Watch Riot in Cell Block 11 For Free

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Using nothing but character players and the personal recollections of what producer Walter Wanger saw while he did a stretch in the joint Don Siegel crafted a real masterpiece of a prison film in Riot In Cell Block 11. In fact the lack of star players gives this film a nice ring of authenticity to it.Cell Block 11 in this particular prison is the solitary ward, the place where the toughest cases are assigned. With a pair like Neville Brand and Leo Gordon in that block would you think otherwise.Anyway to protest the conditions they're in the prisoners led by Brand stage a riot where they take the guards assigned to that block hostage. When Brand is wounded in a quarrel, Leo Gordon takes over leadership and he's belonging in the psycho ward. But he's the toughest guy in the joint and nobody is going to argue with him.Emile Meyer does a great job as the warden who is a decent and compassionate individual trying to affect a few reforms. His pleas fall on deaf ears because then as now, convicts don't have any votes and by definition they are an anti-societal group. Meyer's humanity is contrasted with that of Frank Faylen who is a political appointee and tries a grandstand play with the convicts that almost gets him killed.This is as realistic a prison drama as you will ever get. Big accolades go here to Walter Wanger who had an incredible unique perspective of life on the inside and turned it with Don Siegel's help into a great motion picture.

The angry inmates in cell block 11 led by the shrewd and fearsome James V. Dunn (superbly played by Neville Brand) stage a riot in protest to the deplorable living conditions in the prison they are incarcerated in.Director Don Siegel's trademark mean'n'lean style works exceptionally well in both maintaining an uncompromisingly tough confrontational tone throughout and keeping the gripping story moving along at a brisk pace. The use of authentic Folsom Prison locations and actual guards and convicts as extras provides an utterly convincing sense of gritty realism. The hard-hitting script by Richard Collins likewise doesn't pull any punches, with the inmates drawn in a credible manner as not all of them get along and agree with one another about the riot. Moreover, the screenplay warrants extra praise not only for its admirable refusal to paint the criminals in a too sentimental light or provide any of them with needless back stories, but also for the surprising downbeat ending with Dunn winning the battle, yet still losing the war by having thirty years added to his sentence.The strong acting by an excellent cast of sturdy and refreshingly unglamorous character actors helps a whole lot, with especially stand-out work from Leo Gordon as the unstable and dangerous Crazy Mike Carnie, Emile Meyer as the sympathetic Warden Reynolds, Frank Faylen as the rigid and uncaring Commissioner Haskell, Whit Bissell as mean chief guard Snader, Robert Osterich as venerable felon The Colonel, and Paul Frees as nervous rookie guard Monroe. Don Keefer and William Schallert pop up in small roles as reporters. Kudos are also in order for Herschel Burke Gilbert's rousing score and Russell Harlan's stark black and white cinematography. An important and provocative film.

Riot in Cell Block 11 comes as a bit of a shock, but not because of its brutality (it's a cuddly little puppy compared to Jules Dassin's Brute Force). The shock is that Don Siegel, later to become inextricably associated with such violent and/or reactionary movies as his remake of The Killers, Madigan and Dirty Harry, turned out a temperate, balanced and humane look at prison conditions; another shock is that the movie emerged in the middle of a complacent decade not remembered for its sympathy to marginalized groups in American society.The droning voice-over that opens the movie doesn't bode well: It warns of a wave of riots throughout penitentiaries across the country and even takes us to a criminal-justice convention in Toronto where the topic is aired. But soon we're inside Cell Block 11, part of a run-down, overcrowded institution whose warden (Emile Meyer) has been campaigning for reforms, to no avail. (Standing up for convicted criminals, then and now, is political suicide.) When opportunity knocks, the inmates take over the asylum. What they want is press coverage of their quite moderate demands: More elbow room, separate facilities for the mentally ill among them, job training. But they've taken guards as hostages, and threaten to execute them if their demands aren't met.Leader of the rebels is Neville Brand, who tries to negotiate in good faith, but Meyer has one hand tied behind his back – by Frank Faylen, a hard-line state bureaucrat. Brand, too, has trouble keeping the prisoners in line, particularly those who see the riot less as a cause than as a chance for some cheap thrills. Siegel manages to keep the story taut within the claustrophobic confines of the prison and without too much in the way of splashy incident, until he brings it to a surprisingly rueful end. Somehow, he has managed to make an issues movie told almost solely through action.Siegel's career proved that he had more sides to him than he's generally known for. He started out cutting montages in other directors' movies (Blues in the Night and The Hard Way among them); when he moved into directing, his early work showed range in style and tone: The period thriller The Verdict, the light-hearted noir The Big Steal, the eschatological drama Night Unto Night. Too bad we can't remember him by saying that he just got better and better, because, unfortunately, it just isn't so.

Gritty, realistic, semi-documentary style, early film from Don Siegel - two years before 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'. Essentially a social comment film about the poor conditions in prisons, 'Riot in Cell Block 11' doesn't force its point with cliches and manages to be an effective 'B' Movie.The storyline starts quickly with a group of prisoners taking their warders hostage and barricading themselves in their cell block. Narrative then follows the proceedings to their conclusion, the action never straying from the prison itself.Film succeeds mainly as a result of not having any forced characters - none of the prisoners are particularly likable and there are none of the usual dumb characterisations usually found in prison movies. The various authority figures deal with the situation they are presented with in a matter of fact way, and the films stark style remains through to the end. As I was watching 'Riot in Cell Block 11' I was dreading some wise old sage prisoner coming out of the woodwork, due for parole the following week, who was somehow going to contrive to get himself shot just as the riot was coming to a close, to enjoy a lengthy death scene in someone's arms. Thank goodness nothing like this occurs.Film made me think of 'Killer's Kiss', in that they are both 1950's low-budget movies with great potential, from a soon-to-be famous director. 'Riot in Cell Block 11' succeeds in all areas, and while its targets may be low it certainly deserves more recognition.