Puerto Rican-born Miguel Piñero was serving a five-year stretch in Sing Sing for armed robbery when he wrote the award-winning play Short Eyes. Piñero's screen adaptation, directed by Robert M. Young (Alambrista!, Ballad of Gregorio Cortez) has a rare poetic quality that makes this intimate sojourn into prison life all the more chilling; Short Eyes goes beyond prison melodrama to a challenging portrait of a dehumanized society in which violence cannot be explained away by sociological theories. The story chronicles the jarring disruption of the daily routine that occurs with the arrival of a new inmate known as “short eyes,” the prison epithet for child molester. The ultimate pariah in this strict caste society is met by a united front of terror and ritualized violence.