The Glass House

Someone pointed me in the direction of a movie being (legally) housed online. It's called "The Glass House", based on a book by Truman Capote. Starring Vic Morrow, Alan Alda, Billy Dee Williams and Clu Gulager, it was made in 1972 at the Utah State Prison. (I remember Alda saying in an interview he was actually held hostage there for a time during filming, but I can't find any information on it.)

It isn't by any means a "happy" film, and is actually quite dark and gritty for its time. There's violence, implied rape and a suicide, so it's not one for the kiddies, but even today it's considered to be one of the most realistic film depictions of prison life.

Alda plays a mild-mannered political science professor convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to a year in jail; at the same time, a new guard (Gulager) is being shown the ropes. They both receive a baptism by fire into the dark world of prison life, administered by the resident bully (Morrow).

Without ruining it for you, all I can say is this is the first movie in years that kept me in suspense up until the last possible second. I was actually gripping the laptop in front of me; I don't ever remember a reaction like that with any of the more modern, multi-million-dollar special-effects films today. The climax alone in the last ten minutes was worth seeing the whole movie for.

As someone who isn't a fan of prison movies, this movie still impressed me enough to purchase a higher-quality copy from Amazon.com. If you'd like to see it online, just click the link I gave above and watch it on the right-hand side of your screen. It's in four 20-minute segments, so when the first one finishes just scroll through the options beneath that window to find the next one.