This may have been intended as either a rival or a companion piece to the same year's BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ – since both deal with the true story of a 'lifer' (the capital punishment here having been revoked at the proverbial eleventh hour, hence the alternate title REPRIEVE) making a name for himself in some specialized field: painting in this case and ornithology in the John Frankenheimer film. With that one, however, it also shared the gritty quality of the photography (courtesy of veteran Joseph Biroc) – being in this way redolent of American cinema's maturity, mainly brought on by theatre or TV-derived talents, and which was particularly felt around this time. In any case, CONVICTS 4 proved the sole directorial stint for scriptwriter Millard Kaufman (still best-known for John Sturges' BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK {1955}): his expertise in one field and, at the same time, inexperience in the other were ultimately responsible for a film that is undeniably literary yet needlessly muddled, seeing how it resolves itself via an unprecedented episodic structure that throws in a clutch of rather pointless 'guest appearances' along the way!
Ben Gazzara is the overwrought family man in Depression-era America who shoots a storekeeper (with his own gun!) over a $3.95 teddy-bear he could not afford to buy his daughter for Christmas – such overt melodrama would be deemed risible were it not 'The Gospel Truth'! His gallery of co-stars, then, includes: Stuart Whitman as a prison guard-turned-warden (who first meets our hero at his interrupted execution in Sing Sing), Ray Walston (as Gazzara's irascible cellmate, whom he eventually persuades to burrow underground towards freedom but gets caught in comically ironic fashion: the protagonist's subsequent desperate solo escape attempt results in being similarly fruitless) and Sammy Davis Jr. (as a slick fellow convict whom the hero teaches, off-screen, how to read, though the solitary source at hand is the Holy Bible!). The roles played by all of these are sizeable, though Davis' could safely be removed without the film losing anything from its plot line or scope!
Vincent Price, however, turns up towards the end as an art critic – he was a connoisseur in real life – but is on screen for no more than 3 minutes(!), ditto Rod Steiger in a one-scene appearance, albeit typically intense and compelling as a facially-scarred and sadistic guard nicknamed "Tiptoes", while Broderick Crawford (who has done his fair share of prison pictures) chimes in briefly as the obligatory 'old school' warden. Also on hand are: Jack Kruschen as the hero's father who decides to atone for his son's crime by saving a life, but his off-screen spell as a bay-watcher proves fatal to himself!; Jack Albertson as Gazzara's art teacher; Reggie Nalder as yet another prisoner; best of all, however, is Timothy Carey in a characteristically eccentric turn as Gazzara's boyhood pal and fellow lifer: he incessantly hams it up by constantly talking through his teeth and, at one point, eating a huge piece of cake, thus making for a welcome distraction from the surrounding gloom!
An interesting point emerges when his wife tells Gazzara that she is leaving him for another man: when he states he will never grant her a divorce, she retorts by saying that one is not needed since technically he is dead to the outside world!; on finally being released (having done 18 years in the penitentiary), he is met by his grown-up daughter and her own child. By the way, the film's official title is an odd one: who is the fourth convict supposed to be – surely not Carey (whose part, while showy, is not a central one), so I assume it must be referring to Whitman who, in having pushed the protagonist towards rehabilitation, was as much an outsider within the system as any of the inmates!
Ben Gazzara is the overwrought family man in Depression-era America who shoots a storekeeper (with his own gun!) over a $3.95 teddy-bear he could not afford to buy his daughter for Christmas – such overt melodrama would be deemed risible were it not 'The Gospel Truth'! His gallery of co-stars, then, includes: Stuart Whitman as a prison guard-turned-warden (who first meets our hero at his interrupted execution in Sing Sing), Ray Walston (as Gazzara's irascible cellmate, whom he eventually persuades to burrow underground towards freedom but gets caught in comically ironic fashion: the protagonist's subsequent desperate solo escape attempt results in being similarly fruitless) and Sammy Davis Jr. (as a slick fellow convict whom the hero teaches, off-screen, how to read, though the solitary source at hand is the Holy Bible!). The roles played by all of these are sizeable, though Davis' could safely be removed without the film losing anything from its plot line or scope!
Vincent Price, however, turns up towards the end as an art critic – he was a connoisseur in real life – but is on screen for no more than 3 minutes(!), ditto Rod Steiger in a one-scene appearance, albeit typically intense and compelling as a facially-scarred and sadistic guard nicknamed "Tiptoes", while Broderick Crawford (who has done his fair share of prison pictures) chimes in briefly as the obligatory 'old school' warden. Also on hand are: Jack Kruschen as the hero's father who decides to atone for his son's crime by saving a life, but his off-screen spell as a bay-watcher proves fatal to himself!; Jack Albertson as Gazzara's art teacher; Reggie Nalder as yet another prisoner; best of all, however, is Timothy Carey in a characteristically eccentric turn as Gazzara's boyhood pal and fellow lifer: he incessantly hams it up by constantly talking through his teeth and, at one point, eating a huge piece of cake, thus making for a welcome distraction from the surrounding gloom!
An interesting point emerges when his wife tells Gazzara that she is leaving him for another man: when he states he will never grant her a divorce, she retorts by saying that one is not needed since technically he is dead to the outside world!; on finally being released (having done 18 years in the penitentiary), he is met by his grown-up daughter and her own child. By the way, the film's official title is an odd one: who is the fourth convict supposed to be – surely not Carey (whose part, while showy, is not a central one), so I assume it must be referring to Whitman who, in having pushed the protagonist towards rehabilitation, was as much an outsider within the system as any of the inmates!