"Based on the true story of a prison break in Canon City, Colorado. Warden Roy Best of the Canon City Prison plays himself in the film! Starting from a routine recital of prison life, attention slowly focuses on an innocent-looking inmate making crude revolvers and organizing eleven other inmates for the big break. A neglected classic of postwar Hollywood noir-realism!" (Errol Morris, PFA '79) From John Alton's book Painting with Light, "Prison Scenes": "There is nothing romantic about the drab, gray prison scene. The prison mood can best be presented with display of lights and deep shadows...It is sufficient to show the black shadows of bars on a wall...Interiors of a prison should never be bright, even in daylight scenes. For prisoners the sun never rises...When the lights are out, the moon makes a strong but sad blue light."