Showing posts with label Bette Davis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bette Davis. Show all posts

Thursday, April 4, 2013

20,000 YEARS IN SING SING (1932)

I cannot see this film holding any kind of interest with modern audiences.  Convicted of a number of charges, including robbery and assault with an automatic weapon, cocky gangster Spencer Tracy is sentenced to a long haul at Sing Sing Prison.  In struts into the joint thinking his money is gonna make his time easy, but the tough love warden isn't interested in his stinkin' money.  He truly wants to reform him!  Haha.

Anyway, Tracy and the good-hearted warden butts heads a little bit, but for the most part it's pretty boring.  The highpoint of the film is a prison break scene, but even then Tracy is only a bystander.  One day Tracy gets a message that is girlfriend (Bette Davis) is sick and dying.  She's not even in the hospital, but just laying in her own bed "dying".  So the warden decides to give Tracy a chance to prove himself and gives him a 24-hour, unchaperoned furlough to go visit his "dying" girlfriend.  Right about then I gave up any chance of this film being good.

Compared to the same years I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG this film looks like a joke.  Good acting, but the story was complete hokum and I could never believe that Tracy was a tough guy.  Skip it.