poor young man, who's almost dehydrated already, is left there for hours in the broiling sun where he eventually dies and his death is reported to be by the corrupt master of the guards Skinner, C. Henry Gordon, a suicide.
It soon becomes apparent that the prisoners are not being there in the name of Justice but are there to be used as slave labor in building a road, the aptly named Hell's Highway, for this local construction magnet Billings, Oscar Apfel, who's paying off the Boss Man, Skinner, to get the job done even if he has to work them all to death to do it. It the mist of all of this chaos and human degradation there's the hardened and unapologetic Duke Ellis, Richard Dix, the toughest guy in the joint who's planning to stage a break out. Ellis later gets cold feet at the very last moment not because of the fear of death but because he spots his kid brother Johnny, Tom Brown, in the prison camp who was just brought there for trying to gun down the stool pigeon who ratted on him.
Tough guy Duke always wanting his brother Johnny to look after their mom and Johnny's sweetheart Mary Ellen there and then decided to go straight in not starting any trouble with both the prisoners and guards and look after young Johnny. Ellis tries to get him off this tough guy act in trying to imitate himself and end up in the same position, a lifer with no chance of parole, instead of him being able to get out on parole in less then a year.
Things aren't as easy as Duke thought they would be with the hot headed Johnny getting into a fight with one of the prisoners, who stole his photo of Mary Ellen, and at the same knocking down a guard who tried to brake it up ending up in the sweat-box. Duke blackmailing Pop-eye, Warner Richmond, the captain of the guards in getting Johnny out of the sweat-box with the threat of proving that it was he not the two escaped prisoners, who were later shot dead, who murdered his old lady. This happened when he, thanks to prison fortune teller Matthew (Chas Middleton), caught her in bed with another man.
Getting Johnny a job at the prison office Duke thought that would keep his nose clean until he's let out on parole but it has the opposite effect on Johnny, feeling that he'll be considered a rat by the other prisoners, not wanting to be a pampered office boy but a hardened criminal like his big brother Duke. In order to prove himself Johnny stages another break out that goes completely haywire with the entire poison camp being burned down. During the confusion Johnny saved the entire contingent of prison guards from burning to death interrupting his getaway. On eh run Johnny ends up getting shot in the back ,not by the guards or fellow prisoners, by this group of mutes out hunting in the country who somehow mistook Johnny for a wild animal.
Hard hitting and thought-provoking motion picture about brutality behind prison bars with only the ending being a bit too hard to take. Both Duke and Johnny not only survive their ordeal by fire but also get the goods on both Billings and his paid off butt-kissing Boss Man Skinner. The really out of touch with reality, and the law, Billings incriminated himself by sending an official letter to the prison administration. In the letter he praised what a good job Skinner and is boys did in installing the sweat-box that put fear and terror into the hearts of the prisoners and at the same time got them to work harder in building his notorious Hell's Highway. The letter implicating him, as well as Boss Man Skinner, in the brutal and torture murder of inmate Carter as well.
P.S For the first and last time in his life Duke was more then willing to play the part of a stool pigeon, the worst thing a prisoner could do, in being the one person to testify in open court against the unscrupulous Billings and sadistic Skinner; and you know what! not a single one of his fellow inmates will hold it against him for doing that.
We get to see what's happening at the prison camp when one of the new inmates Carter,John Arledge, who's unable to keep up with his fellow prisoners at the rock pile is thrown into the notorious sweat-box. Put in a stress-position the poor young man, who's almost dehydrated already, is left there for hours in the broiling sun where he eventually dies and his death is reported to be by the corrupt master of the guards Skinner, C. Henry Gordon, a suicide.
It soon becomes apparent that the prisoners are not being there in the name of Justice but are there to be used as slave labor in building a road, the aptly named Hell's Highway, for this local construction magnet Billings, Oscar Apfel, who's paying off the Boss Man, Skinner, to get the job done even if he has to work them all to death to do it. It the mist of all of this chaos and human degradation there's the hardened and unapologetic Duke Ellis, Richard Dix, the toughest guy in the joint who's planning to stage a break out. Ellis later gets cold feet at the very last moment not because of the fear of death but because he spots his kid brother Johnny, Tom Brown, in the prison camp who was just brought there for trying to gun down the stool pigeon who ratted on him.
Tough guy Duke always wanting his brother Johnny to look after their mom and Johnny's sweetheart Mary Ellen there and then decided to go straight in not starting any trouble with both the prisoners and guards and look after young Johnny. Ellis tries to get him off this tough guy act in trying to imitate himself and end up in the same position, a lifer with no chance of parole, instead of him being able to get out on parole in less then a year.
Things aren't as easy as Duke thought they would be with the hot headed Johnny getting into a fight with one of the prisoners, who stole his photo of Mary Ellen, and at the same knocking down a guard who tried to brake it up ending up in the sweat-box. Duke blackmailing Pop-eye, Warner Richmond, the captain of the guards in getting Johnny out of the sweat-box with the threat of proving that it was he not the two escaped prisoners, who were later shot dead, who murdered his old lady. This happened when he, thanks to prison fortune teller Matthew (Chas Middleton), caught her in bed with another man.
Getting Johnny a job at the prison office Duke thought that would keep his nose clean until he's let out on parole but it has the opposite effect on Johnny, feeling that he'll be considered a rat by the other prisoners, not wanting to be a pampered office boy but a hardened criminal like his big brother Duke. In order to prove himself Johnny stages another break out that goes completely haywire with the entire poison camp being burned down. During the confusion Johnny saved the entire contingent of prison guards from burning to death interrupting his getaway. On eh run Johnny ends up getting shot in the back ,not by the guards or fellow prisoners, by this group of mutes out hunting in the country who somehow mistook Johnny for a wild animal.
Hard hitting and thought-provoking motion picture about brutality behind prison bars with only the ending being a bit too hard to take. Both Duke and Johnny not only survive their ordeal by fire but also get the goods on both Billings and his paid off butt-kissing Boss Man Skinner. The really out of touch with reality, and the law, Billings incriminated himself by sending an official letter to the prison administration. In the letter he praised what a good job Skinner and is boys did in installing the sweat-box that put fear and terror into the hearts of the prisoners and at the same time got them to work harder in building his notorious Hell's Highway. The letter implicating him, as well as Boss Man Skinner, in the brutal and torture murder of inmate Carter as well.
P.S For the first and last time in his life Duke was more then willing to play the part of a stool pigeon, the worst thing a prisoner could do, in being the one person to testify in open court against the unscrupulous Billings and sadistic Skinner; and you know what! not a single one of his fellow inmates will hold it against him for doing that.